Started Removing Aft Deck

Worked a few hours this afternoon removing the aft railings and teak cap rail in preparation for removing the aft decks.

Here you can see the railings and the teak cap rail are gone on the Starboard side and stern. Still have the cap rail to remove on the port side. I was thinking that they had glassed an angle into the hull at the top of the bulwark and another angle on the deck at the same height. Then they would over lap the two and screw and glue the joint together with 5200.

Well not quite, What they did was to just end the hull at the top of the bulwark then glass in a piece of 3/4" by 2" or so piece of wood. I have labeled the 3 pieces in this picture. The they did form an angle in the deck mold which they screwed to the wood they had glassed in. Not really strong but better for me. Most of the screws just pulled right through the glass work.





My plan is to remove the deck structure and the stringer they glassed in. Then I will taper the hull down near the top edge and temporarily attach a piece of Formica faced plywood to the outside of the hull. I can use this piece as a form to raise the top edge of the hull by adding more layers of glass that would lap the old glass and rise up to the new level. I think I will form an angle at that top edge to fasten the deck to. After building the deck/cabin top using cold molded plywood structure I can glass the top of the deck right down onto the new raised hull sides. Hopefully it will all make sense when you see the work in progress.

Did some more work in the front port area of the aft cabin too. I removed the sliding door into the salon and a silly little door from the aft cabin into the engine room. Great idea if you were an midget and the water lift muffler was not right in the way. I will splice in a piece of plywood to fill the hole left by the door into the engine room. This is also where I will be adding the bulkhead to extend the engine room space aft to the Stuffing box. I mentioned this in my last post. Again it will be clear when I have it done.

Well that's it for now. I have some outside work for tomorrow and Tuesday so I will not be back to work on this until Thursday.