What are the chances that this boat hates us and is looking to ruin our lives? What are the chances that this boat is really happy that Ted keeps poking her with a chisel and saying 'Wow! That's soft!' If I were a betting women I would put money on both. But I am not and instead a sit and write about the boat and remind myself that Sunday Brunches are not fun - freezing Sunday boat work is where the real fun is at!
We are, yet again, in a race against time to try and get as much done on Restless before launch day and yet again we made a plan and the boat threw a curve ball at us. We decided once the boat was hauled we would sand much of the topsides and bottom to not only see what everything looked like but also to find the plugs on the planks we wanted to remove. We also did an intensive inspection of everything. Which includes; cracked ribs, rotten ribs, loose fasteners, wiggly rudder, rotten planks, epoxy in some of the seams, tons of bondo that needs to go, and now a rotten bow stem!
We had our suspicions but as the eternal optimists we thought that there was no way we could be so unlucky and that Teds list of 2018/2019 boat work would actually be finished. But the Stem is a bit of a bigger project to add to the list. We are lucky in the sense that it appears to be rotten only in a section and not the whole Stem, but as we dig you never know what we might find! Unfortunately some of the smaller issues will not be fixed this year because of our limited time and the reality of how important this repair is. If not repaired Restless will continue to ship water and eventually the front will fall off and that would be embarrassing! And thus, now is winter of my discontent!
The big sand - The first day of December. I forgot to mention that I am going to replace the bolts in our chain plates because I noticed this summer the chain plate was lifting away from the hull while we were racing... That was a fun day!
Bondo - Lots of Bondo. It is just an auto-body fairing compound and after awhile it will wear out in the marine environment. The horn timber appears to be okay... I may be in denial but at least for this year it is FINE.
Ted sanded the bottom... He got the ear muffs I got the goggles. We do wear respirators when we sand anti-fouling. But some dust does get through when you are taking them on and off to talk and take breaks. As a result Ted turned into a smurf and I used an air compressor to try and get rid of the dust.
When you find a galvanized nail in the bow of a boat surrounded in epoxy you know that you are not going to find anything good.
The nail had been eaten away by the bronze fasteners. You read about it and dream about it but you never think that you will be lucky enough to see it! When your boat it fastened with bronze you should not use other metals below the water line because will suffer from rapid corrosion (as seen above).
Interestingly, it is not the head that will show the corrosion but the part the fastener that is actually doing the work. So you will not be able to tell until you either replace it or it is too late.
If you want to know more about this I suggest extensive research - there are many books on the subject that describe in detail the corrosion process of each metal.
That is a large hole - we could see through to the other side.
Planks removed on the Port side to get to the Stem. We discovered the Stem by starting our original project of replacing planks with a bit of rot. It was really like opening up a can of worms.
Here it doesn't look that bad...
But the more we dug....
It got worse... Look at his face!
This was after I told him we had to open up the Starboard side of the boat so we could get a really good look at the scope of the rot.
'Wow! That's soft!
We removed the rotten section of the cut water - That is the piece of the wood that sits on top of the Stem that literally cuts the water at the bow.
So here we are again bigger project but not impossible! Every year we are learning and as a result the boat will continue to race and we will continue to be part of the IOD community and travel to exotic locations like Sweden!
