September 30, 2018
I picked where I had left off in the previous day's work session - removing more hardware and brightwork. My focus today would be the coach roof / cabin top, and companionway trim. My first task was an easy one - removing the stainless steel companionway hatch slide rails. The rails were secured by eight wood screws and one machine screw backed with a nut, per side.
With the slide hatch rails removed, I got to work on removing the wood frame for the slide hatch. The overhead in the boat was thick paint on a coarse weave, almost a roving, for the bottom fiberglass skin. As a result of the unevenness of the overheard, the screw heads were a bit difficult to find, and when I found them I had to apply a cordless drill mounted wire wheel to remove the gobs of paint.
With the screw heads exposed and cleaned, I removed the starboard teak rail.
I moved to the forward piece of trim for the companionway. I faced the same issue with having to clean the screw heads, but once that was complete the screws backed out fairly easily.
Upon "peeling" off the forward companionway trim board, I was left with a sticky goo of mysterious origins. The further I get into the refit, the more I am seeing that resembles "I'm out of time, so I'll just slap this together!"
I repeated the exercise for the port slide hatch teak trim and stainless steel slide rail. This restoration will include all new brightwork across the boat, and I intent to lower the profile of the slide hatch trim. The old rails just seemed a bit too high in proportion to the cabin top, but that's a few weeks out. Next, I moved forward to remove the mast step, err, tank turret? This thing is a monster!
With a socket wrench up top...
...and a pair of locking pliers below, I managed to remove most of the through-bolts.
I progressed forward to the through-bolts just aft of the forward hatch, and then realized that space constraints were going to force me to remove the hatch before the last four bolts could be extracted.
I removed the clevis pins connecting the hinge components, and the removed the hatch. I then removed the deck-mounted portion of the hatch hinge since these were through-bolted and would require removal prior to the mast step being removed.
I then removed the remaining four through-bolts on the forward section of the mast step. Thankfully the mast step installer did not lay it down in a goopy puddle of 5200, but it was still tough getting her to break up with the coach roof deck. I inserted several flathead screwdrivers underneath the mast step, and slowly the bond was broken.
I likely will not worry about taking the time to clean this material off since core work will be required here...across most of the cabin top. There is deck compression in this space, so a thorough rebuild of the cabin top is required, along with new primary bulkheads and potentially a mast support beam spanning the new bulkheads....more to come.
With the tank turret safely on the ground, I set about disassembling the balance of the companionway trim. The photo below shows a good example of questionable construction/reconstruction. You can just make out the exposed balsa core between the top and bottom skin of the cabin top construction. This will be corrected through the restoration. The picture below also shows the post-removal of the vertical companionway trim, and also exposing the edge of a piece of plywood apparently installed to strengthen the bulkhead. This too will be remedied.
I them removed the companionway trim just above the bridge deck.
With the trim removed, I set out to remove those plywood panels. They were secured with four machine screws, backed with nuts. No adhesive was used to bond the panels to the existing fiberglass bulkhead. With the starboard panel removed, I turned to the port.
The port was also secured with four machine screws and backing nuts. My plan for the existing ~3/8" thick fiberglass bulkhead includes bonding balsa core on the interior and laying up glass over the core to add further strength and thickness.
Finally, I vacuumed the exterior and interior of the boat and generally organized the items removed.
Total Time Today: 3.25 hrs
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