How I spent my summer vacation: grinding, sanding, fairing the deck
Neil took his vacation this week.... and he's spending it working on the boat! It's been such a hectic and exhausting week so far, I am not sure I can recall everything we did. But I'll try! First, we removed everything from the decks and taped up all the hatch and port openings with plastic. Then we began to wash the deck with TSP. There was so much dirt and grease on the decks from a year of construction in a greasy warehouse, it was amazing. Took both of us all day long. Halfway through, we realized that everything underneath the boat was getting soaked. Neil had thought the cockpit drains would miss stuff, but that wasn't the case. So we took several hours and completely organized all the parts and supplies, which actually felt really good to do.
Once the deck was clean (I mean it was IMMACULATE!) we put up a big "No Shoes!" sign on the ladder. Then Neil wiped the entire thing down with Awlgrip Bottomprep Dewaxer. I masked off the non-skid areas, inside their borders, and he began working on the foredeck repairs. There was a poor repair job on the foredeck where an old windlass had been, and he needed to fill the holes from removing the windlass that came with the boat, as well as one of the chain pipe holes. The windlass we bought (a Lofrans) has a different footprint so we'll need to reconfigure the foredeck. Large holes are filled with a foam coring material and faired with West System epoxy with 410 microballoons.
The next few days were itchy and scratchy with lots of grinding, sanding, and sweating. We ground out any areas with large gelcoat cracks: there are a lot in the cockpit, mostly at corners. Then we went around with a Dremel too (what a cool tool!) opening up small cracks somewhat. Some of the gelcoat cracks are stress cracks, like at the forward edge of the cabin. These are really small and will only come right back, so we're leaving them alone. Here you can see some of the worst of the cockpit cracks bsing opened up with the Dremel.
Next everything gets a first application of fairing compound. This is kind of a fun job. You are racing the clock, trying to get it on before it kicks, yet not miss any spots or make a huge gloppy mess you'll have to sand off later!
We also opened up the deck on the starboard genoa track where we knew there was some moisture. We were happily surprised to see that the wet core was only about 5 inches square. It's fixed now!! Neil's friend Fred came over one night and helped us grind. That's fiberglass dust swirling in the air: yuck!!!