Easter Weekend Progress

We have two coats of primer on! Lots of fairing and sanding later and we had a great weekend of mild sunny weather that let us get through two coats. 

I took exactly zero pictures. 

We also pulled three chainplate bolts (one at a time) and caulked them. That was messy but we were definitely leaking at those points. 

It APPEARS that the deck fill for the diesel tank is no longer leaking, but time will tell. There are definitely other leak sources in that same area and I’m hoping that taking care of the chainplates will take care of the leaks - water travels and there’s a lot of rot. All the plywood now that area is mulch now. Nothing structural, but the bottoms of cabinets and stowages have suffered greatly. 

We also applied a new coat of bottom paint. It took about 1.25 gallons. The starting point was this: 

The yellow showing through is the barrier coat. We did one thick coat over all and a second coat at the water line. We also repainted the boot stripe. The major failing of interlocking brightsides paint is how it looks so impressive when first applied and then goes downhill so rapidly. The luster is lost rapidly and it really doesn’t hold up to cleaning well. 

Well. Shoot. Fiberglass failure.

We started sanding the new fiberglass surface, but after a while I found a few edges that I could get my fingernails under. It was shockingly easy to yank the sheets off. We got the whole thing off in maybe ten pieces. 

We aren’t sure why it happened, the surface was mostly interlux epoxy primer. Our current theory given the uniformity of the failure is that the temperature swings were too rapid and significant between night and day. 

Anyhoo we are now on the plan b. Rather than try again we sanded some more and ground out all the cracks and drill holes in the roof. 

Now we must fill the holes and cracks back up. We are using epoxy and filler.