Over the hump!

This Tuesday Evan and I headed out the boat, I worked away on the fibreglass and Evan worked through the engine looking at the fixes down below.

Nothing major to report from the week, other than everything takes a long time. Joe was with me at the boat on Thursday & Shane came down on Saturday to work on it.

Shane and I discovered some areas of little rot on the fore deck and started to take up some of the fibreglass and realized it rips of off huge sheets.... which is perfect. We got about 75% of the fibreglass removed from the deck. This process makes the deck much smoother and lets me examine the areas that need to be filled a lot easier. As I did the big rips of fibreglass with my hands and a paint scrapper, Shane went around the edges and meticulously chiselled out the cracks between the deck and teak foot rails...thank you Shane for doing that because I am loosing a little bit of patients at time for the small details.

Next steps: Over the next week I will continue to rip off the fibreglass from the deck and chisel out the edges. Once that is complete I will be able to go around with epoxy filler (West Marine Epoxy) fill in any small gouges, rot areas, and make small curved troughs around the cabin to move water away from the edges.
After that, I will take the same epoxy, mix it with a thinner and paint 3-4 coats over the full deck which will create a sealant on the marine grade plywood.
Once the deck is filled and sealed, one final sanding with a 60 or 80 grit sand paper to get it roughed and ready for painting!

The goal and the dream would be to have the deck ready for painting by the end of this week.

Dirty teak trim. (Fibreglass is smooth even though it doesn't look it.)

 Clean teak trim!!

 Joe worked hard sanding the paint off the side deck.

Cockpit is looking good, almost ready!

Day off the boat...sanding parts of the cabin at the parents.

Foredeck cleared of fibreglass, just needs a little filler & sanding.

Side deck also cleared (the grey is just dust..vacuum stopped working.) 

 That's a big pile of fibreglass...everyone is itchy. 

George...is the man.

A shout out to George- he has come and helped with the boat at least 5 times now, and has put in around 25+ hours in the boat project. So thank you George and all my friends & family for that matter who has helped with the boat.

George & Oz

George and I worked Wednesday and Thursday last week on the deck and the cockpit. We have been ripping off fibreglass & sanding to fair everything out.

 Start of the fibreglass removal in cockpit.

Pretty well cleared out, cockpit floor filling with fibreglass.

 Cabin roof cleared!

Cockpit ready for patching and final sanding. Floor cleaned out, just needs to be vacuumed. 

There's a hole in my boat, dear liza....

No Liza Minnelli wasn't at the boat...yet.

Uncle Bill Weaver introduced Evan and I to a great carpenter named Jake (who lives next door). A soft spoken man, but seems to really know what he is doing.

When Jake got to the boat we chatted about what I wanted done to the areas of rot and he wanted to see how the boards came off... Long story short I watched (and sh*t a brick) as Jake & Bill took hammers & crowbars to the side of the boat. However, at the end of the morning Jake had made a perfectly straight line and all the wood cleared out and ready for the new cedar.

Note: The back inside is not rot, it is oil from the engine & oiling the boat each year. The timber (mostly Oak) is all very solid, which makes me a happy sailor.

 After the crowbars....

 Jake with a skill saw... didn't even knick the inner structure... I was very impressed. 

Final Product- Read to be re-boared. 

Sanding, Striping and Sanding

The hull of the Wood Duck is completely sanded and ready for the fairing process. Fairing a boat is taking a long flexible board with sand paper on it and really smoothing out the surface which preps it to be painted.

The last few boat trips I have been working on getting the deck stripped and sanded. Lots of great progress has been made on the deck with Shane and George both coming to help!

Not to far off the goal now! If you have some time and want to help with this final push it would be amazing to have you down working on the boat!!

 

George KILLING it, he has done so much!           Me... working away. Looking like Mike Holmes..

 Roof of the cabin getting stripped and sanded!

 Cockpit filled with fiberglass!

We've got Sails!

I spent a beautiful Sunday afternoon unpacking all of the sails for the boat and boy are they beautiful.

My grandfather and the previous owners not only loved to buy sails, but keep them in amazing condition. The boat is outfitted with 9 sails from 1952 to 1984, and most are still in beautiful white crisp working condition.

The sails are a little bit of a museum piece, with some of the sails being 50 years old they are a rare bread in sailing now, much different cloth, grommets etc.

The most interesting thing I found on the sails is that each grommet, each shackle even are made out of Bronze! Which gives each sail a beautiful vintage feel and look.

I can't wait to fly each and every single one of these sails.

Top 5 five sails "Head Sails" (left to right):
- #4- Smallest sail 100% of main
- #3 is a 110% which is mostly under the black and orange sail
- Black, Orange and White sail- Is the "reacher" it's approx. 160% made of light spinnaker material, perfect for "no wind days"
- #2 is a 130%
- #1 is a 160% which goes from bow to almost the stern with a huge pocket.
- NOT PICTURED- a beautiful spinnaker

Bottom three sails "mains" (left to right):
-#2 1980's smaller- Charlie Smith
-#1 1950's-1970's larger sail- Charlie Smith, a little bit stretched in the pocket
- Last sail is original 1950's however ripped in a few places the bottom.

That makes 3 mains and 6 head sails...YEE-HA!