Starting work on the repairs needed to get ready to sail.
I want to start out by a little caveat. I am on a low budget. I will cut corners to save money. If your budget allows buying all the best top of the line supplies that's great, mine doesn't, so I will tell how I proceeded with the repairs and what I used for them. I paid $2000 for the boat and trailer and everything that came with it. If worse came to worse I can sell the trailer and some parts and recoup most of that. I don't want to throw good money after bad.
The companion doors were well worn and the glue was gone. After gluing back together a little tung oil and varnish they are ready to go back in place. The tung oil and varnish can be bought right off the shelf at Menards. They stock spar polyurethane and tung oil is tung oil. Standard exterior wood glue or better yet West Marine 2 part epoxy to glue things back together and some sanding and she looks great. The teak and mahogany used in boats sometimes gets a ratty look after years of neglect but it comes out nice with a few coats of varnish. I didn't spend days getting all the old varnish off. A sand and coat and that's it.
The plywood shelves in the galley and v berth were rotting in spots so I removed them cut new plywood and reattached the some trim. I found marine plywood at Menards. $50.00 for a 4 X 8 sheet. The manufacture of the boat must have had it figured out because every piece of plywood in the boat, including the floor board can be replaced with one sheet. I with I would have stained the plywood dark but I just varnished it as is.
I removed the old shelves, traced the pattern on the plywood, drill the holes and re installed. I sealed them down with Life Caulk (more on that later). There isn't much strength to them as they mount on a 1 1/2" lip. They seem a little flimsy.
The table was not mounted so it could be in the raised position. The brackets were not in place. I found the brackets in the junk box and went to remount them and the face board was too small.
The hull was in good shape. Most of the bottom paint was gone and it was smooth. There was light rust to the keel. Again being on a low budget and not wanting too much work I wanted the easiest way to finish this. I sanded the rust spots on the keel and used a wire wheel to smooth the spots out. This may be one corner I cut that I may regret but I spotted the spots with off the shelf Rustoleum primer. A hand sanding of the hull with 80 grit paper and it was ready to paint. No going down to bare fiberglass for me. The paint used was Sea Hawk Monterrey in blue at $137 a gallon shipped. It is compatible with most paints. One gallon did the whole bottom. It was enough for 2 coats. The second coat absorbs more paint then the first so be prepared for that. The trailer pads lowered one at a time with no problem so it could be painted under them. The side pads were used to lift the boat off the front pad to paint under that. I lowered the rear pads and lifted the front pads to just get a inch of distance off the front being careful to keep the boat weight mostly on the keel.
The old wallpaper liner had been removed leaving a glue appearance on the walls. I would have liked to try a flexible cork flooring for the walls. It even comes in colors. Blue would be real nice. If it is good for floors it should be good for a boat interiors, right. At $175.00 a yard I used Rustoleum primer (left over from the keel) and Rustolem blue paint. We will see how it holds up.
And now for a commercial break. Searching for cleaning fiberglass brings a lot of suggestions but one that inconstantly came up was On and Off. This was MaryKate On and Off. At $20.00 for a small bottle I was skeptical but I bought a bottle. When it came I didn't see how it was going to go very far. Was I wrong. Applied with a small roller and rinsed off it worked miracles. In less then half the bottle the whole deck and some stains around the water line were done. It is strong and protective measures should be used but man that stuff works. Now back to our regularly schedule program.
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