For the past month my boat work has primarily been focused on cleaning and preparing the bilge area for planned layup of fiberglass and epoxy. This work has involved lots of grinding, sanding and fiberglass irritated skin. When I haven’t felt like putting on the protective gear and getting into the bilge work I have taken care of some other small tasks like installing LED lights throughout the boat and setting up and learning to use my sewing machine.
If you read some of my early reports about this boat you may recall that there were some cracks in the hull and that the tabbing and floors in the bilge were all delaminated from the hull. Those early discoveries opened the way for the largest projects that I have to tackle before the boat is ready to sail again. Experts have looked the boat over and confirmed that she can again be solid, but I have to repair and reinforce the hull in the bilge/keel stub area before that is true. My recent tasks towards this end have been to clean the bilge thoroughly in preparation for laying up 5 layers of 18oz biaxial cloth and epoxy.
Cleaning started with degreasers and water since the bilge was coated with oil from the engine. After the bulk of the oil was gone I cut, chiseled and pryed the floors and tabbing out of the bilge. With the floors out of the way, grinding, sanding and degreasing continued. I ended up grinding down all of surfaces in the bilge to help ensure that the new layers of glass/epoxy would have every chance of adhering well. Here are photos of the bilge from the beginning to the end of this cleanup process.
I remember thinking that the bilge was pretty clean at the time that each of those photos was taken but there was always a bit more cleaning to be done.
I used sandpaper, dremel, chisel and other cleaning tools but the sidegrinder was again the most important cleanup tool for this job both with sandpaper and a grinding disc.
Here are the floors and tabbing after being removed.
After the cleaning was mostly done I ground out some small voids and applied some small patches.
Beyond bilge work I’ve played around with some other projects around the boat.
Hi, would you add reinforcement while the keel still in place? Or do you will take the keel off in order to add reinforcement under the keel bolts?
Hey Andre,
In this case I have left the keel in place during the repairs. The nuts have come off of the keel bolts so that the new layers of cloth/epoxy will be underneath the washers/nuts when all is put back together though. If I were to drop the keel on this boat it would be so that I could improve the mating of the keel and keel stub surfaces which may stabilize the keel some but I don’t think it is necessary in this case.
Jonathan