Winter Work -- Time's a Running Out

In September 2016 we committed to installing a new BetaMarine 35 HP four cylinder engine.  The reps were kind enough to comp us tickets to the Annapolis boat show, so we attended and put our deposit down on the engine.  Final payment was rendered in January, and now our engine has been built and is awaiting us in North Carolina.  Once we give the word, they will ship it up to Herrington Harbor North, where Dependable Marine will do our installation for us.  The trick is, as you might have noticed, that before we can go down there we have to get the cabin top repairs completed, get the boat back in the water, and get her down to Herrington Harbor just south of Annapolis.  Unfortunately you can't work with epoxy resin if it's too cold out so the winter was a waiting game mostly.  

I did clean behind the slide away oven cover with Bartender's Friend. You can see the grease line where I stopped to take a before and after photo:

She shines in the sun.  

We had some warm weather and bit the bullet.  Here's what was under the mast.  

Nice mulch.  

The outer fiberglass skin is thick enough that all this other crap is really not that necessary, but it's good to get the rot out and reinforce.  The new coring right under the mast base will be aluminum plate.  No messing around. 

Looks like cake batter with all the layers laid up. 

Meanwhile we could do a bit of work on the mast. There was some weird stuff wired in.  I had a "strobe" switch that was part of a reverse polarity circuit -- god knows how we ever got anything on the mast to light up but we usually did.  These will all be re-wired and replaced with LED fixtures to save on juice.  

This looks like a later addition, but maybe it was original and it's just an object lesson in stainless vs. aluminum. 

Lots of our blocks at the top of the mast were just attached with shackles.  And Matt went up using these things to hold his weight. 

Mast head casting removed, clodhopper for scale.  

This barge is right across the water from the mast.  For some reason it fills me with existential dread.

Meanwhile, we had a good solid day of pouring rain, and I arrived at the club the following day.  Ran the bilge pump for 20 minutes, which puts us at about 100 gallons in the bilge from one rain event.  Red alert, we have a massive leak somewhere.  I looked everywhere and couldn't find the source so I did the last thing I could think of and I pulled the companionway hatch slider out.  

Oh and look at that.  They ended the fiberglass before the hatch opening, filled in with thickened epoxy and thirty seven years later we have a mush festival.  I reached in and pulled pieces right out.  

Cookies anyone?

This teak beam was bedded in 5200.  Thank god for those new oscillating cutting tools because without it I would have had to knock this off with a hammer.  It took a full day of excruciating cutting around the sea cover and the teak beam but I got everything off.

And we got out all the mud dauber nests and the rot and the cracked epoxy.  

Suddenly the whole ceiling is translucent.  

While I did all that Matt continued on the mast base.  I also got a crazy good deal on a pair of Nicro solar vents -- 99.99 from West Marine -- unheard of.  So we had to take off the old dorade boxes and my pretty pretty cowl vents (never got a breath of breeze through them).  The project just keeps getting bigger! 

Time for a break.  

Mast Removal, Haul Out, Gel Coat Patching, Shenanigans

We haven't yet actually inspected the top of the mast, and there was  a bit of cabin top compression under the mast base so the only thing to do was to have it taken down.  We took down the mast ourselves on a Grampian 26, which has a hinged mast base and is relatively light. That was bad enough so we went over to Bay Boatworks and they were quite professional.  They were able to lift it straight up and off the boat quite seamlessly, and it's now in storage over there.

Haul out went pretty smoothly as well, which was a nice surprise. The only trick was using the wash down area for the power washing, which added a lot of sling time to the process and I didn't enjoy that in the least.  But she's out, mast less, and comfortably sitting on her jack stands now.  I'm working furiously on the brightwork, trying to get the old gross cetol sanded off and re-coated.  Where I've finished it does look mighty fine.  I re-caulked where needed, but the more I look around the more I see that what i really should have been doing was re-caulking the teak decks. Just thinking about taping that off makes me nauseous.

She looks so small without the rig up.  

Riding the slings 

Phew, on the stands.  

Teak with Cetol vs. the old cetol with a lot of flaking and exposed gray wood. 

Just a close up of some of the impressive joinery.  

I got some two part paint on gelocoat -- there are a hundred or so little chips that go down to the fiberglass. I probably didn't have to do this but it made me feel better to fill them in.