Allied Greenwich 24: Removing Hardware & Brightwork, Final (Part 5)

October 13, 2018

I set out to wrap up the removal of the Allied's remaining brightwork and hardware, and began with removal of the starboard jib track. Again, the jib track is way too long for this 24' sailboat, and was taken from a Pearson Triton 28. The owner and I will discuss replacing the jib track with a more suitable size. The fasteners were a combination of 1/4" stainless steel machine screws and stainless steel wood screws - both pan head type screws. The fasteners released without issue, but the machine screws required a bit more time with having to go below and secure a vice grip onto the backing nut to prevent it from spinning while I unscrewed it from up top.

After removing the jib track, I bagged the fasteners and set the track to the side.

I moved on to the starboard toe rail. In a previous work session I managed to remove the forward-most 3 or 4 fasteners - all of the toe rail screws are 1/4" machine screws secured with backing nuts. The toe rails begged off treating me with any modicum of respect. In fact, I had to resort to the angle grinder on a couple machine screws due to lack of access and/or threads having seized up.

In the end, I triumphed. I went around the boat with a blade scraper removing as much of the bedding compound that I could. In the coming days, I will turn to the task of sanding the decks and topsides, and removing as much of the bedding materials as possible will help to prevent clogs in the sanding discs - saving time and materials.

I moved on to the winches, for removal. The winches sit on top of a molded fiberglass cubby glassed to the deck. The cubby is accessed through a hole cut into the mounted coaming board - a place to store the winch handle (or rum bottle) while underway. Between the cubby and the winch itself is a teak mounting base; underneath the cubby, I found a piece of 1/4"-thick fiberglass used as a backing plate for the winch.

The winch was secured to the cubby with six machine screws and backing nuts. I was able to remove a few of the backing nuts, but in the end I had to disassemble the winch to get access to the screw heads. I prevented the screw from turning with a screwdriver, and backed off the nuts with a socket wrench from below.

After removing the winch, I reassembled it, labeled it, and then set it aside. I repeated these steps for the port winch.

The last bit of brightwork to remove was the eyebrow trim on the cabin sides. The teak was well-weathered and worn. This bit of material was obviously original to the boat, and showed excessive damage, splintering and rot. Due to the condition, I removed the teak without care, and then followed up with removing the shortish #10 machine screws by isolating the backing nut and using a flathead screwdriver on the exterior.