June 15, 2018
Scupper 50
Friday
I spent the morning working in the bowels of the boat, cleaning up the inside of the hull in the engine room, beneath the cockpit, and cockpit lockers–everything aft of the main after bulkhead. My goal in these areas was to clean and prepare the existing surfaces to ready them for new paint later, and any other new work that would be required (such as new engine foundations).
The beginning condition of these areas varied. There was paint and/or gelcoat brushed over many of the surfaces, particularly in the cockpit lockers and areas above the turn of the bilge. The engine room space itself was raw fiberglass, which had become dirty over the years, though I’d cleaned up a lot of that back when I soaked the bilge earlier in the project. Now, with coarse sandpaper, I cleaned up the surfaces as needed, removing any rough edges left from original construction and just generally scuffing the surfaces. Where old paint came off easily, I removed it, but in most cases the existing coatings were well-adhered and needed only a good scuffing to prepare for new coatings later. I also sanded smooth and clean the old through hull fittings that I’d patched from outside before, preparing the inside of the old holes for new fiberglass that I’d soon install to complete the job.
Later, I began work on the new forward hatch, which had arrived in the day’s courier delivery as expected. I used the hatch itself to create a simple cardboard template of the opening, making the template just a bit larger than the hatch itself to allow for some leeway as well as additional fiberglass that I eventually planned to use to secure the new hatch coaming. With this template, I marked the deck to indicate the new cutout, starting with the old opening as a guide. I cut out the excess with a jigsaw.
To support the hatch on the cambered deck surface, I’d need to build a raised coaming that fit the deck profile. With the hatch in place in the new opening, I measured the minimum height required for the sides of the coaming–just under an inch– and ordered prefab fiberglass so I could build the assembly in the near future.
Total time billed on this job today: 5.5 hours
0600 Weather Observation: 59°, mainly cloudy. Forecast for the day: Becoming mostly sunny, 70s