Month: September 2026

2026-09-05 – Sanding and the Transom

Mark Austen Refurbishment, Repairs

I am not a fan of sanding, never have been but I realise that it is a necessary part of making just about anything in wood. This is a common sentiment amongst makers although I do know one or two who quite enjoy it.

Before the hull is turned back up the right way, I have to sand the hull under the waterline and complete the copper epoxy work.

I won’t bore you with the details, suffice it to say that this is not a difficult or time consuming task as this is just to provide a key for the next coat. So, lightly sanding is the requirement, not removal of material. Mind you there were one or two places that needed to be sanded away a little harder, but on the whole this one side took two or three hours to get to the stage you see here. Sanded, swept, air blasted and wiped with a cloth soaked in Acetone. I will need to go over a few spots where the epoxy is still shiny by hand but I’ll do that after I’ve sanded the other side.

Next task, the transom.

Sanded, coated with neat epoxy, fibreglass laid on and then coated with epoxy. I didn’t get the sanding quite right on the far side, the copper epoxy will protrude above the white boot top, but I’m not going to try and fix what is a cosmetic error now.

Second coat, applied with a brush and not a roller so that I don’t need to mix up as much epoxy. Although the rollers are only 4″ long, they really soak up a lot of epoxy which is then wasted.

Note the rubber glove over the stern navigation light to stop drops of epoxy dripping on it !!

Time for a cup of tea.

Having taken a break I started sanding the second side of the hull and was surprised to find that it took around half the time for the first side. Not sure why.

I marked the location of the upper edge of the boot top and then taped it.

This was carried around the transom.

The remainder of the touching up sanding I’ll do tomorrow and then decided whether or not to add the final two copper epoxy coats to the underwater hull or wait until next weekend.

Time for a cup of tea.

2026-08-31 – Affixing the Skeg

Mark Austen Repairs

The next task on the list is to put the skeg in place, which is a little more difficult since it needs to be held in place whilst the epoxy cures. The new cover arrangement suits this quite well for two reasons.

Firstly, the cover is kept away from the centreline far enough that the skeg does not touch either the cover or the ladder that is holding it up and the second it that I can use the ladder to hold braces for the skeg.

The recently applied epoxy was sanded to give a good key.

As was the epoxy around the bottom of the skeg, for the same reason.

Just resting the skeg in place shows that it is slightly canted over to the left looking at it from behind and that meant I had to brace it to place it upright.

Two cramps and two pieces of wood did the trick. The wood was clamped to the ladder as can be seen here.

Now the skeg is vertical.

The underside of the skeg was given a coat of neat epoxy…

…before being slathered with a lot of thickened epoxy.

The skeg was pressed down onto the keel in the correct place and the braces adjusted to make it vertical again. One of them had to be removed temporarily so that I could get the skeg into the correct position.

Peel ply was applied over the squeeze out to form a nice fillet.

I used my fingers to shape the fillet, suitably covered in nitrile gloves I hasten to add.

The forward end was pressed down and another piece of wood used to stop it from lifting.

But it didn’t stop the front end of the skeg from slipping sideways, so I used two pieces to keep it in the right place.

I spent some time sighting along the length of the skeg to ensure that it was aligned correctly. The grain of the wood did make this a little awkward since that made it look as though the skeg were pointing a little to one side, but when viewed from the front of the boat it was seen to be correct.

A few hours later the weather stopped being inclement and I removed the cover and the makeshift supports.

Here is the skeg pretty well fixed in place. The epoxy is hard enough that I can’t score it with a fingernail, the usual way to see if the epoxy is still green, but I won’t remove the peel ply until tomorrow.

A good day’s work.

Time for a cup of tea.