Year: 2026

With the forecast set to be wet but not cold for the next two or three days, I decided that one of the things that I needed to get done was the painting of the coachroof where the solar panel is sited. Without this being done, the panel and through deck fittings cannot be fitted. But the paint needs temperatures that are not close to freezing, which is forecast for next week.

I removed a cleat from the coachrood , scraped off loose paint and sanded, then cleaned the surface before masking the edges and slapping on a coat of anti-slip deck paint. I’m in the last 20% of the last tin I have of this paint which I use on Naiad as well and will be using on Shoal Waters, so ordering some more of this has become necessary.

Shoal Waters will need at least two coats all over as the current coating is flaking off and well worn in places. Following Charles’ methodology I’ll scrape off the loose bits, sand and then paint over what stays stuck on.

Last night I drilled the pilot holes for the screws in the top runner and one of the ends split when I screwed it to the case side, requiring some glueing and screwing to repair. You can just about see the thin line of the split from the edge of the runner along the grain to the screw hole. At this point I have squeezed wood glue down the split from both sides and screwed it together and cleaned up the squeeze out. Once the runner is glued to the case side I’ll remove the screw. I could have used a cramp for this, but clamping on a curved wedge-shaped surface is not ideal.

This is the screw from the top. It will be necessary for remove it since it will prevent sanding in the future and the glue will make it unnecessary. The hole will be filled with an epoxy filler.

Later, after work, I put a second coat of anti-slip deck paint on the port side of the coachroof, the prior coat having dried nicely, and then attacked the remaining portion of the case side and runner that are still in situ.

I removed the first 30 cm or so to start with. The two runners that are left on the keel are too wide for the multitool blades I have to penetrate so I had to cut them off one at a time. Here you can see the plywood that protrudes into the keel slot coming away from the keel.

I had time to do some more and this is as far as I reached before deciding that it was time to stop. At this point I need to clean up the mess, remove the remaining sliver of runner from the keel, and then turn around and work on the remainder of the runners from the aft. So, a good place to halt for the day.

The long, narrow piece to the left of the keel by the multi-tool is the plywood from the slot. It came away fairly cleanly and the slot will only need a little cleaning up to remove any glue that stayed on the slot rather than come off with the plywood.

Time for a cup of tea.

With the current wet and windy weather, I can not say that I am particularly enthused to work on Shoal Waters today, but given my target of working on something for Shoal Waters every day, no matter how small, I resolved to get out there and do something.

This was the first something, the top runner. I unclamped it, removed the wooden batten and the baking paper and cleaned up the edges where the meniscus had formed. The result is pretty good.

The next small task was to mount the clock and barometer. This was a little fiddly as the bronze screws are 3/4″ and I had to hold them with a pair of long-nosed pliers to be able to screw them in the pilot holes which needed to be drilled with a bit extension. Still, the job got done and the result is very nice.

The barometer seems to be working quite well, it tracked the pressure shown on the weather station and that is good enough. When sailing you are mostly concerned with the rate of change of pressure and how high or low it was before the change started rather than the absolute pressure value.

Time for a cup of tea.

As we are having warmish weather currently, around 10º Celsius, I decided that one of the day’s tasks would be the sanding and varnishing of the mounting board in the cabin, the one upon which the clock and barometer will be mounted. I decided this yesterday after hearing the weather forecast and this morning set to with sandpaper and varnish to get the job done. The board already had two coats of new varnish but the last one didn’t go on very well. It’s a condition known as Crawling Varnish and I’ve come across it before when varnishing Naiad.

The solution is simple. Sand it well and try again.

Prevention in this case is also simple. Sand between coats, making sure that the surface is not too shiny and is free from grease.

It was that last one that got me. I thought that since the varnish had been applied less than 24 hours earlier, it would still be chemically active and the new coat would bond to the previous coat. I was wrong ! It was too shiny and smooth.

I also worked on the top runner. One of the sides of the runner, the one that will be glued and screwed to the case side, has been scraped and sanded away to remove the soft wood. If left as is this would form a potential water trap, something I am very keen to avoid, so I need to fill the wood so that it will fit flush against the side.

I clamped a long flat piece of wood to the side of the runner with a length of baking paper between the two to prevent unwanted adhesion. The gaps left by the wood removal were then filled epoxy slightly thickened with low density filler. The epoxy was intentionally quite runny despite the filler such that it flowed into the gaps.

Once the epoxy has cured I shall remove the clamps, wood and baking paper, tidy up any splotches and the runner should be ready at that point to be fixed to the case side without fear of trapping any water in the future. This is probably taking things to an extreme, but it isn’t going to hurt.

The next small task I undertook was to start work on removing the remains of the port side of the centerplate case from the stern block. This was only a small area but the access is from the cockpit in which it is too cramped to kneel. The work has to be done whilst half sitting on the thwart and half crouching down to reach the work area.

This is not completed yet, there is still some plywood attached to the aft block but I cannot get at the plywood using the multi-tool and have to use a sharp chisel. Even then it is not an easy job.

However, I did manage to get all three runners removed to the port of the block almost down to top of the keel. I say almost since there seems to be a thin piece of wood laid on top of the keel and under at least one of the runners. This will have to be removed with some careful chisel work as well, so I’ll leave it for the moment and make the remainder of the removal a separate task.

Once again, most of the wood removed was damp and lacked much structural integrity, however, from what I can see of the keel it has not extended to that timber.

Time for a cup of tea.

Today’s task was to put the tabernacle back into position with sufficient sealant to prevent water from getting down the bolt holes.

The first part of this exercise was to chamfer the bolt holes a little so as to allow the butyl tape to squeeze into the hole.

The tape itself was wound around the thread on the bolt as shown. As the nuts are tightened up the tape is pushed down into the chamfer creating a very tight seal.

I also used an exterior grade sealant on the deck so that the entire thing is sealed. It is important not to use an adhesive sealant here as that would make getting the tabernacle off again very difficult. The purpose of the sealant here is just to prevent water ingress. As for the spots of sealant splattered on the deck, I’ll pull those off once the sealant has dried.

From the inside the bolts and nuts are easily tightened up with the larger recesses allowing better access to the nuts.

It is very important when using butyl tape in this manner that once the bolts are located in the holes that they are not rotated as this has the unwanted effect of stripping the tape away from the thread. Instead the bolts must be drawn directly down into the hole by tightening the nuts, even it this is the more difficult option, as it was in this case. It would have been easier to attach a vice grip to each nut in turn and then tighten the bolt from the outside.

I’ll need to sand the backing board a little and then add another coat of varnish as the last coat of varnish has not covered very well, but since it is now dark outside, that is a task for tomorrow. Once that has been done and the varnish has dried, I’ll put the clock and barometer onto the board.

Time for a cup of tea.

The first task of the day was to get the top runner underway since that needs to be left alone for several hours. So I made a start before breakfast.

I marked the line that followed the slope of the runner on the new pieces, cutting off the excess with the bandsaw making sure to stay on the waste side of the pencil line. Then I used the belt sander to sand down to the line. The other three sides were also sanded such that the extension piece is fair with the old wood.

The next task for the runner was to remove all the soft wood which I did using a scraper to start followed with 80 grit sandpaper. In the image above the edge of the runner shown should be square and as you can see, it is not. I presume that this is rot in the wood but since there doesn’t seem to be any organic matter other than the wood, I’m not sure. Still, all the loose wood had to go.

What came off after the scraping and sanding can only be described as wood dust, a very dry powder.

I mixed up 30ml of Clear Penetrating Epoxy Sealer (CPES) and flooded the damaged surface of the runner until the sealer stopped being readily absorbed. The sanded areas absorbed the sealer like a sponge and sat on the surface of the rest of the wood, soaking in slowly. After a few applications the damaged areas stopped soaking up the sealer quickly and I left the runner on the baking paper to left the remaining sealer soak in as much as possible.

I had a little of the mixed sealer left and some of that was used to seal the wooden strip under the tabernacle as this was just bare wood after the deck had been scraped of old sealant and sanded.

I still had some CPES left and put that on the sampson post, just to use it up. There’s no real need to seal the sampson post, but it will not hurt it and it uses up the CPES that would otherwise be wasted.

After an hour or so the runner was placed on the Rayburn such that the warmth would aid the CPES cure process

Next up is the removal of the remainder of the port centerplate case side. The majority of the side and the easiest has been removed and what remains is the three bottom runners and the plywood that protrudes into the keel.

The Fairey Falcon comes with one runner on each side that is glued to the plywood case sides and the keel and Charles Stock added a second on alongside this, and a third on top. The top one was screwed and glued to the first and the second was glued to the side of the first and also glued and screwed into the keel. The width of the two lower runners is more than the length of the multi-tool blades so the top one was removed first allowing me to remove the two lower ones one at a time.

The uppermost runner was a bit more difficult than the starboard side as there are more screws holding the it to the lower runner and they are a little more deeply set making them not so easy to spot. The quickest way is to run the multi-tool blade under the uppermost runner, cutting in about 10 mm along the glue line, and note where is doesn’t cut into the wood. A chisel is used to remove the wood around this spot revealing the screw which is then removed.

The drawback of this is that the multi-tool blade becomes blunted very quickly! It’s a blade for wood, not metal.

This looks like a right mess at first glance. It is the remains of the uppermost runner at the stern of the case which seems to be made of Mahogany whereas the rest of that runner seems to be Ash. You can see the colour difference at the bottom of the photo. There is a dark section of wood with two lighter brown pieces beside it and below those in the photo the wood turns a light brown, almost beige. This is the Ash.

All the Mahogany in this area with the exception of the two mid-brown pieces, is wet and fibrous indicating that this has been wet for a long time, like the plywood of the case sides. It is still wet as there is nowhere for the water to get out. Paint on the outer parts and glued plywood on the inner sides.

I noted that this was also the case for the starboard side.

This is the starboard side cleaned up and from the cockpit, but you can see that the wood is a dark brown and I noted in the post at the time that it was wet.

Now, the question in my mind at this time is whether the water has got in from the inside of the centerplate case as is it has for the damaged plywood, or whether the water has got in from the outside, namely the cockpit. The footwell does collect water, mostly fresh from rain, so this is not so strange as it might sound.

A couple of hours of work and the port side looks like this. I was pretty tired at this point and just left everything as it was, I didn’t have the energy to clean it all up. I’ll do that later. Still, the uppermost of the runners has been removed in the cabin area leaving just the section that is in the cockpit. After cleaning up the mess removing the remainder of the uppermost runner will be the next task.

After that, the lower runners will be removed and the top of the keel cleaned up. Finally, the areas around the forward and aft centerplate case blocks will be worked on and the inside faces of the slot sanded.

I shall also use the new heater to warm the cabin up with warm/hot air and block the companionway hatch so that the only way out for the warm air is under the bridge deck and into the cockpit and through the slot in the keel. This will help dry out the wet sections of the keel and aft block in preparation for the new case sides to be glued in place.

But that’s a few weeks away yet.

Time for a cup of tea.

I had big plans for today, get the case top runner done, mount the tabernacle, fit the retaining bolts for the hatch…I figured that these would take me most of the day and if I had any time left over, then I still have many items on my to do list.

First up was the top runner which needs to be extended like the other. This took longer than I wanted, I messed up the first one by making it too narrow, but I got it right on the second try, took the runner into the workroom and epoxied the two pieces together.

This left a fair bit of thickened epoxy left so I used some of it to fill in the block restraining holes in the previously broken upright as I want to use a stainless eye-bolt here instead as the wood that was holding the shackle in place is getting weak.

These two pieces were out into the Rayburn to keep warm. I used the fast hardener for this job, but even so, raising the temperature will make the epoxy cure faster.

I had some epoxy left over so I went out to the boat and filled in a few holes and gaps that I had marked for this very purpose and that used up most of the remaining epoxy.

So far, so good.

The next task, the tabernacle had to be put aside for the moment as I need some wider washers for the bolts. Not a problem as this is not on the critical path.

On to the next task, the bolts on the sliding hatch and here’s where I messed up. Some of the gaps that now had epoxy filling them were on the hatch runners and I couldn’t do the bolts on the hatch.

Oops!

I had a cup of tea and a think and decided that I would spend some time cleaning up the workshop, emptying the sawdust traps, and cleaning out the mess in Shoal Waters, all of which needed to be done.

So, not what I had expected to do today, but necessary tasks all the same.

Time for a cup of tea.

Before much can be done with the csae side, the top runner from the old side needed to be removed so that it may be fastened to the new side.

Using the band saw the runner was cut off the old side, being careful not to cut into the runner itself. The screws were removed, some of them were still brass although most of them were now copper, and the runner planed to remove the old and damaged plywood leaving the runner fairly well cleaned up.

There were a few problems, this section seems to have fallen away, not entirely sure why since the wood looks to be fairly clean here.

However, like the other side, there are areas in which the wood has become rotten. This will need to be dried, the loose wood and rot scraped away and then the whole area saturated with the Clear Penetrating Epoxy Sealer. Once that is done I shall fill any voids and cracks with thickened epoxy after which the runner may be attached to the new case side.

I took the time yesterday to epoxy the broken support timber since it was a fairly clean break and the repair would be easy. The result turned out to be quite acceptable, as you can see here after the timber had been cleaned up and then sanded.

One other task I decided to do today was the drilling out of the tabernacle bolt hole. This had been filled with epoxy previously as it was drilled at a slope and now needed to be drilled correctly.

This is the result and although the bolts are not fastened down, you can quite clearly see that the offenting bolt, the one on the left, is no longer at an angle.

This is how it looked before the repair.

The bolts protrude into the cabin and there is ample space to fit the nut and washer now, unlike before.

Time for a cup of tea.

The task for my tea breaks today was to shape the hatch runners and the hatch so that it can be dry fit and then taken inside to varnish.

I used a decent and quite sharp plane for this and soon had the tops of the new runners planed down to meet the existing wood.

Some of the varnish on the old runners was planed off as part of getting everything flat, but this will be replaced one the weather warms up.

The port side needed a lot more planing down, but less varnish needed to be removed to get a flat finish.

After a few adjustments with the plane and a chisel, I had the hatch moving freely on the runners. Here is it completely opened…

…and completely closed here.

Once the old and new runners have been varnished I shall put a thin coat of beeswax on each runner to reduce the friction and to reduce the wear caused by sliding two pieces of wood over each other. I’ll need to be a bit careful about this as too much will mean getting beeswax over your hands when sailing.

A couple of pieces came off the hatch during the fitting, one was an existing repair where the glue had cracked and the other, the thin piece you a see here, came off as the glue and the varnish had cracked, and the brass panel pins had turned to copper.

It looks as though this happened some while ago that there is water damage to the wood in the joint.

No matter, both pieces will be put back in place with epoxy. The original repair requires some gaps to be filled but one pump of thickened epoxy will be too much for just that repair, so I’ll use some of the remainder for the trim piece.

Once these pieces have been repaired I’ll need to take some fairly aggressive sandpaper to the varnish as there are loads of layers and water has gotten under and started to lift it in places. Some parts of the build up are so thick that they are fouling the runners still so it has all got to be sanded down, in places back to the bare wood.

Most of this is due to the previous owners not taking the hatch off for the annual revarnish. Instead the varnish was applied with the hatch in situ. How do I know this? Because on the undersides of the side runners on the hatch show drips and large blobs of varnish showing that the varnish was applied upwards and the varnish has sagged due to gravity. ln some of the harder to reach parts show little or no varnish.

Here’s an example. This is the underneath part of the side of the hatch. You can see where the varnish has dripped down the side and then under the hatch and also areas of the wood that have little or no varnish at all.

No matter, it is easily sorted out and in future I just have to remember that the hatch needs to be removed to get at the awkward parts and not varnished willy-nilly.

After work I turned my attention to the port side of the centerplate case. This as got to go.

It took a bit of effort since I could not kneel down on the port side of the cabin as I could on the starboard side due to the lockers, but I managed to get it all cut off. It is not cut down as far as the keel, I decided that since access was a bit restricted I should cut the side just above the runners that sit on top of the keel and then I would have a lot more access to remove the runners down to the keel.

I was pleased to have done the wiring and lighting by this stage since doing this without the cabin light would have been quite awkward. Probably not impossible with a good torch, but a lot more troublesome.

Not only was the access to the aft part of the side more restricted than in the cabin, but there was a locker and a stronger upright in the way.

The reason for this is that the block for the centerplate uphaul is attached to the upright and therefore it has been braced to resist the force.

With the side now out of the boat I can set about removing the top runner of the side and clean it up before putting it onto the new centerplate side that is ready to be completed.

The upright with teh block broke during the removal, so I need to decide whether to repair it or replace it when I reassemble the case inside the boat.

For now, I’ve removed the block and will put the pieces aside and the next time I do any epoxy work I’ll stick the pieces back together and see how it looks once that is done. Both this upright and the one on the other side will need some modification before being refitted. That is a job for another day in the future.

A successful day as far as Shoal Waters goes and despite the cold start to the day, the trips outside during tea breaks have been very pleasant due to the sunshine and calm conditions. The pleasant and dry condition mean that each small task I undertook during each break was carried out quickly and without having to return inside every five minutes to warm up my hands, as was the case during last weekend.

Time for a cup of tea.

With the warm weather continuing as forecast, I inspected the epoxy first thing and found that it was well cured. Probably not full strength but strong enough for me to get on with the task.

I removed the cramps and visually inspected the new runner edges. They look to be good but there are a few spots that will need further attention. The main problem is that the hatch did not rest entirely on the top of the runners but instead the bolts inserted through the sides of the hatch and located into the slot fouled the top and bottom of the slot. This wore away the slot, and hence the new pieces, but also raised the hatch up off the runners in places where the bolt fouled the bottom of the slot.

I have cleaned up the underside of the hatch where it should contact the runners and remove the bolts as I suspect that these were not in the correct position to run in the slot properly.

I used a pull-saw to trim the deliberately long new runners back to the correct length ready for the wood to be planed. I shall plane the new wood to be flat on the top and to match the top of the old wood and then offer up the hatch to see what needs to be trimmed away after that.

I took the time to remove the peel ply from the epoxy on the coachroof. You can see that the epoxy is partly over the paint. This will be removed with a sander before the coachroof is painted. The painting will have to wait for another warmer spell.

I decided to fill one of the bolts holes through the deck for the tabernacle with some of the thickened epoxy. This is the hole that is canted aft slightly and now that I have opened up the space for the nut in the cabin, this hole needs to be redrilled to be perpendicular to the deck.

However, it is not very easy to drill an existing hole at a different angle and in my experience the best way to achieve this is to fill in the hole and try again. Normally I would glue in a length of dowel that fills the hole completely and then carefully make the new hole. In this case, since I had spare epoxy, I just decided to use the epoxy instead.

Time for a cup of tea.

The forecast temperature for today was 11º Celsius, quite a difference from the -10º Celsius we had a week ago, but the warm spell is just forecast to last two days and I determined to get some of the exterior epoxy work done. I took multiple tea breaks and got to work.

The first thing I did when I saw the forecast on Saturday was to buy this portable diesel heater which was delivered yesterday. The idea is to pump warm air into the cabin and thereby heat up the decking and coachroof from underneath. Hopefully this will allow the epoxy on the outside to cure in a reasonable time. The heater will be used for other purposes, but I bought it sooner than I expected for this job.

Then it was on with the epoxy. These are the new runner pieces with some spacers that were used to make sure that the slot itself is at least the correct size.

It took some time but this is the result. For this part of the repairs I used the fast hardener as the temperature is reduced, rather than the slow hardener I’ve been using to give me a longer pot life.

The new runners and the old were coated with neat epoxy and then a layer of thickened epoxy was spread on one side of the new runners. These were put into position with the spacers and clamped. The excess epoxy was scrapped off as much as possible.

The spacers were removed and a thin mixing stick with a square end was used to scrape any epoxy squeeze out from inside the slot. The new runner piece is bigger than required which will allow me to use a plane to trim back the wood to match the old runners. At least that is the idea.

I made enough epoxy to coat several other areas on the coachroof where bare wood was showing.

Peel ply tape covered the layer of epoxy so that I can easily remove the amine blush, a waxy layer that forms on the surface of this epoxy when curing.

Now I shall wait until the epoxy is cured before carrying on.

Time for a cup of tea.