On Fri, 31 Oct 2014 21:15:44 -0500, Richard
wrote:

On 10/31/2014 8:08 PM, John B. Slocomb wrote:

This message has been snipped some - just to show that the technology
still works!

Some people think a chalky boat is the epitome of success - because
it takes no effort to maintain. And they are perfectly right -
for them.

Way back in the days of wooden boats I read an article in one of the
U.S. magazines extolling topside paints that chalked easily. The
writer said that they really hade the boot look good, longer, as when
you scrubbed the topsides mid season the chalkiness scrubbed off
taking the dirt and crud with it.

The Maine lobster fishermen usually hauled once during the season and
one chap came up with an ingenious scheme. They, of course, beached
the boats, propped up with sticks and this guy, as soon as the tide
started going out and the sticks started taking some weight started
spraying the hull with Clorox from one of those back mounted spray
tanks. Just walked round and round spraying. When the tide was pretty
well all the way out he'd scrub the hull with a "straw Broom" and all
the weeds and shell fish would fall off. He clamed that as he didn't
have to scrape, the bottom paint wasn't damaged so he didn't have top
re-paint half way through the season :-)


Now that's a sailor!


Fisherman actually :-) When I met the guy he was pulling 100 pots a
day, so he had 200 lobster pots in the water. I suspect that other
then not liking to scrape barnacles he was also in a hurry to get back
in the water as those lobster pots needed hauling :-)

Want to know the easiest way to do something?
Put a smart lazy man on the job.

The forty footer I owned, for some reason, had additional jib tracks
added inboard of the original tracks on the gunnels. Apparently done
by the previous owner who simply drilled holes through the deck and
bolted them down. Needless to say, the holes leaked and the plywood
core rutted in two six foot strips down the side decks, toward the
forward end of the cockpit. I finally used a 4" hand grinder and
sliced the fiberglass deck surface and removed two six foot long by
about 18 inch wide sections. The plywood had turned into a black mush.
I cleaned it out back to solid ply thinking that I could simply get
some more plywood of the same thickness to "inlay". It turned out that
the original plywood was some strange dimension that couldn't be
duplicated and I ended up with a horrible job of gluing down a layer
of ply, then building it up with epoxy filler and gluing the original
deck sections back on top. A horrible mess trying to get the whole job
smooth and fair with the old deck.


Oh man. I feel your pain.


A friend is involved with the Sea Scouts and sometimes get boats
donated. One Catalina ancient 27 came in and the entire foredeck was
spongy. He asked what it would cost to have it fixed.
Well, traditional methods - more than the boat was worth - for sure.

We tried something different.
You know how that polyurethane Gorilla Glue foams up from moisture?
We drilled some holes in the under side of the deck, poked plastic
tubing down the length of the deck and squirted in 6 bottles of glue -
one at a time. Squirt a bunch of glue and pull the hose out.
Let it expand for a day or two(!). Then run another tube in as far
as it will go and squirt in more glue.

Didn't plug the holes or anything, just to let it relieve pressure.
Put buckets under the drains and let it cook.

I had a friend that tried to the same thing with that two part foam -
mix the two parts and it foams up to ten or 20 times the volume of the
liquid.

He'd decided that his rudder wasn't big enough so he made a new one.
Made a mold and laminated the two sides and glued them together, made
a new shaft and all. Came over to get me to help. The scheme was that
we would assemble the thing, stand it up straight and pour the mix in
the top and it would expand and fill the hollow rudder and he could
trim off the top and Viola! A new rudder.

Unfortunately the stuff doesn't expand smoothly and progressively. It
goes Whoosh and all expands at once and it awful sticky so it sticks
to everything it comes in contact with. We ended up with a rudder that
was half full of foam and twice the size it started.

The next day he told me that after some thought he had decided that a
larger rudder might be detrimental when the wind got up :-)

A couple of weeks later the deck was solid as a rock again.
The under side looked like hell.

He didn't want to do anything but trim the foam off flush with a knife.
He didn't want to mislead a buyer as to the condition of the boat.

It sold soon after. Not much, but income for the Scouts.
It's still sailing.


A lot of work?
Maybe.

But a job that doesn't have to be reworked all the time is worth the
extra expense and effort.
At least that's how I feel.

It all depends on your personal standards...

--
Cheers,

John B.