Fall Boat Work Time

Not much cruising has been going on because of boat maintenance.  First the eyebrow was in really bad shape and needed to be repaired.  She was split in a section and cracking, about to delaminate in one area.  In another area we had an issue where the part of teak was missing all together.

We hired a wood worker to replace and repair the two badly damaged areas. The entire job was only $150 including materials so we were relieved to see his pricing.

Eyebrow repaired and sanded back in place.

Part replaced on the eyebrow.

 Next we had the boat cleaned the the cabin roof pads cleaned.  This involved using the West Marine two part teak cleaner and a good deal of scrubbing.

Cleaned pads

It had been a while since they were cleaned in ernest.  Black soot from the planes, and mold had embedded themselves in the teak's grooves and grains.

Our next project then was to rebedded the chain plate covers.  As you can see from the photo's below the lifted plates were far above the deck, and were leaking water into the boat.  I visited one boat last spring, another 1980 HC 38 MKII where the chain plates leaking caused the holly in the teak-holly  cabin floor to dry rot away, leaving only the teak slats remaining.  That horrible incident was one I wanted to avoid here.

Old caulk and chainplate lifting.

 To do the job we used a regular screw drive, razor blade scrapper, a wire brush, a stiff wire, sand paper and a cordless vacuum.

Tools for the job of cleaning out the old caulk

 The first step was to use the screw driver to gently pull the plates up to break the seal of the old bedding compound. Care was taken to not apply too much stress, such that the plated would bend.  Once the seal was broken the old caulk was worked out using the razor, and screw driver to free the compound from the cavity in the deck.  When the large pieces were removed we used the stiff wire to pick out the more stubborn pieces, and the wire brush to clean out the cavity throughly.

Chain plate lifted and cavity cleaned out ready for preparing to rebed.

Using painters tape we next marked off the area around the cavity to catch the over flow.

Using 3M 4200 Marine Adhesive Sealant as the bedding compound and a roll of paper towels are the ready.

We found the best method was to layout 6-10 paper towels in a stack near the area to be fixed.  Cut off only a small opening in the nose of the tube.  The small opening allows you to work the material under the plates easier and to fill one long side at a time without lifting the gun from under the plate. Once the adhesive was worked into every part of the cavity we'd then push the plate down onto the excess adhesive until it was flush with the deck.  Pushing it down would of course push out the excess adhesive onto the area taped off.  Gross amounts of sealant were then removed by pushing it upward with the fingers and drying them off using the excess towels. Once there was a thin layer of sealant on the deck, the tape was lifted off and applied to the nearby paper towels. Finally the edges were all smoothed out to allow water to flow around the plates freely.