After some vacation time away and priority time spent on another project, I collected my gear and made my way back to the marina's work yard to finish out the blister repair work on Somerledi's bottom. Upon arrival, and having called the marina office in the days prior to request moving the stands so that I could access the areas obscured by the sands, I immediately noticed the stands had not been moved. I made my way over to the office to ask if might move them, but we all know the answer to this question, so I was promised a quick visit by yard crews and then pivoted to the rudder repair.

In previous work I had ground a bit off the lower starboard of the rudder - having a number of blisters in this area. I had also previously laid up a layer of 1708 biaxial cloth and now was the time to fair it in. I knew this was take a couple passes of fairing compound, so today I applied the first coat - West System epoxy with 406 colloidal silica and 407 low-density micro balloons. I first wetted the surface with neat epoxy, mixed and applied, with a wide trowel, the first pass of fairing. After cleaning up my work, I noticed the yard crew had arrived. I helped the effort in moving the stands and was quickly prepared to complete the work that was covered by the initial position of the boat stands.

I used 80-grit disks and a cordless palm sander for these smaller patches - nine total. After working the areas, I quickly noticed the small, cosmetic blisters that had been addressed the previous work across the field of the hull. I also noticed more on the port side of the hull. At this point, I grabbed the angle grinder and a flap disc to remove the voids down to clean glass. I also noticed roughly half a dozen small curious anomalies on the already barrier coat painted hull, and most of the few spots revealed small voids. These might have been oversights on my part, or they may have revealed themselves through the ongoing osmotic pressure. I like to think it was the former, but in the end nearly all of these blisters present no real threat to the integrity of the hull and only a front to cosmetics.

After a water wash of the hull, drying quickly in the Florida heat, I followed with an acetone wash and readied for filler of the very shallow blisters. I did come across one former repair that was at least an inch in diameter that had failed, so I ground this spot deeper with plans to add fiberglass cloth. With the blisters prepped, I mixed successive small cups of epoxy and thickeners to form the fairing compound. I worked from port forward around Somerledi and finished and the starboard bow. I would finish the day by applying 1708 biaxial cloth to the deeper-dished blister and covering with peel ply. It's most likely that the next sanding session to fair these small repairs will require a final pass of fairing (410 micro-light), followed by the barrier coat paint.

Total Hrs: 5