a gift from Wahoo

Spent a good portion of Saturday working on the boat. Mostly sanding and grinding. Had to wear the Michelin Man suits.



One thing is certain, this kind of work is much easier and more comfortable in cooler temperatures. Can you tell who is who? :)





After much monotonous sanding, we finally got up the nerve (when almost everything you inspect needs replacing, you tend to want to put off the inspecting) to closely inspect the berth supports. They are the longest pieces of wood in the boat, running from the front of the berths to just shy of the transom. Well, close inspection revealed some surprises. For one, most of the wood itself is okay, just one bad spot several inches long at the bottom of the port side berth support where a weep hole was clogged and water collected. Along many spots the epoxy has deteriorated to some degree as there are places where the fillet at the bottom has become brittle. The wood itself sits above the hull a bit (I think they install pieces like this on top of a strip of foam to protect the hull, thus lifting it up a little) and when we sanded through the several coats of glass and epoxy the wood exposed was still good. So it looks like we just need to remove the few bad spots and repair, then sand and clean good and just reglass the berth supports.





So this a huge gift that Wahoo has given us. The two longest pieces in the boat are still good! This obviously saves us money on wood and a lot of time that we would have had to spend removing and replacing the berth supports. So that's two major structural pieces of wood that are okay. That gives us hope for the front of the boat. Maybe it's just the v-berth top that needs replacing and not everything underneath it. Not sure though as the clogged drainhole (weephole) kept water trapped up by the transverse support (the piece the main bulkhead sits on top of). We know the transverse support is rotten, but hopefully everything else from there up is okay.


Thanks for the good wood, Wahoo! :D