Poolio's sailing and travel blog.

The memory card on my camera has filled a few times and this blog has gone out of date but the work on my Pearson 28 hasn’t stopped.  Since my last posting in June I’ve turned a corner on the project and can now faintly see a launch date in the boats future.  Most of the interior has been finished including plenty of small, and large, projects that have been completed.  Boat work is wrapping up for the year due to the holiday’s and to the pending cold weather but I plan to catch up on my blog posts in the next few weeks.

After finishing the companionway drop-boards and re-bedding the transom mounted hardware I moved into interior woodwork.  A lot of the interior projects progressed simultaneously.  I found woodworking to be very challenging and made plenty of mistakes along the way.  There were pieces that I had to redo multiple times, spending many hours on each version.  The end results are a functional interior that I’m happy with but that I can see flaws in and continue to revise in my mind.  Designing and building comfortable, functional, reliable and manageable interior systems (or any systems for that matter) is difficult and requires an expertise that I’ve learned to appreciate but haven’t yet achieved.

The interior of this P28-1 was stripped down when I got it.  My suspicion is that previous owners raced it and wanted the boat to be as light as possible.  In any case the interior was missing a lot of the non-structural components the largest of which were the main cabin settees and shelf faces.  I’m not sure what the originals looked like but I decided to design my own seating and storage areas in the main cabin.  I’m setting this boat up for cruising, not racing, so I want more storage, comfort and durability for regular use.

What I constructed includes seatbacks that fold down to make counter tops for tools/work items and access to new storage that was opened up behind the settees.  The seat backs can also be removed from the settees for widening the berths.  I also added faces to the shelving above the settees that have sliding acrylic access panels.  The design evolved as I constructed it and was a compromise between a variety of factors.  Below are pictures of these projects as the progressed.

These are photos of the seatbacks which fold down and are removable:

These photos highlight the storage spaces that I cut out and added shelves to behind the seat backs:

The port settee seat backs can be used to widen the port berth:

The faces for the shelf above the settees saw a few revisions but turned out nicely in my opinion:

A few more restoration tasks have been completed on my Pearson 28-1 including creating new companionway drop boards and sealing up the transom mounted hardware.  I went from 2 drop boards to 3 and also changed the lock setup and added a latch for the lower board should I ever want to keep it in place in a seaway.

On the transom I potted all of the holes and used new hardware where needed.  I also added fiberglass backing plates for the stanchions and stainless backing plates for the cleats.  I replaced the vent fan and re-plumbed the ventilation hoses and switched to aluminum vent pipes that are epoxied into place for the engine venting.

During the time that I was working on the above tasks a number of tools found their way into the yards dumpster.  They led me into doing my first “dumpster diving” though I fortunately didn’t have to dive or dig to pull them out.  Here are some of the better finds.

While working on the chainplates, cabin top handles and traveler I also constructed a seahood for the sailboat.  Some folks call this thing a turtle and maybe it has other names as well?  On my boat it will serve a few purposes.  It will help keep water from working its way into the cabin through the companionway hatch, it provides a mounting point for a small solar panel that I wanted to find room for and perhaps most importantly it will make it possible for me to install a water tight dodger on the boat whenever time allows.

In building my seahood I closely followed the project documented by David Brown here.  I only had to make a few changes to adapt the seahood to the way it mounted to my boat.  One change was that I built the seahood so that it retained the aluminum strips that Pearson installed originally.  These strips will keep the sliding hatch from exposing the wood in the seahood which would allow for rot in the long-run.  I also embedded nuts into the seahood so that I could through-bolt it from inside the cabin.  I also added too much fiberglass to the seahood but at least it won’t crack or budge if an elephant wanders onto it..

Construction started with the woodwork:

Then I added plenty of fiberglass roving, mat, biax and cloth:

When I was tired of trying to fair out my glassing mistakes I added plenty of coats of paint:

I have a small solar panel that is primarily for keeping the batteries topped up while I restore the boat.  It will similarly be handy for periods when the boat is stored and should enable me to take the larger panels down to avoid theft or storm damage etc.  I set the panel up so that it pivots on the sides since the boom/mast will prevent it from charging well in a horizontal position.  I also raised it up a little to keep it cool and so that my will feet fit under it when I am doing things like flaking down the main.

With the seahood painted I could finally install it and get it out of the cabin so that I could work on other projects.  It was also nice to have the little panel off of the stern rail so that I could pull all of the transom hardware for rebedding, though that is for another post.

When I first acquired the Pearson sailboat that I am restoring it’s broken traveler seemed like one of the larger problems on the boat.  Maybe it seemed like an important problem because it prevented the proper use of the mainsail on what I imagined to be a boat that was in decent condition.  After all, the boat had just sailed down to Beaufort NC from the Chesapeake Bay, on the outside (in the Atlantic).  The sense of how important the traveler problem was and how expensive it would be to fix gives me a decent indication of how little I understood the condition of this boat and what it would take to restore it.  Unfortunately I was blind to the largest and most expensive problems that this boat had.

Fortunately restoring the traveler was easy, affordable and satisfying.  I was able to source a new Kenyon I-Beam track from Rig-Rite.  A local aluminum fabricator at Jarrett Bay was able to re-weld the broken base and the remaining cleanup, install and sealing was nothing new for me.  A little epoxy in the enlarged holes, some drilling and sealing with Butyl, and of course sanding and cleaning and the traveler was back on the boat and ready for lines.

At the same time I replaced the cabin top handles which took more work and was close in cost to repairing the traveler.  I also pulled and inspected the chainplates before reinstalling and resealing them thoroughly (with epoxy and butyl, my favorite sealing combination).

It’s been a great Spring here at Bock Marine.  Most of my time has been spent working on my Pearson 28-1 but I’ve also enjoyed visiting with friends, the occasional bike ride and a little time on the water.  Here are a few photos from a sailing trip on Ciganka, a steel Ketch that spends most of it’s time in the Bahamas.  You can also see Peter Hampton, who came down from Toronto, as he shapes a piece of steel that we used to extract the through-hulls on my boat.  Finally there is a photo of the crane that fell off of its sinking barge and into the ICW channel shortly after I arrived in March.  Deconstruction and extraction of the crane and barge turned into a long undertaking and was interesting to observe.

Travels, visits and cold weather kept me away from the boatyard for the last four months but I’m back to the yard and boat restoration work again.  Instead of freezing here in Beaufort NC I spent February a bit further South in a hotel-turned-sewing-loft overlooking the Atlantic.  During February I was able to stitch together new cushions for the main cabin of my Pearson 28 and am pleased with how they turned out.  I used a Sunbrella upholstery fabric along with new foam/batting and a breathable bottom material for the cushion construction.   I opted for the simplest adaptation of a box cushion that I could find.  Unless there was a curved edge I only used two pieces of cloth for each cushion with no side panels (not even for the rear/zipper panel).  The foam was cut a bit large so all of the cushions are nice and tight.  I haven’t built the seat backs that the back cushions will mount to yet but even the currently incomplete setup has dramatically increased the comfort and appearance of the boat.  I’m hopeful that some of the many other projects that I have coming up will also be easier than expected so that I may meet my lose goal of being on the water by the end of this year.

After months of daily sailboat work the 2010 projects wrapped up in late November.  Due to the great Fall weather the last few months of work went well and I was able to accomplish the goal of getting the bilge fiberglass work finished and the bilge painted before I headed West for the holidays.

I used Interlux Bilgekote in the bilge and enjoyed the finality of painting over my summer of fiberglass work.  It was also nice to pull up the masking and to organize the boat again after having everything moved around for the fiberglass work inside.  Below are some photos of the painted bilge and some odds and ends from smaller projects that happened this summer.  I think a few random photos of the Pearson’s deck squeezed there way in as well.

If you are curious about the chart light in the photos it is an led landscaping light from superbrightleds.com.  I’m pleased with it as a chart light and am planning to add a few more as spreader and deck lights when the mast goes back up.  You can find them lower down on this page:

http://www.superbrightleds.com/cgi-bin/store/index.cgi?action=DispPage&Page2Disp=%2Fmalibu.htm

A common problem with the Pearson 28-1 is corrosion in the bottom of the mast.  This corrosion occurs because the base of the mast is located in the bottom of the bilge and is exposed to the water that collects in the bilge.  Many older sailboats with bilge stepped masts may also experience this issue and a variety of repairs have been created.

The general repair idea is to cut the corroded section off of the bottom of the mast and to add a riser block of some sort to replace the lost height of the mast.  I decided to create a riser block using fiberglass and polyester resin.  I also installed bronze studs that run down into the keel in order to bond the keel and mast electrically.   The resulting repair is strong but was probably more difficult than some of the alternatives.

Here are photos of the base creation and installation:

It may be because of my weight, but the floors in my Pearson 28-1 flexed a bit in the main cabin when I walked on them.  It wasn’t noticeable at first but after working on the boat for months it started to bother me.  I decided that if I was going to stiffen the floor that it made sense to do it along with the the other bilge fiberglass work that I was doing.

The flexing was only evident near the middle of the openings to the bilge.  I decided to install strips of wood laminated with 18oz biaxial cloth on the bottom of the cabin floors.  They strips of wood were installed parallel to the openings.

Now, not only is the boat actually stronger it also feels stronger due to the stiff floor underfoot.  Here are a few photos of the prep and installation of the fiberglass and wood floor stiffeners:

After recovering from the layup of cloth in the bilge, work on the new floors (structural cross-members) commenced.  The usual sanding, grinding and fairing was needed in the bilge in order to ensure good adhesion of the floor tabbing.  Little plates were then installed under where each floor would be installed so that water could move to the lowest point in the bilge with minimal restriction.  After those tasks were complete the bilge was ready to receive the new floors and glass.

The old floors were a laminate of plywood and fiberglass and were showing their age.  These floors were stripped down from when I removed them from the boat and I decided to replace them with new wood.  I started with marine grade plywood that was thicker than what Pearson used and cut the new floors using the old ones as templates.  After they were cut they were fitted to the contours of the bilge and the tops of each floor were rounded so that the fiberglass cloth could wrap over the top of the floors with minimal air sucking.

The layup schedule for the floors went as follows:

• The bilge areas around each floor were faired with thickened epoxy and covered with a layer of chopped mat.
• Each floor was placed in thickened epoxy that was shaped into a thick fillet so that the upcoming cloth layers wouldn’t suck air at the joint between bilge and floor.
• The bilge area around each floor and the floors were wet out with un-thickened epoxy.
• Each floor was tabbed along the bilge with strips of 18oz biax.
• Each floor was covered with layers of 18oz cloth that overlapped onto the bilge/hull.
• Interlocking layers of 18oz cloth were layed up over the tabbing in a manner that faired everything out and also unified the layup of all of the adjacent floors.

In the end the floors were firmly in place and well protected from moisture.  The previous failure of the floors was with delamination from the hull so extra attention was payed to the adhesion of these floors to the bilge.  The results were pretty similar to what Pearson had done at the factory but I’m hoping that the secondary bond of the epoxy will be stronger than the original polyester that was used by Pearson.

Here are a few photos of this phase of work in the bilge of my Pearson 28-1.