Greetings all. I just spent a lovely month in Port Townsend on the hard, replacing 5 of the 8 though-hulls on my Y-33, along with bottom paint and a topside polish, a new bilge pump and new cockpit drain hoses.
Here’s the before picture. Note the lack of backing plates. The hull is thickened with extra layers of glass at each though-hull. The TH itself is held on with the TH nut, and there’s a plywood disk under the nut. The only purpose that I can think of for the disk is to eventually rot and seep, which will require the unfortunate owner who notices it to gnash his teeth. Note the shallow depth. It’s about 6” max. Not enough height for a proper backing plate. Or is there?
First, Tosca goes for a ride.
Then she gets a bath.
The guys at the yard are straight up nice to deal with.
Then into our home for the next month.
Disassembly was next. No pictures. The air was too thick with, uh, sailor talk. I applied a heat gun and wrestled the through hulls out, one by one. I then took a cone-shaped wire brush on the end of a drill and started removing the old caulk. Now I really wish I had taken photos, because the holes were ginormous. On the 1 ½” through hulls, the hole was almost a half inch wider than the fitting. Even the small ½” TH was rattling around in its hole. Awww shucky darn. Or, as they say on The Good Place, holy forking shirt balls. And, to add spice to the hot mess, the original through hulls were flush mount, and the shape was, shall we say, odd. Made in Japan, 40 years ago, they were NOTHING like anything currently on the market.
Hat in hand, I approached Todd Flye, whose shop was conveniently across the way. Say, uh, Todd? I know you’re busy (Major understatement here. Every tradesman in PT is running full tilt at this time), but do ya think you can delete these holes here? ‘Cause I gotta go back to Boise for a week and work.
I must have looked a sight, covered in old caulk and shredded 5200, because he said yes, he’d do it. Huzzah!
Hole deletion in progress:
I’m missing the photos where Todd faired the bottom and Brad Clayton of Starboard Services rolled on the epoxy barrier coat. It looked really nice when I got back a week later!
Look, Ma, no holes!
But I’m getting ahead of myself. While back in Boise, I made up some backing plates out of ½” G10 fiberglass, following Maine Sail’s instructions (mostly) on marinehowto.com. They’re 5 ½”. Bigger than my largest hole saw, and there’s none available in that size anyway. So I made a jig and tried it on the wood bandsaw. Heck no. So I put it on the metal bandsaw, and that worked better.
Here’s the before picture. Note the lack of backing plates. The hull is thickened with extra layers of glass at each though-hull. The TH itself is held on with the TH nut, and there’s a plywood disk under the nut. The only purpose that I can think of for the disk is to eventually rot and seep, which will require the unfortunate owner who notices it to gnash his teeth. Note the shallow depth. It’s about 6” max. Not enough height for a proper backing plate. Or is there?
First, Tosca goes for a ride.
Then she gets a bath.
The guys at the yard are straight up nice to deal with.
Then into our home for the next month.
Disassembly was next. No pictures. The air was too thick with, uh, sailor talk. I applied a heat gun and wrestled the through hulls out, one by one. I then took a cone-shaped wire brush on the end of a drill and started removing the old caulk. Now I really wish I had taken photos, because the holes were ginormous. On the 1 ½” through hulls, the hole was almost a half inch wider than the fitting. Even the small ½” TH was rattling around in its hole. Awww shucky darn. Or, as they say on The Good Place, holy forking shirt balls. And, to add spice to the hot mess, the original through hulls were flush mount, and the shape was, shall we say, odd. Made in Japan, 40 years ago, they were NOTHING like anything currently on the market.
Hat in hand, I approached Todd Flye, whose shop was conveniently across the way. Say, uh, Todd? I know you’re busy (Major understatement here. Every tradesman in PT is running full tilt at this time), but do ya think you can delete these holes here? ‘Cause I gotta go back to Boise for a week and work.
I must have looked a sight, covered in old caulk and shredded 5200, because he said yes, he’d do it. Huzzah!
Hole deletion in progress:
I’m missing the photos where Todd faired the bottom and Brad Clayton of Starboard Services rolled on the epoxy barrier coat. It looked really nice when I got back a week later!
Look, Ma, no holes!
But I’m getting ahead of myself. While back in Boise, I made up some backing plates out of ½” G10 fiberglass, following Maine Sail’s instructions (mostly) on marinehowto.com. They’re 5 ½”. Bigger than my largest hole saw, and there’s none available in that size anyway. So I made a jig and tried it on the wood bandsaw. Heck no. So I put it on the metal bandsaw, and that worked better.
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