Maintenance ongoing.. forehatch, halyard block, cockpit lockers, cabin and washboards..

A busy couple of days over last weekend and this weekend (and some more today hopefully) saw a not inconsiderable jump forward in maintenance..  the weather has been stupidly warm and sunny (until this weekend funnily enough*) and it was ideal drying conditions for paint, epoxy and plastic padding all of which were wielded in varying quantities and effect... 

First off, proof for Alden on the screws, cross hatches throughout except for the two through deck bolts...

...much better.... which is way more than we can say about this pile of hideousness..   

Sanded and post first coat of epoxy..

...water had got under the paint and epoxy on the starboard side cockpit locker lid..  buggeration...  I put two coats of epoxy on it when I made it two years ago but I clearly missed something...  so, rubbed down and taken back to good and  then left to dry out in the sun for two days, and everything looked...  errr, even worse...   

Sanded to within an inch of it's life, I put a coat of epoxy on it to stabilise and seal it, but the splits clearly needed a little more attention so once that was dry I whacked in some plastic padding, and then put another coat of epoxy on top of that for good measure by which time it was looking much...    err, worse...

Sanded again, plastic padding, and second coat of epoxy..

...this is damage limitation, the lid will need replacing, but I'm hoping that  these bodges will mean I might not need to do it this winter...  it's now painted and doesn't look too bad but it needs another coat...  pictures when I get back to the boat...

After years of procrastination and delay the fore-hatch is also done, not quite as I imagined it, but it is done and I'm happy with it... so from this - galvanised garden gate hinges bent to required shape (which was probably a good solution for a couple of years to be fair)..

Hinges removed....   yuckk..

..and then I finally discovered what the pads were that the hinges were sitting on - solid fibreglass/epoxy resin - the deck is cambered, and to get a block of wood shaped to the contour and height would have been a right pain, so it looks like previous owner made a mould, and poured his own resin pads up to the base of the hinge (they were different heights each side) and jobs a good 'un... the only downside comes when the hinges inevitably fail, as what you're left with is a permanent bespoke/custom fixture that you then have the reverse issue of fitting with the hinges (worse, as bending the damn things is not easy and a couple of mm's out and your're stuffed)..

So off came the resin pads (large hammer, large screwdriver, sander) not too bad a job, though as you can see (following) it took off gel coat in a few places..

Plastic padding, sand, plastic padding and sand again, and we are left with the following..

I use masonry paint in as close as colour as I can get to Sparrow's deck, for hatch tops, the latest iteration is a little light, but experience has shown that it dulls with age, and becomes much closer once it's been exposed to weather for a few weeks - all in all I'm very happy with that...  I toyed with the idea of leaving the hinge pad area as it was, but decided to mask it off and paint..  it looks neater..

So having removed the hinges, the question then becomes what to replace them with... at some point (boat archaeology should become a university degree course!) a previous owner had hinges on the lip of the hatch opening but the mechanics show that this clearly wouldn't have worked, as the edge of the cover would not have had enough clearance to open without hitting said lip which is why previous owner had fitted the external hings, as that lifts the cover away from the lip ...  

So three choices, one,  new external hinges, two, grind away the bottom edge of the hatch cover at the back so I could fit internal hinges, or three, not bother and put in a latch...  

I went with latch..   external hinges ruled out for the reasons previously explained, internal hinges ruled out because the benefit of a hinged hatch is not enough to justify the major grinding surgery required...

Job done, and very nice to be able to open the hatch on a hot day, not been able to do that in a long while...

Moving on (and in reality all these jobs were happening in parallel - as paint/epoxy dried on one, I was working on another) clearly something needed to be done with the bottom washboard - it's shagged, but as per the cockpit locker lid, a delaying action could only help, so the same was done, a mix of epoxy, and plastic padding, and sanding...

Looks awful but you didn't see it before...

....coat of paint and it is immeasurably better...

...another coat (when I do the locker lid) and it will be done..

Last of all it was time to do the fore-cabin - which four years ago looked this bad, so you can only imagine how much worse it was as I forgot to take a picture...

...coat of bathroom paint later (chosen as it it inhibits damp and mould growth) and we now have an area I would choose to sleep in...

Look..  the hatch is open... 😀

...and that's it - the inside is done, cockpit is mostly done, time to move to the outside...

...three jobs before I launch..

1. Test run the outboard and do a test fit to the boat to see if raising it half an inch resolves my issues with lifting it..
2. wash down with Oxalic acid followed by a scrub
3. anti-foul

....launch date is tentatively the 22nd...

* fairly typical, but this weekend would have been the Jolly Boys cruise of the Solent, in fact we would have been returning today if plans had gone to plan..  and fairly typical because as is usually the case the weather broke from tropical to gales, rain and cold snap just as we would have been going! Here's a flavour of 2017..  😀