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.