Archives for July 2010
Midsummer coastal life
11 July 2010 | Coastal Living, Sailing | 2 Responses
Boat and computer work take up most of my time but I also get out to enjoy some of the sites and events in this area of the North Carolina Coast. The event calendar remains pretty full out here and there is a good variety of options for entertainment. One of my favorite things to do though is to simply go for a walk on the beach.
Probably for this reason I seem to end up at Fort Macon pretty often on my outings. At Fort Macon I can enjoy whatever activity is scheduled and then go for a nice walk on the nice beach there. Recently I’ve attended a cannon firing and a concert of Civil War era music at the fort.
For the 4th of July I did some back-road exploring and then spent the afternoon in New Bern, NC. I was really impressed by New Bern’s beautiful and historic down town and look forward to going back. New Bern is celebrating it’s 300th anniversary this year and consequently put on a great 4th of July celebration along the waterfront. The air show was top-notch and I enjoyed watching the fireworks over the many boats on the water. The perfect weather over the weekend of the 4th as me excited about the fall and was a welcome break from the hot weather that has dominated out here lately.
Bilge Cleanout
8 July 2010 | Pearson 28-1 Restoration, Sailing | 2 Responses
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.
