South African "Catalina" 22

greg_m

.
May 23, 2017
692
Catalina Jaguar 22 Simons Town
Not much in the way of forward progress going on here... have completed the window frame inserts install and am now busy sanding down the inside of the coach roof lining to prepare for a bright new coat of white flowcoat.

Once that is done I then move on to fabricating some cockpit storage cubbies! These photo's show the space where the cubbies can be installed. The boat is upside down ... still!
 

Attachments

Last edited:
  • Like
Likes: rpludwig

greg_m

.
May 23, 2017
692
Catalina Jaguar 22 Simons Town
My boat does not have a bow eye installed. Although I have purchased one, I am not sure where to place it. Can someone please check their boat and measure from the deck down to the top of the bow eye so I can get an idea of where to drill the holes!
 

greg_m

.
May 23, 2017
692
Catalina Jaguar 22 Simons Town
Ok, so I have been slacking a bit... not without good reason though!

I went to help a friend fix the steering system on their Bayliner 3888. The upper helm station leaked hydraulic oil and eventual the steering was not working. So we repaired the system, added new hydraulic oil and bled the system. Then we "had" to take the boat out for a spin to check the steering works properly! I had my wife and our furkid along for the ride! The boat is moored at the Atlantic Boat Club, Hout Bay, South Africa.

A short video I managed to make...

See what happens when you put an engineer at the helm...
 

Attachments

Last edited:

greg_m

.
May 23, 2017
692
Catalina Jaguar 22 Simons Town
I did get some work done on the boat in October! After I had laminated the openings with the inner "frames I made earlier it was time to cut them to correct size. I used my oscillating power tool and cutting blade to cut the straight parts out and my trusty Dremel tool and a tile cutting rotary bit for the curvy parts. Finishing off was done with a combination of belt sander, drum sander and hand sanding. I'm happy with results but in some places the overall final wall thickness of the laminate will be to much for the groove in the rubber moulding. It needs to be 6mm thick.

Need to thin down the wall thickness of the laminate...
 

Attachments

greg_m

.
May 23, 2017
692
Catalina Jaguar 22 Simons Town
Went to check out the Radio Control National Championships held at a local sailing club, Zandvlei Yacht Club. The wind was the usual howling south easter, far to much for the little boats but the competition was on. These are one design boats designed and made local. 73cm long hull, 78cm tall mast, radio control rudder and sail winch. I must say I got bored quickly and resorted to drinking beer under the hot sun!

A short video clip I made -
 

Attachments

Last edited:

greg_m

.
May 23, 2017
692
Catalina Jaguar 22 Simons Town
November kicked off with a bit of a work spurt on the boat. I spent a lot of time sanding down the inside of the coach roof area as well as the rear bulkheads each side of the companionway. Most of the sanding was to remove the previous crap job done by the auto repair shop. All they did was spray on a thick layer of spray filler material and painted over that with white auto paint.

Unfortunately it was one of those jobs where you think you taking a step forward and it ends up to steps backwards. Around the perimeter of the companion way was a previously done very shoddy fiberglass repair job. I decided to remove the original wood trim which basically fell off because the screws were not supported inside the fiberglass structure. This led to lots of sand which uncovered the reason for the fiberglass job. The joint between the inner lining and the outer deck was splitting on a sharp corner. When I investigated this I found that there was no supporting structure around the opening of the companion way. i could easily squeeze the two sides together with no real opposing force.

Time to take the two steps backwards... out with the oscillating tool and cutting blade and cut away the inner lining around the opening. I found out why there was no support for the wood screws and why i could squeeze the two side together. There was a pisswilly piece of plywood too small, too thin and too narrow, for the job. Nothing for it but to enlarge the opening and fit new solid wood planks around the opening...
 

Attachments

greg_m

.
May 23, 2017
692
Catalina Jaguar 22 Simons Town
In this post I have made progress with the holes previously cut out of the coach roof lining. I added new plywood discs epoxied into the holes. These holes were where the sliding hatch rails and hand rails were screwed into. Galvanised screws were used and not sealed so water ingress caused rot locally around each screw hole. It might seem a little bit half arsed compared to the job I did on the deck but by this stage I was fed up taking steps backwards! So finish off the holes needed to be chamfered out prior to filleting and covering with a new layer of glass cloth CSM. This will leave a small round indentation in the coach roof but I think it will be ok as well as it will kind of allow for the new bolt heads to be recessed! All part of the plan... ;)

You can also see the solid timbers I have prepared for the companion way frame. These had to be rounded off with a router and then custom sanded in places to fit into the gaps and seat well against the outer laminate.

I have also added the contour piece to the mast step area.
 

Attachments

greg_m

.
May 23, 2017
692
Catalina Jaguar 22 Simons Town
The wood I have used is available from my local hardware store... it is called Meranti. Solid planks of 22mm x 44mm x 1.8m long works out to about USD4.65 per piece. It will all be eventually encased in fiberglass laminate.
 

greg_m

.
May 23, 2017
692
Catalina Jaguar 22 Simons Town
Got some more work done on the companion way frame. I had to custom chamfer the wood faces to fit into the corners of the original layup to get a good solid maximum surface contact fit. The usual "peanut butter" mix of resin, catalyst, chopped glass fibers and fumed silica was used to bond the wooden pieces in place. I did the two verticals first, lightly clamped overnight to harden and then did the horizontal piece the following day.
 

Attachments

greg_m

.
May 23, 2017
692
Catalina Jaguar 22 Simons Town
In the past few weeks I have had to do a lot sanding inside the coach roof. This makes lots of fine airborne fiberglass dust which really is itchy. To try and reduce the airborne dust I attach a vacuum cleaner to the belt sander. This though clogs up the vacuum in like 10 minutes. 10 minutes sanding, 20 minutes vacuum and filter cleaning, ten minutes sanding.... you get the picture!

So I made a plastic bucket into a "water filter". The pipe in the center of the bucket lid goes all the way down to the bottom of the bucket and has slots cut into it. I fill about three liters of water into the bucket which cover the slots adequately. The sander discharges into the bucket and the dust mixes into the water! The vacuum cleaner then sucks out the clean air from the bucket. This has proved extremely effective and now the vacuum does not clog up at all.

The work so far has met with the "inspectors" approval...
 

Attachments

May 23, 2016
1,024
Catalina 22 #12502 BSC
better in the bucket than your lungs!....same concept as the "Dust Deputy", wouldn't be without it, use it on router, table saw, chop saw, band saw, etc....nothing lands in the shop vac...

good lookin' pooch ya got there!
 
  • Like
Likes: greg_m

greg_m

.
May 23, 2017
692
Catalina Jaguar 22 Simons Town
Update... November flew past in a blur of activity. Not all boat related unfortunately. My wife went back to hospital for a follow up operation, my bikes starter motor gear drive packed up and the weather has been one lousy near gale force south easter, winds averaging in the the upper 20's knots and gusting into the mid 30's knots, for the last three weeks! That's probably the most irritating part of staying here in the South Peninsula of the Western Cape.

I have noticed that over the rainy winter season that the epoxy resin has taken a knock from the sun. My boat lives permanently outside and I am not allowed to build a carport or a shed in my front yard according to the building regulations. So I did spend a serious amount of time sanding the hull down, washing it down and cleaning it off with Acetone in preparation for re-coating. Now I am in the process of fairing the hull along the bottom parts and waterline area. The wind though blows all sorts of beach sand, dust, leaves and bugs onto everything which is making the work double. It is also a steep learning curve for me as I have never faired a boat hull before and to get a fair curve around the waterline area is pretty damn impossible! I think I will have to learn to say enough is enough and move on instead of spending days shooting for the perfect smooth curves and surface!

Pictures to follow soon when I get the chance. :rolleyes:
 

greg_m

.
May 23, 2017
692
Catalina Jaguar 22 Simons Town
Some pictures of work carried out in November 2017. One of my original decisions was that I did not want to hassle with leaking deck/hull joint. So I spent a huge amount of effort and time cleaning out the entire joint area, turning the boat upside down, then back filling the joint with epoxy adhesive, then covering the entire joint area with fiber glass tape and epoxy laminating resin. I was very satisfied with results with a couple of niggles.

Originally when the hull/deck joint was bolted together this was either not done properly or not done properly! The joint is very "wavy"with depressions where the bolts were used and hills between the bolts. I was unable to sort this out during repairs as it seemed to be permanently distorted within the fiber glass of the boat.

Belts and braces... I decided to only re-install new 6mm brass bolts into every second hole. Drilled the holes out, tapped them to 6mm, countersunk them to accommodate the new bolts, fitted the new brass bolts, tightened them up and then applied an epoxy filler over the bolts. They are now permanent!

The other decision I have made is to install a wooden rub rail... to secure the wooden rub rail I will use every second bolt hole. So the original joint will have the original number of bolts installed as well as the epoxy adhesive and fiber glass tape. Belt and braces I said!
 

Attachments

May 23, 2016
1,024
Catalina 22 #12502 BSC
nice work as usual!, no chance of leakage in that joint for sure....(curious, why brass & not stainless screws/bolts?)
 

greg_m

.
May 23, 2017
692
Catalina Jaguar 22 Simons Town
nice work as usual!, no chance of leakage in that joint for sure....(curious, why brass & not stainless screws/bolts?)
Never really thought about it... except the bolts I took out were originally brass.
 

greg_m

.
May 23, 2017
692
Catalina Jaguar 22 Simons Town
To get rid of the bubbles in the gel coat I had to go right back to the fiber glass layup from slightly above the original waterline down the entire bottom of the boat. This left a fairly undulating surface with lots of ditches and troughs! The original gel coat was not very evenly applied inside the mould. Also the original waterline was gel coated inside the mould in the creme colour and then the entire mould was coated in the red gelcoat. That meant two layers of gel coat along the waterline. To get rid of that it left a very visible trough as can be seen in the first photo below and in previous photo's of this thread. Re-coating the hull required sanding off the sun damaged resing layer. You can see how uneven the layup is by the dark spots left behind from sand with a "longboard" sanding tool. I marked one photo with a black circle to show this problem. I tackled the waterline area first and so far only the one side... it's seriously labour intensive job and time consuming to do fairing!

This was round one on waterline only, starboard side.
 

Attachments