Today I will mostly be inside a locker (fast show reference, in case you missed it). Yes today was the time to remove the rotted wood from the hanging locker and work out what went wrong.
Basically the chain plate, and also the stanchion base next to it has been allowing water to get through the deck and it has been running down the backing plate for the chain plate (chain plates are what the wires holding the mast up are tied to) and rotting the plywood that encases it all. This is more cosmetic than structural, but unfortunately, a lot of cosmetic damage has been done, including about 3 sq inches of teak & holly sole in the companionway in front of the locker. I removed all of the rotted wood, and will replace it at some point, but that’s not a priority now, I mainly wanted to access the chain plates and assess the damage.
I thought you might be amused at the sketch I did yesterday for the thru hulls, not sure why I wrote port on it?
I took a snap of the shanty town the construction site wrokers live in, just up the hill here. Apparently they come from Bangladesh, and before they build the shopping mall, the build their little village out of corrugated iron and shipping containers.
The area all around the ship yard is basically jungle/rain forest, it really feels like I’m in a Tarzan movie when I’m waiting for the taxi up here at night. You hear the strangest sounds coming from the trees.
Below you can see the grinding is moving along, the white-ish circles are blisters that have been repaired before, mostly quite successfully,
A closer look at one of the popped blisters shows it has penetrated a few layers of the matt fibreglass, which is the layer under the gelcoat, this still isn’t of much concern as it’s not structural, and relatively isolated, but it will need grinding out, then rebuilding with new layers of fiberglass
There is an isolated blister on the bow, which when popped, shows dry, fresh fiberglass. This points to a lay up problem, when the boat was build, the builders didn’t get the polyester resin into the glass properly, this is right in the bow and would have been a difficult area to work in. Interestingly, Lady Stardust had a similar problem in almost exactly the same place.
