Sustainable Sailing

Today was another windy day, fortunately it had been quieter overnight so we had a better night’s sleep.

All the fibreglass that we did on the outside of the 11 holes yesterday had hardened nicely, no visible air bubbles. We are going to wait until we strip off all the old antifouling paint before we fair it (no point in making it fair to paint that is coming off).

Today we decided to tackle the inside of all the holes, knowing that first we would need to create a whole lot of dust in every single cabin. Our orbital sander has a dustbag which doesn’t work brilliantly but we don’t have the right adapter to connect it to out workshop vacuum cleaner. In the end I found it was still work vaccuming around the sander as I sanded. Needed two hands as there mostly isn’t space for two of us to get at the job.

We managed to get the sanding and washing/wiping clean done before lunch.

Then we ran our little production line for the grp work. Jane was mixing the resin, then cutting and wetting out the fibreglass cloth in the cockpit.

Fortunately, it was dry so we were able to move some bits outside and some to the van to make space.

Meanwhile, I first put some thickened epoxy in each place to fill where there had been some sagging when we first did the thickened epoxy work. Then two more layers of the 280g 2×2 Twill Woven Glass cloth. So that is 2 layers on the outside, 2 on the inside plus thickened epoxy between them (and for all the larger holes a 10mm FR4 plug in that).

This too seems to be setting nicely.

and so our first GRP work on Vida is done. Now feeling more confident about tackling the other jobs that need it:

• 3 holes above the waterline (old diesel exhaust, old bilge pump and old shower waste).
• 1 chainplate where a slipped backing plate as caused stress cracks in the deck.
• filling the bolt holes and some stress cracks where the davits were inadequately secured.

That is a very short list for a 43 year old boat!

Now we can move to the next job. Cockpit drains so that we can make sure the motor room stays completely dry. So this includes making new bigger holes in the bottom of the hull as well as cutting up our cockpit floor. The excitement never ends 🙂