November 23, 2019
With a full day to work on the Allied 24, I decided to get back inside and bring the interior to a conclusion. Sure, there are a number of things that one would want to do to the interior, but we have to draw the line somewhere, right? What is left for me is the completion of painting the interior, installation of the battery and battery box, and trim work. To that end, I got started on sanding the primer paint.
With 120-grit sanding sponges, I made my way from the v-berth back to the saloon. The effort here was to simply scuff up the cured epoxy-based primer paint so that I could spot-fair and then apply the finish paint.
The finish paint to be applied will be Interlux Premium Yacht Enamel. I finished up the sanding, to include the v-berth and main saloon settees, and then moved on to vacuuming and wiping down the surfaces to remove any remaining sanding debris.
While I was prepping for the finish paint, I knew I had to take advantage of the state of work to affect a more robust repair on a couple areas of the underside of the side deck. Curious enough, the repairs areas were essentially mirroring one another to port and starboard.
The voids were large enough to make me want to apply some thickened epoxy as well as a layer of 1708 biaxial cloth. I wet the areas out with epoxy resin, applied the thickened epoxy, and then the layer of 1708 biaxial. I finished the repair by applying a layer of peel ply to eliminate the need to water-wash to remove the amine blush, followed by sanding to prep for additional work. After the epoxy cures I will simply “peel” off this fabric, taking the amine blush with it. The surface will be ready for additional work.
Now that I had the two fiberglass repairs tucked away, and all other surfaces vacuumed and wiped clean, I was now ready to begin doing a bit of spot-fairing.
I would be working with the TotalBoat TotalFair product – a two-part epoxy-based system that is ready to apply when you mix yellow and blue to make green.
When I say a little, I actually mean a lot! There were a TON! of small voids in the laminate that were just bugging me. I know the owner would be constantly looking at these specs while below. In addition, the voids were a point of potential start of mildew and mold – capturing any condensation that occurred on the interior of the hull.
The sheer number of small voids was both impressive and daunting! In the end, I managed through it.
I moved from the v-berth back to the main saloon. The saloon, or main cabin, appeared to have roughly the same ratio of surface area to voids as the v-berth had.
In the end, I wrestled the beast to the cabin floor and conquered! Tomorrow, I will plan to come back, sand the many areas that I had faired, and then apply the finish coat of paint. At this point I extracted myself from the interior and got to work on the exterior.
The only remaining area of the topsides that I was not comfortable with was the stern. The previous chain plate (externally hung) was apparently covering up a low spot in the laminate, and now that I had removed it I needed to address the unfair surface. In previous applications of the topside priming paint coats 1 through 4, I purposefully did not paint the center line due to the unfair surface. Today, I roughed up the surface one last time, wiped it clean of any contaminates, wet it out with epoxy resin, and then applied a final skim coat of fairing compound.
Back up in the cockpit, I applied (hopefully) a final skim coat of fairing compound to finish off the bridge deck repair. This last bit of work would conclude my time on the Allied 24 today. I gathered my materials and tools and headed back to the shop.
With the companionway slide hatch sufficiently cured, it was time to sand the top surface to knock down the teak caulking that stood proud of the teak slats. I used 80-grit discs to knock down the “proud” material, and then finished things off by hand with 150-grit paper. I blew the surface off with compressed air, and wiped it down with a solvent to remove any remaining sanding debris.
I decided to go ahead and apply a thinned coat of varnish (Epifanes Clear Gloss), so I gathered materials and tools and proceeded to apply a highly thinned coat.
Total Time Today: 6.5 hrs
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