South African "Catalina" 22

greg_m

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May 23, 2017
692
Catalina Jaguar 22 Simons Town
Been a bit quiet and have neglected the boat refurb for a few weeks now. Unhappily, my wife had to go into hospital for surgery and ended up in ICU after the surgery for nearly two weeks! She has been home under home nursing supervision for the last week and a bit. During that time it was impossible to actually concentrate and spent much of my time visiting her in hospital. Last week I was away in Odessa, Ukraine, for a work conference. Long flights but was definitely worth the trip at company expenses! My wife is at home on the mend and now I can get back to working on the boat. So it has been the whole of September so far that I have not touched the boat work... hope to change that from today onwards!
 

greg_m

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May 23, 2017
692
Catalina Jaguar 22 Simons Town
Ok... so time for an update! Going back in time to 24 June 2017. The next section of ply wood laminate was cut to size from paper templates, grooves cut into the layers about half depth to allow for easier bending to match the deck curve, pre-coating the one side and deck area to ensure a good bond, mixing up a batch of resin/chopped glass/silca to make the adhesive, applying said adhesive and then positioning the section of plywood in place and weighting it down with some hefty persuasion. Left it like that for a few days, removed the weights, cleaned the surface and applied the first layer of CSM to seal the wood. Looked all good so far and the deck is really starting to retain some stiffness again.
 

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greg_m

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May 23, 2017
692
Catalina Jaguar 22 Simons Town
So while contemplating the next section the question of the foredeck hatch came up. What to do? Go for a new style or re-use what I had? After checking out cost versus returns factors, installation difficulties and other things I decided to go with what I had. The original hatch was simply bolted down on top of the deck which had a square hole in it. The original laminate had separated around the edge of the hatch as well as there were cracks in the fiberglass deck layer emanating from the corners. I think a lack of good quality support, square corners, poor joint sealing all contributed to the deck laminate failure and plywood rot.

After thorough inspection by my local inspectors, the old hatch was declared fit for duty but needed some serious clean up and repair work. I also wanted to beef up the support around the opening in the deck by doubling the laminate thickness and installing "beams" across the deck to spread the load of someone standing on the hatch. More on that later.
 

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greg_m

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May 23, 2017
692
Catalina Jaguar 22 Simons Town
Unfortunately I did not seem to take photos of installing the plywood laminate around the hatch opening. So these are the next stage of installing the plywood laminates to the side decks. Due to the size of the ply wood pieces I had as well as the compound curve of the deck I ended up cutting the plywood into strategic size pieces and fitting it all together like a big jigsaw puzzle. Each section of deck and each piece of wood was pre-coated and then bonded using the peanut butter adhesive mix as described previously. The plywood pieces were then laid down with as much paving bricks as I could fit to weight them down to ensure as best surface contact for bonding was achieved. I then left these pieces for a few days to harden. So working in stages I managed to get the rest of the fore deck and side decks plywood installed during the month of July 2017.

I used the old deck laminate as a template to get my new pieces to fit well, adjusted for cutting and fit of course. After all wood was bonded I proceeded to fillet the hull/deck joint area and tab the joint with pieces of CSM broken into strips. This work was carried out until 14 July.
 

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greg_m

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May 23, 2017
692
Catalina Jaguar 22 Simons Town
An issue that came up after completing and cleaning up the layer of plywood laminate installation was that the inside lining around the coach roof perimeter was not flush level with the new plywood. There was also a substantial gap between the lining and the deck in way of the coach roof sides. I filled the space with urethane expanding foam. Once trimmed away you can see the height issue. I did not want to cut it away anymore so I decide to install a second layer of plywood running along the length of the side decks to build up some height to match the coach roof. My plan to reinforce the fore deck hatch area sparked this idea. I wanted a doubler to spread the loads around the foredeck and this could then tie into the side decks in terms of level. Photos show the story better, I hope!
 

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greg_m

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May 23, 2017
692
Catalina Jaguar 22 Simons Town
It's scary now when I lay out the old sections of deck laminate and see the extent of the work I took on without realising the EXTENT of the work needed!
 

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Aug 31, 2017
102
Catalina Catalina 22 Tampa
I'm glad to see you're doing it right. I read a thread on another forum where there were guys doing it how your are but instead of laminating it back together they were gluing it with 5200.
 

greg_m

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May 23, 2017
692
Catalina Jaguar 22 Simons Town
@greg_m Great work. Seriously good work, but I suspect you are crazy. :)[/QUOTE]

Yes, I'm getting my fair share of "Aaahhh"'s and gazes into the distance, and nod's etc. etc. when I explain to visitors/friends/family members what I am doing. All these signs agree with your comment!

Sometimes I think I should just go out and buy a ready to sail boat and actually just enjoy sailing on the bay for a change!
 
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greg_m

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May 23, 2017
692
Catalina Jaguar 22 Simons Town
I'm glad to see you're doing it right. I read a thread on another forum where there were guys doing it how your are but instead of laminating it back together they were gluing it with 5200.
Wow, would not even contemplate doing that... not even if it was a quick fix for someone else! I hope to take my grandchildren sailing one day in this boat and I don't need to worry about when the deck may cave in or such like...
 

greg_m

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May 23, 2017
692
Catalina Jaguar 22 Simons Town
Ok, so the gap between the side of the coach roof and the lining was also an issue. I filled most of the void with PU expanding foam and then filled the corner with some adhesive peanut butter mix. For extra measure before laying down the side deck plywood strips I also put in a strip of fiber glass tape 75mm wide (3 inches in Amercanese!) running the length of the side decks to reinforce the area. That can be seen in previous photo's.

Here I actually installed the extra side deck strips to raise the level to match height of the "flange" a week before taking these photos. I used as many paving bricks as can fit to weigh things down during the curing time. So this is a week later, 26 July 2017, all wood laminates have been installed and now just to clean up before adding the new CSM glass laminate on top of the wood.

You can get an idea of how I tried to add some pleasing curves into the re-construction of the ply wood parts... and the fan was for trying to get air ventilation going!
 

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greg_m

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May 23, 2017
692
Catalina Jaguar 22 Simons Town
Ok, so after all the ply wood was bonded in place (5200 no where in sight!) I decided to tackle the fore deck hatch frame fitting. I dry fitted it, decided I did not like the fit so proceeded to modify the deck opening to suit by attacking the hole with my router. I also decided the hatch support frame needed some beefing up by way of "beams". The hatch frame simply screws down on top of the deck in the original design I have. Not good enough for me!

I cleaned up the frame and used it to clamp down these beams with temporary wood screws while the wood was bending to correct shape and were bonding in place with some epoxy adhesive this time = high stress area I am considering. You can see there is a fair amount of curve across the deck. I was much happier with the final fit and support structure. Now to prepare for laying down the fiberglass CSM.
 

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greg_m

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May 23, 2017
692
Catalina Jaguar 22 Simons Town
Ok - so after everything was cured and solid I removed the hatch frame. I decided to enlarge the hole to match the wood structure installed as well as to have space to wrap the fiberglass CSM down into the hatch frame. The theory being if everything is encased in a thick layer of fiberglass then its going to be water proof as well as super solid structure.

Previously the hatch was simply screwed down with what seems like poor mans 5200 as a sealant. This time I cleaned up all the surfaces good and proper, including the top side of the deck, and used epoxy adhesive to bond the hatch frame permanently in place. I then finished off the internal wood frame by rounding off the edges with my router to accommodate the fiberglass CSM folding down gently over a soft edge.

Finally ready to lay down the CSM!
 

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greg_m

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May 23, 2017
692
Catalina Jaguar 22 Simons Town
Laying down the fiberglass CSM took some planning. It was actually a lot of glass cloth. I used about 12 meters length of material which comes in 1.2 meters wide. That makes it around 15 meters square of area of cloth in total. In reality this was laid down in 3 layers and in some places 4 layers deep. I used news papers and original deck laminate pieces to make cutting patterns for the various shapes. The cloth layers were laid down over several days as it actually was time consuming as well as I underestimated the resin and needed to wait for more supplies to arrive! By now we have reached the end of September, 25th, in terms of date up to now.

The cloth is 450g/m² and probably used up about 15 liters of resin! So roughly I have added back around 12 kg's of laminate for the entire deck structure.

I will be really PO'ed if this comes apart sometime in the future!
 

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