Boat work update: Had to go back and check what I have already uploaded - yep it's been a while!
In this post I remove the old cockpit drain brass inserts. Well I ended up having to cut them out as the were bonded in place. After that I then used an angle grinder, belts sander and manual sanding to remove old rotted gel coat and fiberglass. I ended up sanding a large "dish" recess in order to fill it back with new laminate. This was very dusty so ended up washing out the cockpit to clean it prior to the glass work.
I sealed the holes from below with some plastic packaging tape as a support for the filler. Using a batch of thickened resin I filled the holes and built up a layer to fill in the "dish" about half way. The filler was a combination of resin/silica powder/fiberglass fibers made into a stiff peanut butter consistency.
Then I covered the lot with three layers of CSM of increasing diameter pieces. I'm preety certain now that water will not make its way into the boat from the cockpit sole!
I have also eliminated the two drain holes in the boats bottom. Yep my boat had four holes through the bottom = Galley sink drain, keel lifting cable and two separate cockpit drains!