Dry and Sunny!

Every fine day means we should head to the boat to get what we can done, so on Sunday Julian and I drove to West Mersea hoping to get a layer of underwater primer on the hull. Julian had a look at the putty that Paul had put over the bolt heads from when he redid the floors at the bow, and decided that he was unhappy with the slight drip he got when he pressed it. The putty is still very soft. He wanted Paul to check it before he painted it over, so I got him to sand down the cabin sides that continue the white stripe of the bulwalks. The paint there has been flaking off again, so needs redoing.

The bilge pump worked as soon as I tried it, most mysterious, so I did not need to dry the bilges, and since Julian was getting on with what I had intended to do I started rubbing down the bright work in the cockpit ready for re-varnolling. I'd done about half by lunch time. Unfortunately when I went to Marinestore to buy the Varnol they told me they had discontinued it. I'll have to rethink! That left me at a bit of a loose end, since I did not want to take off any more Varnol until I'd decided what to replace it with.

While brushing down the cockpit so my sanded off varnol did not blow onto the grey metallic paint Julian was putting on the bulwark I noticed that the fibreglass sheathing that butts against the cabin edge was pulling away a bit. That led me to tap at it, and my heart sank. An area the size of a side plate on the port side of the cockpit top sounded hollow. I felt around underneath it, and pulled out a lump of fungus that seemed like a fruiting body of some sort.

When Julian drilled into the cockpit top to fit the GPS mount back in April 2009 he reported that the wood seemed a bit soft, but that was on the starboard side, and that all still sounds fine (with no ominous fungus) beneath.

I called Julian, and we decided that we had to find out what was going on, so that meant taking off the locker seat and dismantling the port side of the cockpit.
 
The ply beneath the hollow fibreglass crumbled like wet fibre board when we exposed it, and the support strut for the locker seat also lacked strength. We worked back, and the support strut at the stern of the locker seat was also rotted, with crumbling ply above it. The ply was fine further back though, so it seems that the problem lies with the locker supports.

I got Paul to take a look at it today, and he'll rebuild it for us before we relaunch. I've also asked him to refinish the mast, as we really don't have time to do it with the uncertainties of the weather. He saw no problems with the softness of the putty, so Alex washed the salt off the hull and painted a layer of underwater primer. It will take a while to go off, but the next dry day we get it will be back to Robinetta for more painting.