Lackey Sailing | Lyra Phase 2-13

January 13, 2022

Lyra Phase 2-13

Thursday

In the head and forward cabin, I began with the usual prep and then lightly sanded the new tabbing as needed, simply to scuff the surface and remove any hard edges.

On deck, I sanded the various small fairing patches and other areas. Most of the small divots would require at least one more round of filler.

Now that the coachroof was more or less structurally sound once more, with the new overhead and tabbing, I could address the remnants of the old structures above. In several areas, the defunct repairs extended far upwards, and needed to be removed or ground down to make way for new core and fiberglass, at least as much as possible. The area at aft center/starboard, roughly paralleling the notch in the starboard bulkhead, was the highest, and its nature and the lack of access below meant that some of the lumpy mess would have to remain, but I still intended to remove as much as possible. Other high areas where I expected to be able to remove more or all of the humps were at the starboard side of the mast step area, just aft of the hatch, and on the port aft side of center.

With a grinder, I cleaned up these and all other areas of the old inner skin, grinding down the nasty old work as much as possible, removing remnants of the old core, and generally preparing all surfaces for new work. Around the perimeter of the repair, I removed the gelcoat and ground the laminate to prepare it for tying in the new structure later in the process. I extended this area up the doghouse bumpout a bit, as the whole length of the transition had shown cracking and, as I ground, I found a clear seam filled with some form of filler. I planned to run the new top laminate up into this area for added strength. This chore was, and would be, by far the messiest part of the whole project, and it took as long to clean up the mess to some reasonable and workable point as it did to do the actual grinding work.

This seam was part of another ongoing curiosity about this boat, one which encompassed not only this now-visible seam, but also the small cracked areas in the toerails on each side that I’d just patched (which were aligned with the doghouse crack), and some visible but mysterious landscape features belowdecks in the same area. I’d never know precisely what this boat had been through, other than “a lot”. For all this, she seemed to hold together, and that’s what mattered. The new work could only make things better.

While I had the grinder out, I prepared the small recore area on the starboard coachroof in the same way.

The new bottom skin was, by requirement, below the original bottom skin, leaving a recess that needed to be brought flush before I could install the new core. To this end, I pieced together a layer of 1708 for the job, using various smaller pieces because I’d unexpectedly run out of the full roll of material earlier in the week, and while I’d ordered more at once, it had not yet arrived. To keep the repair moving forward, I chose to use smaller pieces on hand, which posed no problem in this application since this layer was only a height-and thickness-enhancer. Once I got the base even enough, I planned to add one full-size layer of lighter cloth to tie the whole thing together–original, old repairs, and new work–before recoring.

But for now, I cut the scraps to size and, after first skim-coating some of the various transitions and old work (with various old seams) with a thickened epoxy mixture to smooth and fill any minor voids, installed them in epoxy resin.