Author: Mark Austen

It is a beautiful, warm day today albeit somewhat windy and I’m on annual leave for today and only working three days a week from next week until the end of the year. I hope to get a lot done.

The first task was to deal with the compression post. A couple of days ago I took it out completely.

It was screwed onto the “instrument panel”, but the screws were small and originally brass. The are also under the clock. so that had to come off.

Fortunately, the screws were not too badly decomposed and I was able to get them out meaning that I could reused the holes in the board and the post.

I constructed a new footer for the post out of Birch Plywood as you can see here. This is screwed in place and has sealant underneath. There is also a long bronze screw through the footer and into the centerplate case. The compression post in Shoal Waters serves two purposes. The first is to transfer the weight and the downward force on the mast when sailing to the centerplate case and thus to the hog. In the original Falcon dinghy, the mast was stepped directly onto the case, but with a cabin and tabernacle in the way, something has to stop the top of the cabin from being crushed.

The second purpose of the post is to hold the block through which the centerplate uphaul is threaded so that the plate can be raised and lowered from the cockpit. The new footer stops the base of the post from moving and the screws sealant securely fix the footer to the case.

The post is now fitted with two new stainless steel screws at the top.

With the bottom of the post in the new footer.

Moving on to the sampson post, I cut off the sloped end of the old post, completely removing the part that still contained the broken screws.

I then cut that same angle in the remaining part of the post so that I had a new piece with the correct slope but without the screws.

I cut off the bottom to form a piece that will be the retaining piece fo the bottom of the new post and marked out where the mortice was to go.

And then promptly cocked up the whole thing. Cutting a good mortice on a workpiece that has a slope is for the experts. That excludes me entirely.

Instead I cut four pieces of Oak and glued them around end end of the new post, with plastic sheet to stop the glue from making the whole thing one solid lump. While the glue was drying I cut a new angled piece from the old post.

Time for a cup of tea.

The new buckets arrived and I put one to use immediately.

Armed with a bucket of cold water, a stiff brush and a cloth I started cleaning up the bird sh*t.

Nice clean thwarts.

And no more droppings on the top and side of the centerplate case.

Time for a cup of tea.

Having given the glue about an hour to get sufficiently dry to allow me to continue working, I took the retaining wall thingy off the new sampson post.

This is how it will fit on the sloped section.

The old post wasn’t quite square as you can see from this photo, but that is fine as it means that I do not need to drill drain holes in the walls. If water does get into the footer, I don’t want it to stay there.

I used the messed up part as a base in the drill vice.

Putting the new piece on top means that the surface I need to drill is perpendicular to the drill bit.

The clearance holes for the screws were then easy to drill.

The wall part was drilled with clearance holes, smeared with sealant and fitted together.

But no sealant on the side that doesn’t quite fit.

Now then. What is this thing in the bows? It has a significant notch in it which suggests a way for water to drain away, and it is in front of the sampson post. I’m tempted to think that it is designed as a ledge on which the anchor chain bucket would rest with the aim of preventing the bucket from forcing its way down between the hull and the sampson post due to the weight of the chain.

I’ll investigate a bit more once I get to the stage of dry fitting the sampson post.

Time for a cup of tea.

The last task I set myself for the day was to fill in a few gaps. The two major problems with Shoal Waters are that the vast majority of the original screws were brass and that the glue was a hard glue. Over the course of 60+ years of sailing in mostly salt water the brass has decomposed by the zinc leaching out of the brass and leaving the copper behind and the glue has become brittle.

One of the things that turning the boat over a few times in the recent weeks is to crack the glue in a number of places causing gaps to appear. My solution to this was simple. Fill the the cracks with a soft sealant and to double up the screws with stainless steel ones.

The first of these was the last task of the day.

There is a bead of filler between the hog and the hull forward of the compression post and, as you can see from the photo, this has cracked.

I used a wooden spatula to fill the gap with Sikaflex and then wiped it down with a wet cloth to give a smooth finish. The excess will be sanded away when the bilge is repainted.

The other gap is in the cockpit.

And was treated in the same way.

That’s it for the day.

Time for a cup of tea.

I ordered some oak last Saturday, pretty much as soon as I had determined that the old sampson post had to be removed and had to destroy it in the process. That timber arrived this morning.

Two pieces of really nice construction grade Oak.

I could not buy a single piece the correct size or larger, not because they were not available but because the delivery cost was prohibitive. In one case the cost of the Oak was £35 with a delivery cost of £89.

Buying two smaller pieces and laminating them together was far less expensive, just £10 delivery. Much better !

I started the laminating as soon as I had unpacked the timber. It didn’t take long as I used Titebond 3 for the adhesive rather than epoxy as epoxy and Oak don’t go well together.

The timber was Planed All Round (PAR) and dead straight and square, so the glue up was easy.

Later on in the day I was able to remove the planks and cut down the timer to the correct size.

I made a test piece, the short bit of wood you can see in the photo, to make sure that the cut was correct. The two pieces I glued together were 60mm wide, which is just smaller than the hole in the deck which is 62mm or thereabouts. Once I had the test piece cut and made sure that it fitted into the hole in the deock, I cut the new sampson post.

Now I have to decide what length to make the post. Looking at the old post, you can quite clearly see the mortice (slot). Originally, this would have been completely above the deck level and the line where the orange paint ends is where the deck would have been. The post above the deck measured 8″ at this time.

Subsequently, the bottom of the post was cut shorter and the height above deck reduced to 6″. I have enough timber to make the post the same height as the original 8″, but here’s the question. Why was the post cut down? If it was because the foot was damaged or rotted for some reason, then the new post can be 8″. However, if that height of the post was too high, then making the new one 8″ may mean that I end up cutting the now one down later on when I find out why it is too high.

The clue is, I think, in the fact that the post was shortened but cutting it off at the bottom. If the post was too high, then it would have been much less trouble to just cut 2″ off the top. That would not have required the post to be removed. Just tap out the bronze pin, cut off the top with a saw, drill a new hole for the pin and done. Instead, the post was removed, the bottom cut off, then post put back in again, the lower part of the mortice, now below deck level filled to the level of the deck and the tenon cut down on the bowsprit.

My presumption is that the foot of the post had to be removed and it was not the height of the post above deck that required the adjustment.

One other possible reason for this adjustment is that the mortice as originally cut and the position of the gammon iron, through which the bowsprit extends made the bowsprit point down instead of up, following the line of the deck. It would have been harder to reposition the gammon iron than to shorten the post and move the mortice down.

Still, I think I’ll make the new sampson post 8″ and see how that goes.

The other thing I ordered was a new tarpaulin that is 5m x 3m. This is to cover the boat whilst it is in the Hay Barn. Not to keep it dry but to prevent something else.

Bird droppings. This is the top of the centerplate case and it has a lot of mess on it.

The thwarts and side decks are also liberally coated in bird sh*t and I will soon be repainting and varnishing and this sort of addition to the finish is not required.

I’ve used bungee cord and small hooks to fix it in place. For those times when I need to paint areas that are touched by the tarp, such as the topsides, I shall hook it up to the rafters a bit. Enough to keep it clear of the paintwork but still low enough to keep the birds off.

This is the anchor chain bucked which needs to be replaced. There’s one split on one side…

… and one on the opposite side. I would guess that this was caused by having to force the bucket between the hull and sampson post a few times as the sampson post could not be easily removed. So a new bucket is on its way. Now why would you need to move the bucket in and out so often?

Good question. The answer is that the chain is usually put into the bucket wet and often muddy. So, at the end of the season at the very least, you need to putt out the chain from on deck then take out the bucket and wash it out.

That neatly brings up the next topic, that of how to install the new sampson post so that not only is it watertight at the deck, but also not too difficult to get out.

The bare section of wood you can see here is the point where the foot of the sampson post was before and you can even see the remains of the two busted screws. I think that I will make something to epoxy and screw down to the hog at this point that is no wider than the bare patch, but possibly a bit longer fore and aft. In the top of this footing will be a recess into which the foot of the sampson post will locate and stop it from moving around.

If I make this fitting too wide, then any water that gets into the front of the boat will not easily get past the fitting. I need to leave a respectable gap between this and the hull for drainage.

I will need to shape the bottom of the post, but that is a small job and the result should be more than sufficient to hold the foot in place. The timber is 60mm x 40mm and I can reduce this by half at the foot.

Another task I undertook was to remove the curtains. These are threaded onto short lengths of curtain wire that have hooks at either end. These hooks locate into small screw eyes. Unfortunately, all these are steel and the hooks and eyes have rusted. So down they came. I’ll wash the curtains and make new ones where they are missing, using bungee cord instead of the curtain wire and hooks.

These are the remains of some of the eyes. The length of line came away when I pulled on up in the forepeak.

There were three up here, but only one remains in position. The screws were brass. I’ll replace these with small stainless screws. There’s netting on the other side of the forepeak and I think that also has brass screws which will need to be replaced.

Time for a cup of tea.

The next major task for Shoal Waters is another leak test and that means completing all those things that might leak, such as the pintle fitting on the transom.

The first fitting to reattach is the bobstay stem fitting. This needed three hands to get in the correct position, two to hold it and one to drill the pilot holes, so whilst Tina was about I borrowed her for a few minutes to get this in position. Then I decided that one inch no.12 screws were too short for this, so I put in the four screws that I had and ordered some one and a half inch screws.

So far, so good.

Time for a cup of tea.

Next up is the pintle fitting on the transom and this was a lot trickier. You can just see from the above photo that there is a gap in front of the pin, between the pin and the gudgeon fitting meaning that the fitting needs to have a spacer put between it and the transom to move it backwards slightly. I used some washers for this.

You can see the effect in the photo here. There is a gap between the fitting and the transom and the gap around the pin is even showing that the pin is centered . Mind you, I did have to drill out the hole as it was oval after many years of use.

Having got the adjustment done I sanded the fitting, and bedded it using butyl tape. The holes in the transom were countersunk and as well as the tape around the edge of the fitting, I also wound some tape around the bolts. This was forced into the countersunk holes as the bolt was tightened up from the inside ensuing that the whole thing is watertight.

On the inside, I put some butyl tape between the washers and the transom such that there was a watertight seal on this side of the bolt as well.

The next task I decided to work on whilst I await the arrival of the screws for the bobstay fitting is the completion of the repairs at the prow. First up in this task is to replace the rubbing strake that came away when the prow was cut back to good wood.

The hull was cleaned up and a line draw on the hull where the new piece will go. On both sides the part that came off was a short section where the rest of the batten was too short to reach the bow.

I cut two laminates of the Sapele I had left over from the Naiad rebuild and having cut them to length and planed them to width. I glued them together.

Time for a cup of tea.

After a tea break I shaped each piece to fit the gap.

The new pieces were held in place by two screws and once the dry fit was complete I moved on to the epoxy. Yes, that stuff again.

Neat epoxy was brush onto the expose wood of the hull, the ends, sides and back of each new piece. Thickened epoxy was spread onto the hull and the pieces screwed into position.

The squeeze out was removed and the new pieces left for the epoxy to cure. I used the fast hardener for these for no other reason than it wasn’t necessary to use the slow stuff. It is a beautiful warm, sunny day with virtually no wind. This was a short job so I didn’t need the extra working life of the slow hardener.

Time for a cup of tea.

The forehatch needed some work and since this will take some time due to varnish and paint drying, I decided to start it now.

The forehatch on Shoal Waters is not hinged and is held down by two bronze toggles mounted on the inside on each side of the hatch.

There is old neoprene tape stuck around the inside edge of the hatch to prevent water ingress but this has come off in places and left a very sticky mess behind. I removed the seal, needing to use a chisel in places.

I’m not sure what the bungees were for, I’m guessing that at some point there was a curtain between the two so that you could stop the daylight from shining on your face if you were trying to sleep.

Still, I brushed it down and washed it ready for the next stage.

Time for a cup of tea.

One of the things that inverting your boat does is to move all the detritus inside to one place. Time to clean it all up !

In the cabin I found acorns. It seems that one of the local squirrels decided that Shoal Waters was a good place to store these when she was upside down.

During the clean up I noticed that the base of the sampson post was loose. The bucket forward of the post is to hold the anchor chain. Unfortunately, the bucket is conical and the weight of the chain forces it down into the boat putting a lot pressure on the post.

It looks like there were two screws fixing the post to the hog but I suspect that these were brass as they are not doing anything now.

I also noticed that the base of the compression post was loose.

Here I’ve moved it and you can see that the glue that had been holding it in place has cracked. I suspect that inverting the hull has caused this and one or two other glue crack that I’ve noticed. Nothing awkward, I just need to put some bronze or stainless screws in a few places along with some new glue and that will fix the problem.

Back to the sampson post and you can see that the seal around the post and the deck isn’t, so this needs to be removed and fixed.

In the end I had to cut the post at deck level and chop away the post through the deck and king plank. There were two screws through the sides of the king plank and into the post stopping the post from lifting out. But, the screws were brass and I couldn’t get them out.

Here is the hole and you can see the remains of the screw.

Likewise, the screws in the base have snapped off, probably due to the anchor chain the the bucket pushing against the post the whole time.

Lining the pieces up is looks as though the sampson post was a little longer at one point. The mortice for the bowsprit extended below the deck and you can see on the post where the deck used to be. I think that the foot of the post rotted at some point and was cut off making the post shorter.

I suspect that the tenon on the bowsprit was full width until the post was shortened and was cut down as the mortice was not shorter being partly under the deck.

So, I’ve ordered some oak timber to make a new sampson post and I’ll put a hole through the post and the king plank with either a bolt through or a bronze pin. I’ll also make a footing for the post on the hog. This will hold the post securely in place, but allow its easy removal if required.

That’s all for today, I think…

Time for a cup of tea.

It was another beautiful day, sunny, dry and no wind. Today I hoped to get Shoal Waters onto the working trailer and back under cover for the rest of the restoration work. All I needed to get done under the waterline has now been completed and I now need to be able to work on her without her being exposed to the winter weather.

Not that it is very Autumn or Winter weather right now, more like Summer.

The first order of the day was to raise the hull up in the strops another six to eight inches or so, the intention being that she will not bump the concrete when we turn her the right way up. I used the railway sleeper block as a guide and raised her up one of those. This is the result.

You can just see on the horizon a pall of smoke rising straight up. No wind. None at all.

Here’s a shot without the boat in the way. As I said a lovely day.

Shoal Waters is quite high up in the strops right now but quite stable. The blocks are “just in case”.

Once that had been done I turned my attention to the trailer, clearing away all the stuff that has been left around it because there’s space with the boat there. Here it is, ready to be wheeled out when the hull is the right way up again.

I cut off the very last cross bar at the end of the trailer, it serves no purpose now, is very rusty and lowers the ground clearance by about three inches. I took a grinder to it and it was soon gone. This make the trailer easier to wheel in and out of the barn as it no longer touches the ground at the back. We will see if that is the same once the boat is on place.

Time for a cup of tea.

Task completed. Shoal Waters is now the right way up again, on the working trailer and back under cover.

This is the hull in the fully vertical position, and doesn’t that bottom look fine ?

Back in the barn again.

It was 18th July that Shoal Waters was inverted on the hard standing, nine weeks and four days ago with work being carried out almost every day during that time. What remains to be done is almost trivial in comparison.

Now I need to get her ready for another leak test, but there’s a bit of work needing to be done on the centerplate case that I stopped after the first leak test

Time for a cup of tea.

It is a beautiful day to day, the sun is shining, the temperature is set to get up to 20º C or more and there is little or no wind.

As soon as the tasks allowed we lifted Shoal Waters off the overnight blocks and tipped her over onto her starboard side.

This took very little time since we had done the procedure tentatively yesterday so today we knew what to expect. As it happened the entire thing took five minutes, maybe ten, but not more. Most of that was removing the various support blocks away from the working area and resetting the inversion strops such that the ratchets were on the other side of the hull and up as far as they would go.

The tipping part of the procedure took about 30 seconds. This is such a good system.

Time for a cup of tea.

At the next break, lunch as it happened, I did the next part of the process, the penultimate epoxy work under the waterline.

The lower side of the slot as seen when standing by the hull was cleaned up, removing the squeeze out sealant, sanded, to provide a key, air blown, to get rid of the detritus, taped, to keep accidental splashes off the copper epoxy and neat epoxy brushed onto the join between the hull and the side of the centerplate case.

I mixed up a fairly stiff thickened epoxy batch and this was applied to the join. Peel ply then added to that and finally, another batch of neat epoxy mixed and brushed onto the peel ply.

I used the fast hardener for this task as I would like to have this cured enough to apply the final coat of epoxy to the work done yesterday and today this afternoon. This will be copper epoxy. That will leave the second coat of copper epoxy to do tomorrow.

Time for a cup of tea.

After work ended for the day I inspected the state of the epoxy and found it cured enough to be able to apply the copper epoxy. I removed the masking tape and tidied up the epoxy as there were some straggly bits here and there. The area around where I wanted to apply the copper epoxy was then rubbed down with the stainless scrubbing pad, but I got a little carried away with that and did as much of the hull as I could reach. It was going to be done tomorrow anyway and it was such an easy job that I just kept on going.

After donning my overalls and nitrile gloves I mixed up a small batch of the C-Guard and applied it to both inner sides of the centerplate slot.

I also covered the few drips that I made with the neat epoxy applied earlier after scrubbing those with the scouring pad. You can see the scouring marks on the hull quite well with the sunlight in that direction.

I’m please with the result and I shall keep an eye on the temperature with the view to applying a second coat when it gets to around 15º C or so. If the copper epoxy is cured enough by that time it will be recoated, if not then I’ll wait until tomorrow. This evening would be preferable as it would mean one less turn of the hull.

Time for a cup of tea.

I was able to get another coat of the copper epoxy applied before the got dark and too cold and once that was done we put Shoal Waters back in the same position she was last night. I also scrubbed the portions of the hull that I was unable to reach earlier.

And here she is, ready for the night.

That completes the under the waterline work I needed to carry out on the hull, tomorrow we shall attempt to put her back on the work trailer and in the Hay Barn. Work from here on can be carried out at a slightly less frenetic pace.

Time for a cup of coffee.

It’s windy, did I mention that?

Too windy.

I had wanted to turn the hull today, but it’s too windy.

You see, I was unable to drill the 25mm holes in the metal I had cut, my equipment is just not powerful enough to do one, let alone eight, so I had to resort to using rope.

Like this. Perfectly strong enough to take the load but it moves and can move sideways and possibly destabilise the block.

This is manageable, but since this is the first time I’m doing this, I do not want any more possible failure modes and force 6 and 7 gusts of wind count. That is enough to move the boat in the strops and that I want to avoid.

So, having made up the two blocks I put them aside until another day, perhaps tomorrow, when the wind is not so strong. If not tomorrow then Monday and Tuesday look to be quite calm.

Instead I made these. I’ve not worked on these since Shoal Waters arrived here and I need to make some of these up for an upcoming craft fair. The trouble is that the first two versions required more time to assemble and glue that to do everything else, include the packaging, and that made them not something that I could sell and make a profit.

This version, however, snaps together so there is no assembly, at least not that I have to do and an added bonus is that they ship flat. The biggest issue is the LED tealight. Still, the redesign means that these are now profitable. I have seven different face designs and they are quite popular. The skulls face above being the one that most people seem to want.

Anyway, this was not a wasted day, despite not working on Shoal Waters much.

I did also create a drawing for the metal side pieces I need and send that off for a quote from the same person who made the pieces for Naiad’s tabernacle.

Time for a cup of tea.

The first task of the day and mid-morning or so, was the dismantling of the tent over the hull.

Here she is without the framework around her supporting the cover, and in the light of the morning instead of the early evening.

The last part of the inversion blocks is the manufacture of the side pieces that connect the bat over the top of the gantry to the spindle through the pulley proper. The will be made from this length of rectangular section steel that has been laying around the yard for the last thirteen years or so. The first requirement is to cut it in half.

An easy job with a good cutting disk in the angle grinder.

The technique I decided to use was one that I save in a Youtube video made by a gentleman by the name of Mark Reuten, a boat builder in Canada (I think, he has a Canadian accent). He has a business named Mark Reuten Nomad Boatbuilding and the episode to which I am referring is called “Building the Catalina Wherry – Part 25 – Flipping the hull”. Specifically the part that starts here.

Now, the hull in the video is far lighter than Shoal Waters which is why I’m making the blocks so strong, but you can see the principle used.

Time for a cup of tea.

But the weather forecast said that it should clear up around 13:00 and sure enough, after raining on and off most of the morning, although not hard, the skies cleared and the rain stopped.

However, I wasn’t going to take the forecast’s word for it and built a temporary shelter under which to work that will also keep off any rain that may fall, thus ensuring that none does.

This is the arrangement this time, with sufficient clearance not only to stop the tarpaulin from touching the hull but also to allow enough space for me to work under it.

Worked well.

This is the result after the second copper epoxy coat. All the keel bands have been liberally coated and since I mixed up far more than I needed, I spread the remainder around the hull with a roller, concentrating on those areas that looked a little thin.

What it quite interesting is the colour of the copper powder used, from a different supplier, is a different colour to that used in the first two coats. Not that it matters since it will all be underwater and will go green quite quickly.

Now all that remains is to work on the inside of the bottom of the centerplate slot, removing any sealant squeeze out and making sure that there are no gaps anywhere or rough spots. However for this work to be done I need Shoal Waters to be on her side. First one side and then the other and for two reasons. The first is that I can’t access the slot as she is now, it’s too far away from where I can stand and too high. The second reason is that I will need to put in some epoxy in places and having the hull on its side will mean that the epoxy is pulled into the place where it is put, instead of dripping through the slot and into the cabin.

So, the next task is to finish the inversion blocks.

Time for a cup of tea.