The turn in the weather in Florida opened up the motivation to crawl into Tyvek and a full-face respirator to tackle the interior surface prep. The recent weekend was the third round of interior work, and now represents ~99% of that work completed. There are a few areas (tight inside corners) that require some additional hand work, but the work is essentially in the bag!

For this third round, again I worked with a smaller 5" DA sander which assisted me getting into the less roomier areas of the interior, using 60 and 80-grit disks. The overhead had been completed in the first two rounds of work, so today I focused on the v-berth hull, v-berth platform, cabin sole, and quarter berth spaces. The surfaces worked in this session were all part of a molded interior, with a gelcoat finished surface. The plan is to simply rough up this gelcoat surface, create a tooth for the paint to grab onto, and finish with an interior paint. With a 6'2" frame and low overhead of the Typhoon cabin, the maneuvering was at times acrobatic and in part interpretive dance, but I slowly managed my way from bow to the aft portions of the port and starboard quarter berths.

There are a few areas where this molded interior has been damaged through what appears to be compression, but also areas purposefully cut out. The owner and I will contemplate what may be necessary to repair for mostly aesthetic reasons, so more to come on these areas of the interior. The sanding was roughly two-thirds of the day's work, and felt good to put nearly all of that sanding work in the rearview mirror.

After cleaning up the interior with a good vacuum session, I turned my attention to the last remaining thru-hull. This thru-hull was located on the port side, just outboard where the head was located. Based upon the size of the thru-hull, it appears to most likely be a discharge thru-hull. It consisted of a bronze mushroom type thru-hull, a wood backing plate and a Marelon seacock. This hull penetration would be eliminated, so I worked towards removal and closing it in with a new fiberglass layup. With an oscillating tool, I made a series of cuts on the exterior of the thru-hull fitting, and then individually pried the pieces up until they broke off as tabs. With all of the "tabs" removed, I hammered the remaining portion of the thru-hull up and into the boat's interior. Since the hull thickness in this location was roughly 1/4" thick, the taper needed to be 3" to achieve the 12:1 ratio required. The 3" taper would translate to a 6" diameter that would need to be ground, and this was done with an angle grinder and a 40-grit flap disk.

I then cleaned the surfaces (interior and exterior), and began to prepare for the new glass layup. A piece of clear plastic taped to the hull would provide easy work in tracing for the 3 layers of 1708 biaxial cloth. I drew in a few arrows to retain proper orientation, and then took the template into the shop to remove them from fresh biaxial cloth. With the three layers prepped, I began mixing epoxy to wet the surface of the hull and to saturate the layers of biaxial. The layers of cloth wet out, I placed them in their proper orientation, removed trapped air, and then finished of the surface with a layer of fairing compound (thickened epoxy with 406 colloidal silica and 407 low-density fairing compound). I placed a piece of peel ply on to reduce surface prep upon my return.

Total Hrs: 8