Renovation Icebox Removal Pt 2

The icebox is now long gone.  The resulting open area will become a navigation station one day, but for now we at least need to close off the engine room.

Ad-hoc engine room access:  The original plywood had been stuck up against the wet foam of the icebox for 44 years.  There was truly nothing left.  The used-to-be-plywood debris was cleared away by hand, in sunday clothes, while on the phone, without even breaking a sweat or getting dirty.  The remaining flanges are fiberglass, which were used to screw and epoxy to the new board to.

Remember when every home improvement store sold an inexpensive-yet-high-quality, void-free AC Douglas fir plywood made with genuine waterproof glue?  Neither do I; apparently I'm too young, but I have been told that they used to about 15-20 years ago.

Well, the product still exists, and it is still cheap, but you must look long and hard to find it...  or have a great little wood shop just down the road like we do: MR Woods.  We bought a half sheet for $15, and toted it home.  The usual fiberglass tape/epoxy/filler job and the engine room is a room again instead of an extension of the main cabin.

We turned the three walls into one wall which left an opening over the engine room. It will be covered with a counter/shelf extension.

The half bulkhead separating the previous icebox from the main cabin is an odd lumpy site.  The top is covered in fiberglass, and the bottom is exposed plywood.  I filled the holes in the bottom, then covered the plywood with biax fiberglass cloth. I laid the glass from the fiberglass tape at the bottom to the fiberglass above the plywood to fully encase it. This bulkhead will get covered up with something and become the back of the seat in the new Nav station.

It's been raining so much that we haven't been able to move as quickly as we'd like with the toxic work - epoxy, primer, paint, and varnish.  While we can work in the boat during the rain, the lack of ventilation is a problem. We wear our heavy duty respirators but that only helps so much when you can't open windows. And without being able to leave the boat open, the fumes take days to dissipate. Also, epoxy cures quickly in the heat, and slowly when it's cool.  If the temperature is over 90 it usually cures in 24 hours. But its been in the 70s in the boat with the rain and clouds, causing it to take multiple days to cure. I never thought there would be a day when I wanted the boat to be hotter, but such is life. The blazing sun has returned today after a 2 week hiatus. So I'm going to go do some more stinky toxic work with the hatches wide open.

Sand Epoxy Sand Paint (Again)

The head is finished.  We haven't dropped in the new bronze Groco toilet unit, but the tiny "room" looks like part of a nearly-new boat...  or at least a well-loved boat.

The two fiberglass wall repairs from the previous post were faired with thickened epoxy to cover the weave of the the glass cloth.  The room is now a continuous fiberglass bowl from the counter height down.

The fiberglass floor is part of the original interior mold.  Through the years and owners, it had received at least three "renovations" and was a mottled mess of four layers of paint: bright green, red, tan, and seafoam, all on top of a factory-molded honeycomb "nonskid" grid that prevents water from flowing freely to the drain.  It is humid and icky enough in the tiny head without having standing water in the floor exacerbating the problem, so we sanded, chipped, and ground out the paint and honeycomb texture as best we could, and then filled and faired the floor with thickened epoxy as well.

No matter how much work you put into fairing/sanding/fairing/sanding, you will always find tiny imperfections.  Suck it up and move on.  That is why they make: Paint; the beautiful concealer.

For this application we used Petit EZ Prime and  Interlux Brightside, a one-part polyurethane, in pure white.

The anchor locker was also attended to.   AJ removed/sanded the old flaking paint as best as he could, then painted it with gray Interlux 2000E, aka "barrier coat."

We scraped the V-berth back down to gelcoat.  The paint chipped off the smooth gelcoat sides in rather large pieces with a paint scraper fairly easily (easier than sanding!), so for the past couple months whenever one of us had some spare time, we'd go and chip away at paint in the V-berth until eventually it was bare.

Pics of the repairs to the back wall of the port side of the V-berth are below.
I used thickened epoxy to fill the depth/gap left by removing a delaminated layer of plywood, and I filled many large holes in the back wall that wires ran through before. We have also been scraping paint off the ceiling for months. The ceiling is not smooth like the sides, so it wouldn't flake off in sheets. It had to be picked off slowly and painstakingly.  We stripped the ceiling the best we could because we did not want the Reflectix falling down due to weak paint adhesion.

On the starboard side a previous owner drilled holes in the base of the V-berth.  He probably wanted to allow the compartments below to "breathe." but when he realized that he just drilled holes into the tops of the only totally water-tight compartments in the boat, he decided not to continue.  The holes allows for dust and debris, and most importantly, water, to fall/drip into the contents of the drawer below, so I filled the holes with thickened epoxy...

...  And then painted it all with Petit EZ Prime and Pettit EZ Cabin Coat, also bright white.

We hope to move to start moving aboard in about a week.

... and to take it out for a daysail shortly after that!

(Another) Delaminated Bulkhead Fiberglass Repair

If you do a google search for "delaminating" or " fiberglass bulkhead repair" we'll probably pop up in your results. Spell check persists on telling me that "delamination" and "delaminated" aren't words, but I must protest because it would be really difficult to write this blog without them.  It's a little depressing to have done enough of this dismal work to achieve these google algorithm rankings for word combinations.  Eventually the google algorithm should favor our blog with terms like "bad-ass adventuring sailor solves world hunger" and "girl kills ass-hole shark with bare hands to save seal pups", stuff like that.  Now, I would never enter into battle with a shark without a gun, a scuba tank, and a bigger boat, but I might be there when this happens to break the story. Today, we won't be adding any new keywords.

Once upon a time there was a delaminating bulkhead.

Two delaminating bulkheads in the head. They had suffered water damage from a leaking window and chainplates.  But the damage was limited to the thin top layer of the plywood on the lower half of the walls.  AJ scored it off at a hard line and removed it.

The bulkhead above on the right separates the head from the V-berth.  On the V-berth side, the bottom of the bulkhead was also delaminated.  Underneath it turned out to be completely rotted out for about five inches before going solid.  It was decrepit enough to break it apart with your hands. Can't catch a break right? 

So out came the rot and in went a small section of 3/4" plywood to fill the void.

I finally got text to go next to a picture!!! 

But unfortunately there is little more to say between this picture and the next one.  And no text above and below to sweetly envelope it. So this trick will do little aesthetically for this post. But I'm not going to undo this magic. It will look fabulous when there are many words and beautiful pictures.

Plywood patch coming up shortly.

I glued the new plywood piece in place with thickened epoxy. Then faired the uneven portions of the raw plywood wall.

We used thin 6 oz woven fiberglass cloth to fill the gap left by the missing plywood veneer, to seal in the new repair, and to make a waterproof epoxy/glass joint from the bulkhead to the fiberglass floor basin.  Now water cannot seep between the bulkhead and the basin. The entire head is a fiberglass bowl from the waist down.   

To make for the smoothest transition, I overlapped the fiberglass cloth onto the wall with a little thickened epoxy underneath in the crevasse.  That way the final cured product can be sanded smooth and flat with no transition marks.

Another nifty little trick is to come back a couple/few hours later when the epoxy is still "green", meaning it is still plastic and flexible, but has already taken (for the most part) its final shape and is not wet/sticky to the touch.  At the green stage, the semi-cured fiberglass cloth can be cut easily and precisely with a knife or razor.  Which is especially useful for inside corner edges.  If you are too late, then you will be sanding, chipping and grinding hard fiberglass.  Too early, and the cut will disturb and deform the lay of the cloth.   Also, if the edge pulls up or you notice some other gaps/pockets in the glass during the "green" stage, then you can still deform it and push it down flat with firm pressure from a paint scraper edge and it will join and cure solid to a picture perfect finish.  AJ scored the edges next to the trim and mast support in the head, and the edges in the pic below on the right.

The left side of the head had delaminated at the bottom one plywood layer deeper than the rest. So I laid a thick biax fiberglass patch there, then sheathed it in the thin cloth.  After it cured I fared it by filling the cloth weave with thickened epoxy.  Tomorrow it'll get buffed out with the sander and the head will be nearly ready for paint. 

We're also almost finished with the v-berth and anchor locker.  But more on that next time.  Once upon a time there was a lot of chipping paint...

Sand, Epoxy, Sand, Paint

This week it feels like the boat is really coming together.  We laid the first batch of cabin coat, marking the momentous occasion of the first-ready-to-move-into sections of the boat.  A small preview of our living space to come.  Most of the week was spent sanding. The dreaded sanding of so many painted surfaces, and all of the new fiberglassed bulkheads and chain plate fin patches. It was a dusty week.

Before painting the cabin we also had to deal with the area where the liner of the cabin ends a couple inches below the under-decks.  In the cabin it was covered with veneer.  A veneer that was falling off and delaminating.  Behind it is rough dry flaking 43 year old fiberglass.  We originally decided to at least brush it with clear epoxy to reseal it before putting up new veneer, but then decided to use thickened epoxy to just fill the bumpy surface to mostly smooth, sand it, and call it done. No hidden veneers to rot and less costly: win-win... ish

The Dinette is complete!  With 2 new lower bulkheads, a chain plate fin patch, epoxy filler, a kick board patch, and paint.

There was a hole cut out in the kickboards of the fiberglass dinette liner for the old battery bank switch, but we won't be reusing that location. So we filled the hole the same way we patched the hull:  tape on the outside, and a few layers of glass in descending size on the inside.  This too will be painted.. still have to sand and paint the kickboards...

In the v-berth we also epoxy-filled the liner gap.  A few months ago, AJ removed the plank that covered it so we could install the new toe rail bolts. Otherwise it would have stayed. AJ cut all the new bolts and ground them smooth before we laid the epoxy fill. He also sanded and scraped off the chipping paint on the sides back to gel coat. A little ceiling work, and it will be ready to paint! 

The starboard side of the main salon also got the filler treatment, but since this is plainly visible we made it especially flat and smooth as if it was part of the original mold...  Before we can paint, we still have to tackle sanding all the old stained flaky paint on this side. I'm doing that tomorrow.

The epoxy was thickened with Q-cell and Cabosil. The first batch on the port side was done only with Q-Cell, aka microsperes, aka glass ballons, which are tiny hollow glass spheres that provide the lowest surface-area-to-volume shape possible, meaning it flows nicely.  Q-cell is so fine it billows away like smoke when disturbed.  It can be a challenge to keep it in the cup and out of the air when mixing.  It is soft and sands like chalk with a power sander and 40-80 grit, making perfect feathered edges easy.  However, it takes a LOT of Q-cell to thicken to a paste, and even if you get it too thick to the point that it is snagging and no longer laying smoothly, it can still sag a little after being laid.  So, in spite of the silky smooth surface, we had some sagging issues, and decided to add a little Cabosil to the mix.  Cabosil is about as light and fine as Q-cell, but it sticks to itself a little more like dry baking soda, and doesn't billow away as much. (Unless you open it outside, the slightest breeze will empty a cup of either.)

Cabosil is also known as fumed silica.  Fuming silica is a process of plasma-blasting glass in an electric arc into tiny jagged particles of silica that have an incredibly high surface-area-to-weight ratio.  The resulting product has virtually replaced pumice in nearly all smoothing/polishing compounds, including toothpaste.  As an additive, besides being a mild abrasive, due to the surface-area-to-weight ratio, it increases the thixotropy (the quality of of anti-sagging/gap-spreading) of the product you add it to....  the point: a filler that is still wet enough to swipe on smooth with no resultant sagging.

You can feel the jump in stiffness by just adding a little Cabosil to the Q-cell batch. The problem is that Silica is hard... so hard that it can be difficult to sand, but it also makes makes the paste easier to pull smooth, leaving less sanding afterwards anyway.  We ended up mixing about 10%-15% Cabosil and 85%-90% Q-cell for optimum results.  

The closet is also finished!  I sanded the new bulkhead fiberglass seams for hours and hours in that coffin-sized locker, then I smoothed the edges out with thickened epoxy, then sanded that out smooth. Then painted!!  I love that closet. It's the one feature that keeps me feeling civilized. A place to hang things. Not a place to dig for things. A single normal convenience. I can hang foulies and a couple sets of scamouflage. (For when we need to not look like a dirty, homeless bums.)  I don't care how small it is, it's enough to take the boat from survival travel vessel, to home sweet home.  Until now it's been a rotting, humid, leaky mess.  And now I can hang things in it! Pardon my over excitement, but as I said earlier, this is the first glimpse since we bought the boat of the inhabitable home it will be. AJ is talking about adding an aromatic cedar liner to the sides for humidity and mold control.

While we were doing all this epoxy filling, we also patched the underside of the decks where hardware had been removed.  When Danny painted, his guys also sort-of patched 3 holes in the deck. One in the head cabinet, and two in the cockpit locker.  They put in a foam core and glassed over the top, but not underneath...?    Since it was upside down and part of the deck structure, we used the zip-lock bag as an icing bag trick and squeezed epoxy thickened with about 50% Cabosil (for thixotropy) and 50% cotton flock/milled cotton fiber (for strength) around the foam and glassed over the holes with two layers of biax.

I think this marks the end of fiberglassing.  I know we'll pull out the epoxy again for some reason.. but I can't think of one at the moment!   (oh wait...)

It feels like everything is happening all at once and we're on a mad dash to the finish line. We're trying to finish out the cabin so we can get off the mattress pad on our friend's floor and move back into our own place, all the while getting together the final parts and time we need to stand the rig. As soon as we get the bolts, we'll put on the chain plates, stem piece and chock cleats. And soon we'll start building the mast support, (the wood is cut!) but the toilet has to be removed to access the base... fun times ahead.  At least we will be installing a new bronze Groco head when we finish the job. The 43 year old bronze head did not hold up, even after two rebuilds in two years.

When the cabin is done and the rig is on, we get to turn our attention to one last project - the disaster of a water tank and surrounding subfloor.  That means taking out the floor boards and floor beams...  should probably refinish the beams while we're at it...  and the floors could really use a refinish too...  I just keep thinking of more things we have to do.  But, the difference now is, I actually can think of all the things that need to be done to finish the boat.  It's no longer an abyss...   it is now more like a mountain.  But we're above the treeline, and that feels pretty good.

Beach Fail, Epoxy and Paint

This is the beach two Sundays ago.  It was supposed to rain. It had rained Friday and Saturday, but it did not rain on Sunday, and we were invited out to the beach.  It was warm and windy, but the water was perfect.  There were a lot of slow rolling waves to bob with. But they were not too strong. I thought. Until one knocked my left arm straight out of its socket. I screamed. AJ came running from farther out in the water.  He helped me back to shore where it was immediately evident to all the spectators that my arm was no longer in my shoulder.  AJ helped me hobble to the car, so we could go to the ER.  When we got there AJ helped me into shorts in the parking lot, I really didn't want to go in in a bikini. But there was no hope in the shirt department. My left arm was pinned unwaveringly against my side with a right handed death grip.

The most painful part was the car ride. You don't realize how many forces are applied to you in how many directions until every micro movement becomes excruciating. I kept yelling "Slow down slower! slowdown slower!" as AJ approached red lights or bumpy intersections.  It was the granny-est ambulance ride he could pull off in a bouncy old work truck. But I let out a few more involuntary screams than I'd like to admit any time we turned. At the ER I waited a record low time of one hour before being seen.  I was put on an IV with pain meds, then a couple hours later they came to fix my arm.

I was honestly surprised the ER staff was so concerned that I not feel anything. I figured they'd just pin me down, yank on my arm and do it. But they fed me a cocktail of pain drug, Valium and something to make me forget.  I remember them sending AJ away, then tying a rope around my arm, and then looking over to AJ and saying,  "When are they going to fix my arm?"  To which the nurse piped up, "We already fixed it. You don't remember? You were awake through the whole thing." So there you have it, down but apparently not out. The forget-me drugs worked.

Why they have to make you forget I don't understand. They didn't ask if they could give me those drugs. They just informed me as they were doing it.  I would have liked to remember so that I could feel how it needs to move to go back in. So I can handle it myself in the future. Oh well.

I kept my arm in an isolation sling for 6 days, at which point I had regained about 40% shoulder mobility.  On the 7th day I couldn't take any more resting and got back to work, because there's so much to do and summer is coming!

We got a little subfloor work done. From grimy to shiny.

AJ made a new support for the floor beam out of starboard. Finally, finally, finally we have floors between the cabin and V berth again! It's a big step, and the steep floor beneath is not forgiving on the ankles.

There was one last little bulkhead to deal with. Under the port side dinette settee were a few dividers and a massively oversize starter battery box fiberglassed in. After chiseling out the box, the bulkhead behind it was a mess, so AJ cut it back and fitted a new piece  We glued it in like everything else, with strips of biax w/ mat fiberglass cloth and epoxy.  Then we took turns sanding to smooth out the rough edges on both new bulkheads. Then I painted it in grey Pettit EZ-Bilge. 

Months ago we cut out the old chainplate fins before being distracted with the deteriorated interior/living conditions. Well, we finally finished glassing over the last 4 chain plate fins and are almost ready to install the chain plates!

We mixed a batch of epoxy HEAVILY thickened with chopped strand glass, cotton flock, and cabosil.

And patched over the entire area with more biax w/ mat fiberglass cloth.  Three layers (~3/16-1/4") thick was added in a large area to the center fins making the hull ~1" thick here (drilling soon to confirm).  This additional glass will function as backing plates for the location of the new bronze external strap chainplates.

AJ has to narrow (grind) the tops of the bronze chain plates a bit to fit the toggles.
The chain plates and toggles are sitting on top of 300 feet of 1/4" 1x19 316 stainless rigging wire. Which we got a while back for a steal at $.90 a foot! Sometimes it's good to know people.

Our current project list is as follows: Install chain plates, fabricate stem fitting, finish cabin mast support, order rigging fittings, (if the ER bill does not find us first) then raise the mast!  All the meanwhile finishing the scrubbing and painting of the inside.  We're in for another rainy few days, but there's always something you can do with closed windows and hatches... if you dig deep, and wear a respirator. 

The Other Naughty Bulkheads

This week we repaired the last two problematic bulkheads. In the pic below you can see the triangular missing shape from the back bulkhead in the closet through the hole of the missing bulkhead (which is now replaced with fiberglass board).  AJ cut out the portion of the plywood bulkhead that had rotted.  

To prep the area for a new plywood piece, we sanded back the paint where fiberglass tape would be laid, down to wood or gel coat,  then cleaned it with acetone.  Pics are not of final prep ;)  I bet even my non boater friends know this drill now, but I just can't think of anything else to say about it. This was glued to that, that was bolted to this...and so on and so forth until I'm boring myself to death. And probably you too, faithful readers.  My life amounts to little more than nuts and bolts and glues and screws right now. Unlike AJ, these things fail to illicit the poet within me.

We decided to use fiberglass tape this time with lovely selvage edges, instead of cutting strips out of our biax, which leaves sharp shards sticking out everywhere that you have to fight to smush down, then cuts you after it cures.  Yay tape!



We laid two layers of tape over every seam.  The two triangular sections of the V berth you can see in a pic above were slathered with thickened epoxy and chop strand glass before the new plywood piece was wedged in.

The other problematic bulkhead was the plywood bottom of the non structural bulkhead that separates the galley from the cabin.  This one was removed via punching.  Pow pow! And it fell to pieces. The old fiberglass tape along it's edges had to be chiseled off then sanded down.

New plywood panel dry fit:

The veneer on the top of the bulkhead isn't doing so hot...but it's veneer on fiberglass so no problemo! 

Same story, and voila, another fixed bulkhead.

We've also been working on the chain plate fin areas.  Removing the fins left a gouge. The area was ground, sanded, and scrubbed clean. We filled and smoothed the gouge with thickened epoxy with chop strand fiberglass. Then covered it with fiberglass cloth. 2 down, 4 to go.  2 of them will serve as the location for our new chain plates, and receive 2 layers of heavy biax fiberglass. The chainplates can be installed after that, then the mast support, then the mast!

After all of this glass work, we'll get to do tons more sanding! of fiberglass! Ahhhh!
Then we can cover it all up with paint and forget it ever happened. Try to forget, try very hard.

Next up, a sneak peak!

Full report coming soon.

Hull Patch

We are finally beginning the rebuild.  AJ wants to be in Antigua in April for the Round Antigua race.  It's scheduled the Saturday between the Antigua Classic week and Sailing week. There should be at least two J Class sloops attending.  AJ has been wanting to see J Class sloops under sail since his father first showed him pictures as a boy, but since they were the America's cup boats of the 1930's, they had all been scrapped before AJ, or his dad, could ever see them.  However, in the beginning of this century there has been a revival of the class with a few boats restored and relaunched, and more being built to original plans.  Glorious 120+ ft full keel hulls with long slender overhangs and 160+ foot masts.  Seeing one of these monsters launch their 18,000 square foot spinnaker is a feat that is sure to impress.  AJ invited his dad along to crew our boat for the race. They'll get to watch them for the first time together.  Talking about going to Antigua was a paradigm shift.  It's easy to get lost in the work, and even forget what I've been working for when there's no foreseeable end to it.  After 17 months of living on a boat without systems or an engine, and the last few months living off the boat moving our grubby selves and grubby boxes from place to place, it's hard to even imagine having a real home again.  Much less one that takes me to Antigua.  We only got to sail once before the engine failed.  We've been helplessly tethered to a ball or dock since. The story this blog was intended to tell hasn't started.  But for the first time since we bought the boat, we can talk about cruising and make tentative plans.  And I can start imagining life on the sea as I did when the proposal to do so was first made.  We will be living aboard by December, and sailing south soon after. We'll be underway in March when we'll celebrate two years of boat ownership and the 6th anniversary of the plan to sail away. 

There is still so much work to do! And it feels good to be doing it.  Phase 3 is commencing!

Our rudder is back, new, improved, rebuilt, and three times heavier.  We managed to sneak in two barrier coats and two bottom paint coats between afternoon rains this week. 

We had a little hull work to do before splashing.  To finish the newly oversized cockpit drain system, we replaced the two ancient 1 1/2" thru hulls with 2" marelon thru hulls.  AJ resized the existing holes and chiseled off the wood backing pad.  The hull is about 3/4" thick here, and the pad was nearly another 3/4", to the point that the new thru hulls don't even have exposed threads inside.  The backing pads were needless overkill, especially for an unvalved passive drain.  We installed the new thru hulls with 5200.  

Then AJ decided he wanted to remove and patch the thru hull shown in the upper left corner of the pictures below. It's old, scary, and won't be plumbed to anything.  Why didn't we do this prior to having the boat bottom and engine room painted you might ask?  I asked.  The answer was a shrug.  I'm so happy we're finally moving forward again that I can't be bothered to be pissed about having a new coat of fiberglass dust all over the newly fiberglass free engine room. 

AJ removed the giant thru hull strainer contraption, and pounded out the bolts. Then he ground the thru hull area into a dish on the inside while I sanded and prepped the outside.  We taped over the holes from the outside to provide a smooth fair surface for the epoxy and fiberglass on the inside.  I cut eight circles of decreasing diameters from a thick fiberglass bi-axial cloth w/chop strand mat backing. I laid strand thickened epoxy in the holes against the tape. Then glassed in the circles. The largest circle was laid first, then the subsequently smaller ones. The last patch was a second large circle to cover the stack.  Hot damn I patched a hole in a hull.  Just gotta pull off the tape, sand and paint.

The back of the boat is also prepped for the rudder's return.  The dished back portion did not get sanded and repainted with the rest of the bottom because the rudder was in the way, so we tended to that. The gudgeon has been cleaned and cracks welded.  It's now barrier coated and ready to re-join the rudder.  While we had some thickened epoxy whipped up for the hull patch AJ ran down and filled the little holes around the cutlass bearing and built up the low portions.  

While AJ was grinding I took it upon myself to re-dig the hole under the rudder.  We filled it back in when it started caving out underneath the boat in the rain.  And now we are ready to install the rudder. Today!

Sealing the Cabin

Now we are working to seal the cabin top and decks to stop all leaking, then prep for paint. This means removing all hardware from the decks, toe rails, & cabin, removing the windows, removing the chain plates, patching the deck, repairing and refinishing the toe rails, and sanding down the honeycomb.

First we needed to stop cabin roof leakage.  The windows are not the only leaky teak in the cabin top. The exterior trim leaks in many places. You can see where after it rains.  The wood behind the wet places inside the cabin is rotting.

Water drains in behind the trim in the corner of the V berth.

The top left picture below is the same corner as above from the outside.  The trim serves no purpose and fills the cabin with leaky holes so we decided to remove it.  We used Goof Off to scrape off the tar.  It unfortunately stuck all over the decks as it was coming off, despite attempts to contain it.  Underneath is the original buttery gel coat. We filled the holes with thickened epoxy.

We also removed the trim on the inside. The bottom rail trim was already mostly detached. We had it held up with tape to keep it from falling off.

The wood top and bottom is the original plywood panel. The center of the panel was cut out without removing the trim, and replaced. There is some wood damage to the upper strip on the port side. The wood on the bottom is rotting and peeling from leaking windows. The center panel is solid wood, and still pretty nice. None of the paneling or trim is structural so we will dig out the rot then add a thin strip to level it with the center panel, and put the trim back. Since the cabin should not leak, it should stay dry and rot free.
In the V berth is the original single panel which peeled off in layers.  The yellow near the bottom is the fiberglass.  This panel will have to be replaced.

We removed a couple windows. The sides are super thin compared to the inch and a quarter cabin top.

None of the screws in the windows were bedded.
I think it will look just fine without the trim.

We went back and forth on whether or not to take off the hand rails before painting, and ultimately decided not to. They are not leaking and AJ popped a few plugs on the inside to inspect the screws and they don't want to budge. If it ain't broke...we certainly can't afford to fix it. So they got sealed Starbrite Teak Sealer.

We stripped the cabin top of hardware  The screws in the hardware even with all their silicon, caulk and goop, came out easier than the screws in the floor boards.

We took apart the Hatches. Hopefully to go back together watertight.

The epoxy repairs peeled right off the rudder.  AJ popped them off with with just fingers.  There was a lot of water inside.  Oh sad rudder, there were no holes in it before. None.

The others should come off with the same lack of effort. These gouges do reveal some good news. That little bar showing through at the top is rust free stainless steel.  Which maybe means the rest of the frame is as well?

The heat is getting brutal, so we have adopted a morning and evening work schedule. Sunrise till one-ish, then come back at five-ish when the heat starts to break for 3 hours till dusk.  I'm looking forward to when the list of projects starts getting shorter rather than longer, but at least there is little left to spend money on,  just lots and lots of work.  How much work? Check out the new Checklist To Launch.