Flyer III photo and drawing....

I was able to get Flyer drawings from Cheoy Lee last year but I was only able to get a Type I drawing. Came across this Type III drawing and a great picture...

Sheerclamp nightmare….

Sheerclamp nightmare….
I was checking my handywork on the starboard side sheerclamp and while the big piece of oak that I had put in last year was bomb proof, I did find a little more rot on both sides. I haven’t really decided how to handle this yet. Part of me wants to clean out all rotten bits from the inside before replacing it with new wood, all from the inside. The other idea I had which could be easier in some ways but more painful in others would be to open up two small holes in the bow and after cleaning out all the rot from the inside, I could slide in new pieces in from the bow openings and epoxy in place. Not quite sure on this one yet. I hate having to go back and do some of this stuff after the rest of the boat has come so far. We’ll see.

Cabin house…

Along the same lines of crack repairs.. I wasn’t satified with the way I had decided to repair the cabin house. I had just planned on fixing any leaks in the roof but after taking of the trim pieces around the edges I wasn’t happy with the way it looked at all and was worried about water eventually working its way into there eventually. I started to think about sanding the whole thing and applying a thin hardwood veneer over it. Cut out the portlight openings, trim top and bottom and epoxy in place. The inside will stay as it is but hopefully with the outside completely covered in a new layer of wood and sealant, that too should be water tight for years to come…..

Green paint….

Green paint….
Going back into the boat after a while and looking at the way the dust, dirt and little bits end up in all the little corners and creases under the seats and berths in the cabinhouse. I’m sure looks like this would only get worse once the boat was being used all the time. I wanted to have a different color than the white so I found an old can of one part epoxy paint. It was sea green, a left over from a half hull project my dad had worked on about 6 years ago or so. Opened the can, mixed it with a drill and gave all the lower areas a coat of green which should do a better job of hiding the dirt, grime and water stains etc.

Gouges in hull …

Last year, I had cleaned out any large cracks in the gelcoat by scraping down into the gelcoat but not through into the fiberglass beneath. After that they were filled and I had been fairing them out along with any of the deeper dings and nicks that I found along the way. There were two or three small spots that needed to be cleaned out making sure to leave a nice text book West System 12-1 taper.

After spending a long time getting the hull back close to fair and close to painting, one afternoon I started to second guess the work I had done thinking that while it was pretty good it wasn’t as good as it could be. I started to think about water intrusion and those cracks being deeper than I really liked. Some were only through the gel coat but a lot were really all the way through or close to all the way through.


I grabbed and old style can opener, the one I had used last year (again, sage info from West System) and started to scrape the cracks open again but trying to go all the way through this time. Way too hard. I walked back into the shop (formally known as the garage) and grabbed a Dremel type tool. I put a carbide or diamond tip on it and in less than an hour, I had 200, 10 inch long, ¼ deep gouges…on each side. That seemed to work much better but the boat looked worse than ever.

The weather was good and dry so I didn’t have to fill them right away and I could sneak away to a friend’s for dinner with the girls. Later that evening, when we got back but before reading Maya a bedtime story, I mixed up a big batch of West system and micro balloons and filled them all up.


They sat that way for a few days and last night before the rainstorm, I was able to start sanding the excess off and hopefully tonight I’ll get to the other side and then finish filling them in.



After all this, the boat will look them same as it did a week ago, looking close to fair and close to painting but this time I know that these small cracks will never open up and let in any water. That doesn’t mean others won’t show up but if they do, it should only be a couple. Its funny, if I had a finished sailboat and found my hull looking like this one day, I would probably have a heart attack, but nothing seems to faze me these days with boat projects…hopefully they never will after all of this.

Tape removal...

Maya has been dying to do something with me on the boat and I feel bad that I keep having to tell her that she cant help out because of either the chemicals or fiberglass. I wonder how different it would be if this was a wooden boat... if I was working with wood, pine tar etc, would she have more of an opportunity to work with me? Maybe, but for now shes being patient with the process. I put aside any deck or hull work so that she could be around. She went straight to work pulling up any of the old tape that was still down from last years high build primer.

Deck..