Ever wonder what's under the cabin sole?

More fun with the demo of the aft cabin. While ripping out the rotten cabin side and partitions, I noticed some debris at the edges of the cabin sole.

 So I decided that it might be best to take it up and take a look....
The wood laying across the stringers are the teak beams they NAILED into the tops of the stringers. No effort was made to seal the nail holes in the stringer tops. All they needed to do was place a wet tab of mat on top of the stringer before setting the beam. That would have gone a long way towards sealing the point of entry of the nails.











Water being water it would much prefer to wiggle its way down a nail than to run off. I made a rectangular cutout in the stringer top in the area that was under one of the beams. Guess what, it was all rotten inside. The really amazing part is that the boat has been out of the weather for 4 months at this point and it was still very wet inside the stringer. I will post another blog on the stringer.

More shots showing how well they cleaned up before laying the cabin floor. I found a soda bottle and pieces of news paper from Taiwan circa 1978 when the boat was built.

 Luckily the pressure washer was able remove all the old saw dust and debris as well as most of the cheap latex paint.

Leaking Windows

Ever wonder how much damage a little leak can do or how far the rot goes? I figured from the funky smell that there was mold growing under the surface of the aft cabin sides.
 Looked OK on the surface..

This picture was taken during the demo work in the aft cabin. The bulkhead between the cabin and the head has been removed as well as the stupid bathtub!












 Here is the same area with the Formica and top
layer of plywood removed. The builder used 4 molds (hull, deck, trunk cabin and flybridge ) to put the boat together. You can see the up-turned flange at the inside edge of the deck. The trunk cabin sat on the deck outside of this flange. Unfortunately they did not glass the inside surface of the plywood that was bonded to the fiberglass cabin sides, so it rotted from the inside.
I was able to remove most of the rotten plywood with a shop vac....

Hers is a view of the port side window area, again with the top layer of plywood removed.

 So those window leaks are a much bigger problem that one might think. I can't wait till I rip the walls out in the main cabin...

Here are pictures of the ramp from the shop up to the boat. 2 X 4 frame with 5/8 Ply and landscape
timbers for posts.

                                                 
                                                    The tent frame over her.

 You can see the front wall of the workshop at the left edge of this picture.





I was lucky and found the better part of a large tent frame in a junk yard. I used 1-5/8" commercial fence piping to complete it. It is 19' at the peak, 18' wide and 50' long. It has rained nearly everyday this month, man am I glad I built that frame

I have started this blog to record the progress, design ideas and ... of the rebuilding of the MV Phoenix. We took ownership of her late last year. After moving her from the yard in Fort Lauderdale to Palm Beach Gardens we had her trucked out her present location on our property. One of the many advantages of having 5 acres to work with.