Cutta Hole is Now Patchta Hole

[emergpa1]

As some of you guys may remember, i started a thread called Cutta hole in my boat to discuss my problems with sagging under my mast on my 1984 Oday 26. I had to remove the outer skin and found rotten core. So I was left with a big hole in the deck. Since then I have removed most of the deck hardware and even removed almost all of the interior due to rotten everything. Now I am in the painfully slow, but satisfying task of rebuilding. I am learning as I go by reading books, using the internet, and asking questions of all the helpful folks here.
Finally, I am close to getting the deck area under the mast tabernacle completed. I patched with epoxy, end grain balsa, and fiberglass cloth, and fared with thickened epoxy. The trickiest part is trying to match the curves of the deck and maintain the proper angle where the mast mounts. To accomplish this I made a sanding block (second picture) by screwing a wide flat piece of plastic from a window blind to the deck over the cuttout area, this created a curve that matched the deck, then i layered epoxy and mat over that and when it hardened I had a curved sanding block that matched the curve of the deck.
I decided to raise a small area under the mast slightly higer than the surrounding deck to try to cut down on leakeage. I wetted out a few more pieces of cloth (third picture), then layered thickend epoxy over that. Since the last picture was taken, the raised area has been sanded and the edges rounded off....it looks pretty good!
As I paint and finish, i am going to post the pictures to this thread.

 

[Joe11688]

That's quite a project, but you're doing what needs to be done. It looks good. I hate working with fiberglass. Good luck!
Joe

 

[RichBone]

Looks like it's progressing well. Looks good.
Richt

 

[sailormanbigd]

Nice work, its so satisfying to know you did it yourself and did it right. And the buzz from resin is way cool. Keep up the good work! Is/was there a compression post inside the cabin below the deck tabernacle?

 

[Shoaldrafter]

As some of you guys may remember, i started a thread called Cutta hole in my boat to discuss my problems with sagging under my mast on my 1984 Oday 26. I had to remove the outer skin and found rotten core. So I was left with a big hole in the deck. Since then I have removed most of the deck hardware and even removed almost all of the interior due to rotten everything. Now I am in the painfully slow, but satisfying task of rebuilding. I am learning as I go by reading books, using the internet, and asking questions of all the helpful folks here.
Finally, I am close to getting the deck area under the mast tabernacle completed. I patched with epoxy, end grain balsa, and fiberglass cloth, and fared with thickened epoxy. The trickiest part is trying to match the curves of the deck and maintain the proper angle where the mast mounts. To accomplish this I made a sanding block (second picture) by screwing a wide flat piece of plastic from a window blind to the deck over the cuttout area, this created a curve that matched the deck, then i layered epoxy and mat over that and when it hardened I had a curved sanding block that matched the curve of the deck.
I decided to raise a small area under the mast slightly higer than the surrounding deck to try to cut down on leakeage. I wetted out a few more pieces of cloth (third picture), then layered thickend epoxy over that. Since the last picture was taken, the raised area has been sanded and the edges rounded off....it looks pretty good!
As I paint and finish, i am going to post the pictures to this thread.

Keith,

Gee, you are pretty good. Now that you have changed the level of mast, how much does that change your standing rigging? Are you also getting all new stays and shrouds? If yes, remember to tell the rigging shop to account for that 1/4 inch in the center under the mast. How much does raising that mast lengthen the fore and aft stays? Inquiring minds want to know.

Ed K
26

 

[emergpa1]

Nice work, its so satisfying to know you did it yourself and did it right. And the buzz from resin is way cool. Keep up the good work! Is/was there a compression post inside the cabin below the deck tabernacle?

Ha, regarding the buzz, I never smelled any from the epoxy, but I usually had a respirator on if i was mixing in any filler.
The neat thing about the way fiberglass work has gone on this project is that I had smaller tasks that allowed me to practice at least some basic skills before I did this "big" repair. Smaller projects I competed were making the sanding block, filling the bolt and screw holes from the stanchions, grab rails, etc, and then some small deck repair at the pulpit mount areas where the core was also rotted out. I even used the skin I cut to practice grinding the "12 to 1" beveled area, which is not as easy as it looks. Next I have to tackle the deck at the chain plates.
My intention is to paint the area under and adjacent to where hardware mounts with one part polyurethane paint. Then I will "outline" that area with a strip of kiwi. The reason for this is that i don't think i can get a good color or texture match, I am hoping that, by outlining with kiwi nonskid, I trick the eye into not comparing the smooth paint with the original gelcoat/nonskid. I will let everyone know how it turns out when i complete it.

 

[emergpa1]

Keith,

Gee, you are pretty good. Now that you have changed the level of mast, how much does that change your standing rigging? Are you also getting all new stays and shrouds? If yes, remember to tell the rigging shop to account for that 1/4 inch in the center under the mast. How much does raising that mast lengthen the fore and aft stays? Inquiring minds want to know.

Ed K
26

Hi ed, good to hear from you! Yes, while you have been out wasting all your time sailing and getting sun, I have been diligently tearing up and repairing my boat, servicing my winches, and sanding my teak!
Good question on the elevation effects on the rigging. Honestly I don't have an exact way to measure the difference that I can think of at this point. But You may remember that the mast was sunken in at that point. I did not go in and correct that because I wanted to "thicken" the deck at that point by using a little more cloth and by raising the attachemnt area. Now that I have sanded the attachement area, it is somewhere between 1/8 and 1/4 inch thick. I think that the amount of sag i had at that area will allow me to use the same stays and shrouds.
Another thing, I almost used the "make a mold with clay" technique recently shown in Good old boat magazine, but i needed to match the forward angle of the deck at that point, so what i did, as you can see from the pix, was to wet out the cloth, and then carefully apply three thin layers of thickened epoxy following the angle of the boat. A thick clay mold would have obscured the angle too much.

 

[emergpa1]

Ha, regarding the buzz, I never smelled any from the epoxy, but I usually had a respirator on if i was mixing in any filler.
The neat thing about the way fiberglass work has gone on this project is that I had smaller tasks that allowed me to practice at least some basic skills before I did this "big" repair. Smaller projects I competed were making the sanding block, filling the bolt and screw holes from the stanchions, grab rails, etc, and then some small deck repair at the pulpit mount areas where the core was also rotted out. I even used the skin I cut to practice grinding the "12 to 1" beveled area, which is not as easy as it looks. Next I have to tackle the deck at the chain plates.
My intention is to paint the area under and adjacent to where hardware mounts with one part polyurethane paint. Then I will "outline" that area with a strip of kiwi. The reason for this is that i don't think i can get a good color or texture match, I am hoping that, by outlining with kiwi nonskid, I trick the eye into not comparing the smooth paint with the original gelcoat/nonskid. I will let everyone know how it turns out when i complete it.

P.s I intend to use the same pattern of paint and kiwi at the lateral shrouds/ chainplate area and the pulpit attachement areas, to try to create a uniform appearence. It will take a little time, but i don;t want to paint the whole boat, and the gelcoat is otherwise in decent shape.

 

[emergpa1]

Nice work, its so satisfying to know you did it yourself and did it right. And the buzz from resin is way cool. Keep up the good work! Is/was there a compression post inside the cabin below the deck tabernacle?

Yes there was a small compression post attached to the mast under that area, I intend to replace that with a s/w thicker post, and to put a backing plate where the mast attaches. It is hard to believe the the manufacturer attached the mast without a backing plate.....I am definately going to take a harder, wiser look at my "next" boat. (isn't there always a next boat?)
keith

 

[Shoaldrafter]

Keith,

There are reasons boat manufacturers do not use a backing plate under the cabin top for the mast.

If an incident occurs that demast the boat where there are just bolts to fiberglass, then the damage will be bolt holes. Whereas if you had a backing plate you would have a bigger hole than you had with your project rebuild. Imagine not only rebuilding the cabin top area but also inside the cabin ceiling.

Boats get demasted routinely and it is lot easier getting a new mast and rigging and patching four bolt holes than going thru not only what you did but the interior rebuild too.

Consider if the demasting occured during a storm sailing home not only with broken mast but gigantic hole in the cabin. Your boat was designed and built without a backing plate under the mast for reasons old boat builders knew and hopefully you will not experience.

And yes, sailing has been good the last six weeks...

Ed K
26

 

[emergpa1]

Keith,

There are reasons boat manufacturers do not use a backing plate under the cabin top for the mast.

If an incident occurs that demast the boat where there are just bolts to fiberglass, then the damage will be bolt holes. Whereas if you had a backing plate you would have a bigger hole than you had with your project rebuild. Imagine not only rebuilding the cabin top area but also inside the cabin ceiling.

Boats get demasted routinely and it is lot easier getting a new mast and rigging and patching four bolt holes than going thru not only what you did but the interior rebuild too.

Consider if the demasting occured during a storm sailing home not only with broken mast but gigantic hole in the cabin. Your boat was designed and built without a backing plate under the mast for reasons old boat builders knew and hopefully you will not experience.

And yes, sailing has been good the last six weeks...

Ed K
26

Ahh, good points, glad i brought it up. Makes sense. Funny how something so logical can escape my attention. Another reason that talking with other sailors is a great idea!