Taking the plunge on refit.

[curifin]

Stripped the Turtle - Sail No: 4526. Going to refit, repaint, rechristen.

Stripping and grinding revealed some interesting things about 4526.... Looks like it was holed in the past. Good repair, port side front. Also, I had not asked earlier, but it was marked "Texas 2000 K.C." - Who's boat was this - looks like it sailed the TX 200 ? Also, a few things, the interior looks like it was epoxied heavily over.... the stringers have some localized rot, but not much.... the transom was redrilled for new gudgeons but the wood is sound, planning on glassing a reinforcing piece of marine grade plywood and using the same holes..... The entire inside looks like it had glasswork reinforcement around the edges.... there are plywood pieces glassed in under the thwarts... I ground them back to good glass but they are structurally sound.... It also looks like someone tabbed some glass along the bow where the stemhead is.... it seems really strong.... There is a large plywood insert in the middle of the cuddy.... the cuddy has stiffeners, look like half round noodles but after drilling they appear to be wood, much rotted around screws but probing with a steel sticker seems solid....

I am grinding out the edge between the trunk and the hull, going to fillet it unless someone tells me this is bad..... It is plenty strong but a total beyatch to keep clean... I am thinking a nice rounded fillet will make it easier.

The top of the cuddy has a 1/4" rebar span, it was rusting through... ground it out and will glass over. The wood strip under the port and starboard rail is sound, but the screw holes are wallowed out... will redrill and put dowels in to hold new SS screws.

There are a TON of holes in the keelson..... some filled with caulk (YUK)... drilling them all out and glassing back over them.... Am leaving most of the hardware in place, the P.O. was a much better racer than me so why downgrade.....

Interesting that the boat flexes a LOT with the thwarts removed, every time I mount the boat and put my weight on the side it separates along the top.... I through drilled the thwart mounts for SS screws and nuts because the old screws were stripped, presumably that will prevent flexing.

I am impressed with how well a boat from 1970 has held up... Wow. The gelcoat is actually in really good condition... I would not paint it except I am stripping everything down anyway... so why not... planning on using interlux please let me know your expert recommendations. I am thinking I will keep the two tone, and paint "bilg" area with some tough epoxy two part and paint benches and topsides with brightsides....

[K.C. Walker]

I did a refit on my 74 DaySailer 1 some years ago now. As you say, it's amazing how well these boats hold up. Mine was a bit soft and the stringers were totally rotten so I stiffened up the bilge area with a foam core. It made a huge difference. My boat now feels like a well put together boat.

I ground out around the centerboard trunk both inside and outside of the hull and glassed back in with a good size fillet on the interior. Mine had stress cracks that I wanted to totally grind out. And yes, a nice large rounded fillet does make it easier to sponge out.

I completely faired below the waterline and put on an epoxy barrier coat. However, the topsides gelcoat still looked good. Just this year, I decided that it had faded enough and had enough gouges that I would do something about it. At first I thought I would paint. However, the more I looked at it the more I decided I would touch up the gouges and compound the boat. It came out really well and I figure I have at least another 10 years before I need to do anything serious, like buff it out again.

If you do paint the topsides, I would highly recommend going with the best quality two-part paint. If you go with the same color, even if you do get a gouge, it won't show that much. The amount of work it takes to do good prep work and getting ready for paint, in my opinion it's not worth going with Brightside. The two-part urethane paints just hold up so much better.

I used a water-based two-part epoxy paint in the bilge and it has held up very well. I put on one coat, but had enough for two coats +. After one coat it looked good enough so I saved the second coat for later. I'm still waiting. After four years it still looks good. The good thing about epoxy paint in the bilge is that it holds up to standing water.

It sounds like you're pretty much on the right track. Keep us posted.

[curifin]

Thanks for the input. I think will go with two part. I spent all day grinding and cleaning. Seems like the painting will really be the end of a long prep process and after all of that I want the toughest paint I can get. What water based epoxy did you use. What is in mine now is freaking great. Pinkish with grey flecks you literally have to grind or heavily sand it to get it off..... I am hoping to find something equally robust. I mainly want to do the top sides to hide some ugly patchwork.... Great advice on same color will do that for sure....

I am up in the air on grinding the stringers out..... It looks to me like the real strength in them anyway would be from the geometric shape of the glass holding them in. Seems like whatever wood I would use would be more flexible than the glass but that can't be right given that everyone redoes the stringers.... Heck maybe I should grind me out and replace them.

The YouTube stuff from the boat works guy is very good and entertaining. Your comment and that is leaning me way over towards a two part paint... I will look over your foam core project again but man that looks like a ton of work

[jeadstx]

Don't know what the Texas 2000 K.C. means. My DS2 is the only DS that has been on the Tx200. Might be that the yrear 2000 was the last time major work was done on the boat.

John

[K.C. Walker]

The water-borne epoxy I used was PPG Aquapon. It's an industrial paint that I bought from Kirby Paints out of New Bedford. There fine to deal with over the phone and will ship it. I found out about it from the owner of Forte Carbon Fiber. They used it on their factory floor and he liked it so much he's been using it as bilge paint.

The problem with leaving the rotted stringers is that they probably are holding water. If you know they are dry, no problem. I'm sure that you're right about the structure being just as strong without the wood. If they are soggy, as mine were, it can lead to blistering and hydrolyzed fiberglass. Definitely not a good thing! I cut mine out by setting an old skill saw blade shallow. Yes it trashes the blade. It does however make less to grind out.

The core that I put in was definitely an extreme repair.

[curifin]

Good point.... I just don't want to have to fool with vacuum bagging and all that.... Not to mention grinding out the thwart bracing.... The hull shape looks good. I may spot check for wet stringers and if they are okay just add some PVC stringer from the thwarts back. The boat seems fairly stiff to me.

I uploaded some pics to my gallery - how do I link them in a post...

[GreenLake]

Posting images from the Gallery there's a "Gallery" button in the editor when you compose a post.Try it.

Unless you want to do foam over large flat areas, you don't need to do vacuum bagging. Along a narrow stringer, sand-bagging might work just as well.

To get a bit better control over the ratio of glass to resin, you could use the homemade pre-preg technique. The idea is to do the layup not in place but (in upside down order) on a sheet of plastic and to have another sheet of plastic on top. You squeeze the layout between those sheets to push extra resin out the sides. You can then trim the layup while wet to the precise width, and, still between two strips of plastic, carry it to the boat. You then peel one layer of plastic (like removing a backing tape) and flip the layup in place (after lightly wetting the area where it's supposed to go).

If you used relatively stiff plastic to do this, then it will help you get a smooth top surface when you flip the "pre preg" in place. You don't remove it until the resin has cured. but you put another layer of plastic over it with sand bags to provide some pressure to keep things in place. Unlike vacuum bagging you are not relying on that pressure to pull extra resin out of the layup, because you did that while working things between the two plastic sheets.

I've used a variation of that approach for a repair and I think it could work well for something like stringers. K.C. may have additional thoughts.

[K.C. Walker]

I'd go along with Green Lake on the stringer repair. Yes, vacuum bagging is better, if you've got the right gear, but these boats weren't built with vacuum bagging and they've held up amazingly well. I've used the reverse layup on plastic method for patches and it worked great. I had not thought about doing it between two pieces of plastic. That should work well for this application.

Hopefully you won't have to do it. However, as nasty as fiberglass grinding is, getting the stringers out and ground down didn't take that long. I did the shallow cuts on each side so that I could pull the top fiberglass off, then dug the old rotted balsa wood out with a chisel. Heck, on my stringers I could pretty much vacuum out the old balsa wood. I used 24 and 36 grit Zirconia flap discs on my angle grinder and that moves fiberglass pretty fast.

[talbot]

Questions for you experienced restorers:

Status: My 1973 DSII is currently upside down in my garage with probably 1/4 of the bottom gelcoat ground off around all the gel coat blisters. The badly beaten up keel area forward of the CB has been totally stripped and recovered with three layers of glass and epoxy. I also stripped the transom so I could see what was happening when I injected Git-rot epoxy into gaps around the old wood core.

Question 1: Is it worth taking off the rest of the bottom gel coat? I was considering adding a laminate of glass over the existing bottom, but I'm concerned that my amateur layup will result in a hull less sound than I have now (not to mention heavier). My current plan is to just run the standard Interux "interprotect" procedure using their sealing/faring/barrier system.

Question 2: I like the idea of filling the inside fillet of the CB trunk. Has anyone done that on a DSII? It's hard to get in there. I can reach through the standard inspection ports, and can also access the forward part of the trunk through my home-made battery compartment under the cuddy.

Question 3: I can't be sure what's going on inside the transom, but I have pumped everything I can from this position. I put holes in the top (now upside down) to drain water out. I will try to inject more Git Rot from the top down when the boat is flipped in the spring. Is there anything else I can do to support the transom? Is there anything I should know about the transom structure?

Question 4: How do people lift their boats? Having the boat upside down allowed me to easily reinforce the side stay chainplate area. I'm thinking I could do the same thing aft and have permanent lifting eyes. But I'm not sure where to put them. Where is the boat's balance point? I think it's near the front of the CB trunk.

Question 5: My cuddy floor is cracking forward of the mast, I think because of all the baggage we carry on camping trips, as well as a couple of times we've slept aboard. Again taking advantage of the boat upside down, I think I could reinforce that area from underneath. Anyone tried this? I'm thinking: create a flat foam-filled fiberglas stringer, goop it with 3M 5200. Use strings through the floor to pull it forward of the mast, sticky side up. When in place, use the strings to flip it over against the underside of the cuddy floor, and weight the strings to hold it in place until the 5200 sets.

[GreenLake]

Your cuddy floor on the DSII has just a narrow space between it and the hull. This would allow you to use some jury-rigged inflatable to provide the pressure for clamping your below-floor stringer until the bonding agent cures. Should yield more uniform support than strings.

As for the boding agent, why don't you use epoxy? The benefit of 5200 of having a slightly flexible bond shouldn't be what you need here.

You'll have some epoxy around anyway from making the stringer. If the stringer's still "green" (freshly cured) you wouldn't even need to sand it. You don't want the epoxy quite as runny as you had it for laminating, so either you thicken it yourself, or buy pre-mixed stuff. I usually do the latter and get System Three's Gel Magic (I usually get the caulk-gun cartridge with the self-mixing tip, but it's also available as 2 components). Once mixed (or squeezed through the mixer tip) it's non-saggy and gap-filling. You cover the stringer liberally, move it into place and then apply moderate pressure (via inflating something underneath it) and voila.

The epoxy glue has near infinite shelf-life, and you'll use it again and again. If not on your boat, then in your house. I use it instead of wood glue when I have to make a repair that will leave gaps or where clamping is difficult. That's why I usually have a cartridge or two lying around.

[GreenLake]

You may want to check out this post: http://www.daysailer.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=3785 - I was struck by the similarities to applying a hard patch.

[K.C. Walker]

Talbot,

I'll comment on question #1. If you can avoid it, I would definitely not strip the entire gelcoat. This would be a big can of worms. When I did the repair on my hull I had to approach the hydrolyzed fiberglass from both the interior and the exterior, as I had rotted stringers (DS1). If at all possible, you don't want to disturb the original hull unless it is hydrolyzed (basically rotten fiberglass). The blisters will have hydrolyzed fiberglass but normally it's a small spot for each blister. I used a drill with a countersink for most of the blisters on my boat. You want to dry out your boat as much as possible. The osmosis will have moisture in the bilge area fiberglass. If you open up the blisters either by grinding or using a countersink it helps the boat to try out. It may take a week or two or possibly longer. You want to keep washing your boat after you've opened up the blisters because you want to get all of that styrene smelling stuff out.

The good news from me is that I've had no further problems with blisters. Once I had the boat dried out, I filled all the blister divots with colloidal silica mixed in epoxy. I then did fairing (lots of it) and then an epoxy barrier coat. I also used epoxy paint on the inside. My boat spends about eight weeks at the dock in freshwater each summer.

[talbot]

Thanks. I'll consider inflatable pressure on epoxy. Remember, everything in my boat is upside down for the winter. The whole reason to do these repairs now is that gravity is on my side. I have had really bad experiences trying to reinforce things under the floor with the boat right side up.

Thanks for the warning on the gelcoat removal. The only through-hull damage that I saw was where collisions over the years had broken up the very front of the keel. That has now all been replaced. What I have is a speckling of divots in the gelcoat where I have removed blisters down to solid fiberglas.

Interlux recommends a minimum of 3 months (yes, months) for hull drying. My boat has been in the garage since August 15, so I'm getting ready to think about sealing it up. For the record, when I drilled into the transom to inject epoxy last week, I found a pocket of water. A powerboat forum I visited said that transoms really never dry out. If you are really into classic boats with wood structures, transoms are something that eventually have to be replaced. At 63, I am interpreting "eventually" to mean "after I am dead." Unless it turns out that Git-rot injections will keep me going as well.

[GreenLake]

Thanks. I'll consider inflatable pressure on epoxy. Remember, everything in my boat is upside down for the winter. The whole reason to do these repairs now is that gravity is on my side. I have had really bad experiences trying to reinforce things under the floor with the boat right side up.

With gravity reversed, you could also use sand-bagging. My suggestion about epoxy vs. 5200 remain.

How rough is the underside of the cuddy floor?

[talbot]

Pretty rough. An issue I see for the floor support is reach. I can't actually get my arms up forward of the mast to clean the surface or to position the support. I'm thinking of trying to reach up there with a brush on a cut-down broom handle. Then I thought I goop the pre-fabbed support with epoxy, nudge it into place wrong-side up, and then flip it over so the web side is against the floor. It all sounds kind of improbable, so I'm going to think about it some more.