August 5, 2017
The day started out as innocuous as any other Saturday...I was off to the office to collect an item I had been meaning to bring home for quite a while, and on the way to the office, I treated myself to a Dunkin Donuts sausage and egg bagel - auspicious beginning to the weekend indeed. Alas!, coming out of the office, I noticed a foreign object protruding from my driver-side rear tire. I attempted to drive to the dealership, but was suddenly flooded with images of total tire failure at 80mph. I slapped the spare on, and then made my way to the dealership. With mid-day bearing down on me, I made my way back to home to begin boat work...
The goal for the day was to remove the red topsides, at least the starboard side. I fastened the dust shroud to the Porter Cable 7335, connected the vacuum hoses, donned the 40-grit PSA pads and was off to the races.
The dust shroud and vacuum combo does a remarkable job of eliminating unwanted airborne paint particulate. I would periodically clean the shop-vac filter, as this keeps maximum 'suck'-level achieved.
I worked the topsides down to the originally gelcoat, burning through red topsides, primer, a former green topsides and primer. The clean slate, white canvas, was nice to see.
As I approached amidships in the sanding process, I decided to go ahead and adjust the boat's positioning on the stands. When Joule was brought in by hydraulic trailer, she was set with her sheer line set in a horizontal position. This position set the waterline in a downward trajectory; she was also positioned on but a few pieces of blocking material. By using just a few pieces of blocking, my rather large stands had to be severely angled downward so that the pads engaged the hull, and also resulted in the pads resting rather high on the topsides.
I set out to raise Joule so that I could 1. level the waterline, and 2. get the sailboat stands' pads below the waterline so as to not interfere with eventual painting of the topsides. I used a jack to alternatively raise the bow and stern, putting both in a higher position (using more blocking) so that the pads of the stands rest at a point below the waterline. After an hour messing with the positioning of the boat so that it met my satisfaction, I returned to the work.
Getting as close as I could to the bow line with the Porter Cable 7335 - I would entertain more detailed work with the palm sander and hand-work.
Removing the starboard topsides revealed a repair made to Joule's amidships at some point in her past. The interior also reveals some glass work. This area of her topsides will require some fairing work prior to primer paint.
With the starboard topsides removed, I moved on to the stern...
...and the stern topsides removed.
Joule came clean with her past today, and revealed her darker side - the Cape Dory Typhoon formerly known as 'High Ri$k'. Yes, that's a dollar sign for the 's'. Joule, you naughty girl!
With significant progress made on the topsides, I moved onto the poop deck to address some core issues. Knowing that recore work was on the list, I wanted to get a peak into the problem areas, measure the depth of the balsa and then get some replacement material on order. I began with where the stern light was mounted. I traced out cut lines and then removed the top skin.
As imagined, the core was at some point saturated, proceeded to deteriorate, and then dried out. the core was anything but a solid construct, and was removed with hardly a fuss.
Seeing that additional core material required removal, I expanded my cut line.
The additional removal of core material eventually revealed sound core.
Next, I moved over to port where a cleat was added. As can be seen below, the top skin is concave, and soundings revealed the dreaded 'thud' of a wet core.
I marked cut lines, and proceed to remove the top skin.
After the initial removal, I choose to remove an addition section of top skin and core. I ended the day satisfied with extracting the wet core in these two areas on the poop deck.
Total Time Today: 6.5 hrs
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