November 22, 2012 - projects underway

The boat is now out of the water.  The mast and dinghy davit have been removed.

About to be hauled out by the travelift.

About to get the bottom pressure washed.  The paint looked GREAT for
being in the water for 1.5 years.  

There goes the radar mast.

We are removing the hatch that covered the opening between the cockpit and the boat deck (you can see the opening in hte left side of the boat deck in the above picture).  There used to be a ladder there but we removed it.  The hatch is partially covered by the dinghy so it cannot be opened with the dinghy up top, so it's mostly useless.  The hatch is rotting and looks terrible.  But worse, the hatch prevents us from locating the dinghy where we really want it.  So, the hatch has got to go.  We are having La Conner Maritime fill the hatch opening with fiberglass.  When they are done you will never know that hatch was there.

Once we got into this project I decided to remove the cockpit ceiling lights, which were big clunky things that were rusty and looked terrible.  The problem is that removing them left two huge cavities in the ceiling.  So, La Conner Maritime is going to fill those while they are at it and make them disappear so I can then mount two modern, flush-mounted, LED light fixtures.

The two lights removed, and the hatch that will disappear

The light holes are being filled with fiberglass.  Next comes the hatch opening.

While we were doing all these fiberglass repairs I decided this is the best possible time to deal with one known moisture issue in the deck. So, I cut into the spot with the highest moisture content (as indicated by my hi-tech moisture meter).  It was indeed wet inside.

Standing water in the end-grain balsa coring.  This is BAD news on on a boat!

So, with my moisture meter I marked off the boundary between high moisture and normal/low moisture and then began cutting into the fiberglass deck.  Once the fiberglass was removed we could see exactly what was going on.  Fortunately, the moisture hadn't traveled too far and it will be a relatively easy fix for La Conner Maritime.

Not what a boat owner wants to see.  Water damaged
coring in their decks.

The deck opened up and a new 3/4" thick piece of solid fiberglass installed
where the dinghy davit pole passes through.  There will be no chance of a
future leak causing damage, and it will be much stronger than before.

I used my moisture meter to inspect the entire deck and found two other areas with high moisture and we are fixing these also.  They are much smaller.  Once these repairs are done we should be good for another 20+ years.  The guys in the yard commented on how thick the fiberglass deck is on our boat.  It's a testament to what a solid boat Hatteras builds!

My buddy Sal working on the big repair.  Another one is near the bottom right
of this picture.  The other is next to the hatch opening.

Fixing a relatively small area of wet coring.  This is easy to do while we are
filling that hatch opening since it right next to it.

Sal working on the hatch removal.  Just to the right is the repair of a water soaked
balsa core repair.

Since I've got to paint the boat deck once these repairs are done, I decided to go ahead and deal with the foredeck.  It has a bunch of little "battle scars" that needed to be ground out, filled with fiberglass, sanded smooth, and then painted.  I will be painting the entire foredeck.  I am almost done with these repairs now.

Repairing a bunch of small nicks, dings, and failed past repairs.

But by far the biggest paint project is repainting the flybridge.  It was looking bad.  I removed all of old antennas, the navigation lights, hte old searchlight, two horns, a PA speaker, and all the old snaps for long-gone canvas.  I patched all of the holes and now I am sanding it all in preparation for painting.

Sanding the flybridge.  It will be repainted and new antennas installed.

I'm also stripping the pilothouse doors down to bare wood so they can be refinished.  I will also repaint the pilothouse door frames.  Another much needed project is to repair the salon door jamb (the door that goes to the cockpit).  That door frame got damaged on the trip up the coast and badly needs to be fixed.

So, there is a lot going on in the paint shop right now!  I may have even forgot to mention a project or two here, as I've got a lot of irons in the fire right now.  I hope we can pull it all together within the next week or so and the painting can begin.