Lackey Sailing | Lyra 15

February 10, 2021

Lyra 15

Wednesday

Back to work in the cockpit, I started off the morning with a round of sanding, cleaning up the first round of fairing filler in the cockpit areas and lightly sanding the fiberglass patches on the inside surfaces of the cockpit and icebox hatch.

After thoroughly cleaning up, the cockpit was ready for a second round of fairing compound, this time mainly concentrated on the two larger structural patches (icebox hatch and aft lazarette), and the corners where the cockpit sole met the cockpit well sides.

After a light sanding, the transducer housing was nearly complete–just a few pesky tool marks remaining, but the overall shape and profile was where I wanted it.

Later in the day, when I had some fairing compound leftover from another job, I filled these small voids.

After giving the forward hatch frame a light sanding, I applied a second coat of varnish, a process I’d continue for the next several days.

I quickly cleaned up the verdigris-coated bronze chainplates (original equipment, complete with Merriman logo) so I could better judge the metal’s condition. I didn’t bother cleaning the chainplates completely, as my goal was just to get an inspection efficiently. Getting past the idea that these chainplates seemed impossibly puny by today’s standards, the fact was they had (and still were on some sisterships) worked fine for 60 years, the bronze didn’t appear in terrible condition, but there was some discoloration suggestive of a metallic reaction, and various other signs of cumulative corrosion-related damage in the sort of topographic, dark-colored swirls seen hither and yon.