Work begins

Now Robinetta is out of the water the "winter work" can begin. My first step was to remove any raised areas of paint, and there was a large bubble on the bulwarks, just where they become the cabin sides. This area is actually inside the hanging locker, and I have made no attempt to paint the hull inside that locker since we bought the boat as access is incredibly difficult. On removing the exterior paint I found an area of very soft wet wood, and after it dried out overnight it crumbled, rather than hardening up.

Julian likes doing bulwark replacement, but he is snowed under at work, so I called Paul Drake and asked his opinion. He came to have a look, and thinks that the rot was caused by this area being  regularly doused in fresh water as the run off from the cabin top flows down here. He will remove the rotten section and put in a new piece. He is also going to re-caulk and redo the stopping of the opened up hull planking, so there is no point even thinking about painting the exterior hull until that is done.

There was some damage on the foredeck where we did not lash the anchor down securely, and I have patched it with plastic padding before giving all the decks a fresh coat of masonry paint.

Cap rails in both foredeck and cockpit have been stripped back to bare wood and given coatings of Deks no.1, as has the new cockpit pin rail Julian made over the winter. The varnish on the cabin sides needs renewing, and I stripped off the loose stuff, but so far have only managed 1 coat of new, so there is still a lot to do on that.