Repairs

Posts about repairs carried out to Shoal Waters

2026-08-16 – Aft to the Transom

Mark Austen Repairs

Another cool day and time to continue with the transom repairs. But, having said that, the first task of the day is some washing.

Specifically washing the amine blush off the epoxy on the new stem. Now most of the epoxy you see here will end up being sanded off, but it is still pretty essential to remove the amine blush before sanding starts and for two main reasons.

The first is that the blush, being a waxy substance, clogs up the sandpaper very quickly rendering the sanding pretty ineffective.

The second and more concerning reason is that having clogged up the sandpaper the sanding then does nothing except generate heat from friction, which melts the waxy blush and the epoxy and can mix the two together leaving an epoxy surface to which nothing will stick. The remedy when this happens is to use a heat gun and a scraper to remove the epoxy and start again.

Fortunately, the amine blush is water soluble and the recommended treatment is to use warm soapy water and a soft brush or abrasive pad to dissolve and remove the blush followed by rinsing the surface with clean cold water.

Which is what I have done here.

So, on to the transom.

Having given it some thought and tried various ways to get the new transom piece into the correct position in one piece, I gave up and cut the thing in half.

I also cut a lip on each piece, mainly to make locating the two pieces easier and also to increase the glue area.

I have to confess that I had intended to cut these laps on the other side of the wood and made the mistake of getting them on the wrong side. Only, after some consideration I realised that this way round was better than the way I had intended. So, although it was wrong, it was right.

The more difficult piece was cut to the correct length and put into place. As you can see it doesn’t fit, and nor did I expect it to, but with a new belt on the bench belt sander I sanded away until I had a pretty good fit.

The remaining gaps will be sealed with thickened epoxy when it comes time to glue it all together.

Before I continue with the other half of the repair, I needed to fit a small piece into the notch in the transom where the rotten part extended beyond that of the rest of the removed transom.

Once this has cured sufficiently I shall cut a lap on the transom. including through this new piece and then carefully cut a lap on the second half of the repair piece, probably making several closer and closer cuts until the piece fits into place.

That will be the point that the transom repair is glued into position with thickened epoxy .

Any remaining epoxy from the work will now be used to fill in some of the dings and scratches. Peel ply will be used, as you can see here, to ensure that the amine blush is removed without having to wash the epoxy.

Time for a cup of tea.

The next step in the transom task was to cut the edge of the transom to give a straight edge. This was done using a router being careful not to put the router through anything but the transom.

Following that the router was used to cut the lap in the transom, again being careful not to let the router go anywhere it should not.

Finally I used a newly sharpened chisel to clean up the rounded ends.

At this point of the processes everything had gone well and each time a step was completed successfully, I fell into the trap of saying “I’ll just do a little more” and then “a little more”. You know what happens, you get tired and something goes wrong. Then you start saying “I should have taken a break earlier”.

Well, I didn’t fall too far into that trap, at least not this time. I took a break.

Time for a cup of tea.

The next task was to cut the lap on the second repair piece and dry fit.

It took a bit of back and forth cutting the lap little by little until a fit was obtained.

After that I drilled clearance holes for the retaining screws and pilot holes in the boat and screwed the two pieces in place for a dry fit.

Next up is epoxy work, but I need a break before I tackle that job.

Time for a cup of tea.

The final task for the day was to mix up a load of epoxy and glue the new pieces of the transom in place. The first batch of epoxy was neat and brushed onto all the exposed end grain and those surfaces that were to be glued. The second batch was thickened with microfibres until it was the consistency of thick Greek Yogurt. Just thick enough to cling to the mixing stick. I put this on the inside of the hull and on the mating surfaces and assembled the repair. ots of epoxy squeezed out of the joins, which was the aim and I used a putty knife to scrape off the squeeze-out and to make sure that all the joints were filled.

Finally, I mixed up a third batch of neat epoxy and used that to stick the peel ply over the joints. This last step wasn’t strictly necessary but it does stop the amine blush and smooths down the epoxy surface.

In an hour or two I’ll go out and loosen the screws and then tighten them again just to break any epoxy bond to the screws since these will be replaced with countersunk screws, probably tomorrow. Just loosening them means that it is easier to get the out once the epoxy has cured.

Time for a cup of tea.

2026-08-15 Stem Repairs Continued

Mark Austen Repairs

With the temperature forecast to be around 10º C cooler today than yesterday at a reasonable 24º, it is a good day for doing some rapid epoxy work.

The first task was to shape the stem a little better, it is still not exactly the right size and again, this is deliberate. The next task was to trim the edges of the hull so that the cut is straight and clean. To do this I pencilled in a line where I want the cut to be and then a second line 38mm away from the line. A straight edge was nailed in place temporarily to guide the cut. The hull edge was trimmed using a trim router adjusted to the correct depth.

It didn’t take long to cut the hull to a nice straight line.

I repeated the procedure on the other side.

On both sides the cut stopped short of the end due to the router bumping into the underside of the deck and I used the multi-tool to cut away most of this followed by the rest using a sharp chisel.

The router also cut into the new stem a little clearly showing the correct size of the stem.

This allowed me to take away a little bit more of the stem leaving it the correct size.

I cut four pieces of Agba to fit each side of the gap, gave the stem, breast hook and some other timbers inside a coat of neat epoxy as well as the undersides of the Agba strips, then applied a liberal coat of thickened epoxy to the stem etc, seated the pieces in the correct place and stapled them in place. The staples are plastic so I do not need to pull them out before putting on the next layer. This is very good since getting them out invariably damages the wood.

The second layer went on at right angles to the first, more or less, and the third in the same direction as the first.

At this point I realised that the Agba I had was 3mm thick, not 2.5mm and the three layers plus the thickened epoxy made the new hull the same thickness as the old.

This is the last layer. It still looks wonky and that is because it is. I’ll be shaping the new stem a little bit once the epoxy cures, probably tomorrow, to get the final shape.

So a good day’s work albeit a little rushed as i used the fast hardener and that barely gave me enough time to get the next layer cut and in place before the epoxy was unusable.

The nice sharp point of the new stem will be flattened to match the rest of the hull and to be wide enough to extend the keel band all the way up the stem and to hook over the top. This will reinforce the stem since it is subject to quite strong forces upwards due to the staysail and the forestay pulling on the stem via the gammon iron.

But that is for another day.

Time for a cup of tea.

2026-08-14 – Stem Repairs

Mark Austen Repairs

Despite the contining heat, work has been progressing on the stem and planking repairs, just slowly.

The Sapele block I laminated together was carefully shaped into something that is approximately the correct shape.I say approximately since I have deliberately made is just a little too big. The intention is to sand it down to the correct shape once the stem has been rebuilt.

The dowels are there to ensure that the block is positioned correctly each time it is removed for shaping and then replaced.

So far, so good.

I did make a mistake in the construction and had to add a 10mm piece at one end and a smaller shim on the side.

This is the state of the stem as of this evening. All the required pieces have now been epoxied in place,

Copper nails have been used both as locating pins and clamps to hold the pieces in position whilst the epoxy cures.

The next task will be to shape the new stem so that the new hull can be constructed.

Time for a cup of tea.

2026-08-09 – Another Unwelcome Surprise

Mark Austen Repairs

The task for today was to investigate the patch of soft planking that the surveyor reported in the port bow. This needs to be attended to before the hull is sheathed and to that end I tried to remove the gammon iron, the fitting at the bow through which the bowsprit extends and to which the forestay is attached. It is also known as the stem head fitting.

Sometime in the recent past the bronze/gunmetal fitting had been replaced with one made from steel. Not sure why but it had rusted and refused to come off gracefully so I resorted to angle grinder, hammer and cold chisel to “persuade” it to release.

And this is what I found in the area the surveyor found the soft returns. Rot.

This is the view from under the boat looking at the deck. The cause, almost certainly, is the front part of the deck. This was a small piece of plywood that had been added to the rest of the deck, presumably because the sheet of plywood was just a little too short to reach right to the bow and so a piece was added. Not unusual, I did that myself on my boat Naiad. But, the joint on Naiad was glued together with epoxy. On Shoal Waters this was something else and the joint had eventually failed allowing water to get in.

The other side was as bad and it got worse.

With the gammon iron, deckpiece and the rubbing strakes either side removed, the extent of the damage became clear. And it got worse still.

The stem was also soft. Here I have cut away the hull planking until I reached good wood and had cut parts of the stem away. That top cut is finally in good wood across the width and thickness of the stem.

I cut the stem away leaving a step in the end so that the replacement has a larger gluing surface, but more importantly, the joint is more easily located and held in place. I’ll certainly use epoxy for this joint.

This is the plywood deck piece. The joint, at the back as you look at it, was completely cracked. The replacement will be epoxied in place so that this does not occur again. Each part of the repair will be coated in epoxy before the repair is made and the end grain and sides of the existing stem and planking will also be liberally coated with neat epoxy. This is to ensure that should water get in again, it will not be able to get into the new joints.

This is why you don’t use steel on a boat. No matter how well you protect it, the steel eventually rusts.

I was able to get the part of the hull that the surveyor identified as soft off in one piece.

This is the gammon iron that was replaced with the steel one. It is still in good order and I’ll be putting this back on the boat once the repair and sheathing has been completed.

I still have a half sheet of 2.5mm thick Agba and some pieces about 50mm wide left over from the repair that I carried out on Naiad’s hull. I think that there is enough cut pieces to make the repair without using the sheet event though using the sheet would be a lot easier. I’ll make the new stem piece first and then evaluate the planking repair. Cutting eight triangular pieces, four for each side, to fit the space might be easier than laminating up the triangular pieces from the cut stock. I’ll have to think about that one.

I cut some lengths of Sapele from the stock I have and glued them together using epoxy. I’ll fashion a new stem piece from this once the epoxy has cured. In this temperature, currently 31º C that will not take very long.

A long day but ultimately quite satisfying despite the unwelcome surprise.

Time for a cup of tea.

2026-08-06 – The Penalty for Carelessness

Mark Austen Refurbishment, Repairs

On his website Charles Stock wrote a number of articles and I was reminded of one of these as I removed the last of the antifouling from Shoal Waters’ hull. In the article entitled ‘The penalty-for-careless‘ Charles describes how in the September of 1989, having passed under the bridge at Havengore Creek, Charles and his wife Joy anchored for the night. Sometime during that night Shoal Waters sat back on her anchor. This is what he had to say in an article published February 1990 issue of Practical Boat Owner:

Hours later in warm morning sunshine I put on my water boots and dropped over the side for a walk. Where was the anchor? A few steps to port showed the end of the stock peeping out from under the bilge. My heart sank as I plodded round to starboard and peered under the hull behind the mast to see one fluke pressed hard against the skin of the boat. With a home made paddle serving as a spade, I quickly dug down to the crown of the anchor and then the lower fluke. A firm push drove it down into the mud drawing the top fluke clear of the hull. I reached under the bilge to find a `little finger’, sized dimple. Back on board, we removed my bunk cushions and boards to reach the bilge. Any damage should be under the inside lead ballast but once that was lifted, none was visible. I have glued two narrow strips of wood to the inside of the hull to carry the ballast rather than let it sit directly on the half inch hot moulded skin of the hull. Could the fluke have met the hull directly under one of them?

Well, I found that ‘little finger’ sized dimple in the hull. Still there after 37 years.

The Plastic Padding used to fill the dimple has long since fallen out, but here is the evidence of that mishap.

It is not much when compared to these two scratches. The two scratches are quite major. I spent some time cleaning out the lower one but passed on the upper one for the moment and will do that when I go around the hull getting the filler out of all the other scratches.

But I did finish the removal of the antifouling paint which all-in-all has taken just two days.

I had to adopt a two-handed technique for this side of the hull since my arms and right wrist were still aching from scraping the other side. This involves heating the area to be scraped with the hot air gun for a few seconds, then scraping along the hull holding the handle of the scraper in my left hand and pressing down on the blade with my right. I found that I needed far less heating this way, hardly any at all in fact, and the finish was a lot cleaner than the first side.

Now that this is done, I can make a start on the topside paint which should be fairly easy of the first side is anything to go by, and I’ll start at the bows and work my way aft. Starting with the larger area and working towards the smaller.

Time for a cup of tea.

2026-08-04 – Hull Surprises

Mark Austen Refurbishment, Repairs

I made an early start on the hull this morning, after feeding the animals and before breakfast, although that could also be classed as feeding the animals, but I digress.

I decided to start on the middle section between the bilge runner and the keel since this was the area on the other side that I found most difficult to work on due to the stretch.

Imagine my surprise when I found this. It is the pointed tip of a screw. On the inside there are two reinforcing battens about half an inch thick and two and a half inches wide and as long as the bilge runner. These were screwed, and presumably glued, into place from the inside. Either the batten in this area was a little thinner than the rest of the screw a little longer or the countersink bored to recess the screw head was a little too deep and the point has just protruded from the hull.

I’ve hightlighted the visible parts of these reinforcing battens in the photo above.

A little bit further on I found another one, only this one protrudes a lot further. The first one I found can be left alone, it only just sticks out and the sanding will probably make it flush with the hull, but this one requires some attention to make it level with the hull.

I managed to get the strip next to the bilge runner done, the hardest part as the runner gets in the way of the scraper, and a section about a foot wide at the front.

Time for a cup of tea.

And breakfast.

I scraped more at lunchtime and then again ager work and found a few more surprises.

Firstly a gripfast nail that I think was supposed to go into the bilge runner and missed.

The another doing the same thing. In both cases the nails were covered in filler. I’ll cut these two short rather than leave them proud.

One of the scratches on this side of the hull appears to have been filler with putty It certainly fill the scratches well and required some effort to get it out.

Time for a cup of tea.

2026-08-03 – Transom Repair & Starboard Hull

Mark Austen Refurbishment, Repairs

I didn’t do any scraping over the weekend, instead I continued the transom work and gave myself a chance to stop aching.

The laminated plywood for the repair came out very well and I was able to hold it against the hull and draw the outside of the hull on one edge.

I used panel pins on the rough line and a very flexible batten to fair the curve which you can see about 2.5mm away from the rough line.

I heavily scored the line with a sharp knife to keep tear out to a minimum. It’s not really needed where the cut is in the same direction as the grain.

But it is very necessary where the cut is across the grain.

A few minutes work with the jigsaw and the shape was cut.

I kept the cut just outside the cut line, deliberately, so there were a few fuzzies but not on the good side of the cut.

The patch was then screwed over the hole with the cut edge aligned with the hull.

It’s not so easy to see in a photo, but the edge of the patch does not follow the shape of the hull.

I used a sanding disc on an angle grinder to fair the patch to the curve of the hull as you can see here. It was a bit tricky since I had to avoid sanding any of the hull in the process.

This part got away from my a little…

…but most of the edge was good.

I trimmed the bottom of the path to the level of the aft deck, again by drawing on the patch along the deck and then sing that line to cut the excess away.

This is not the final fit since when it is fitted to the top of the hole, this bit will extend beyond the deck and will need to be cut down again. But it shortens the patch a bit making it easier to locate and handle.

Today’s job was to cold scrape as much of the antifouling paint off the starboard hull. This took around two hours this afternoon and in places quite a lot of the wood was exposed. There are also a few scratches as expected.

The area between the bilge runner and the keel did not scrape off so much of the antifoul, but that’s because it’s further way and thus a stretch. Still, good enough.

The aft section did not scrape away so much either and I may revisit this tomorrow afternoon.

This side showed more cracks between the laminates as seen here.

With a major scratch closer to the bows.

As well as cracks between the laminates. I’ll fill these with neat epoxy. The hull will be warmed first with the hot air gun, masking tape applied either side of the crack to limit the spillage, then the epoxy dripped into the cracks. The hot wood will thin the epoxy which will then flow deeper into the crack. Or so I hope. This will be carried out once the hull has been properly scraped off and sanded and at that time I’ll also fill in the more egregious scratches. That won’t be for a few days yet. Lots of scraping to do first.

Time for a cup of tea.

2026-08-01 – Skeg Build

Mark Austen Refurbishment, Repairs

During the last week I managed to work on the scraping every day except Friday.

This was the state of the port hull on Wednesday morning, 07:05 to be precise…

… and this was the hull on Thursday afternoon with all of the paint, both topside and antifoul scraped off. I still have to sand the hull but for right now, I need to do a few other tasks and let my aching arms and hands recover bit.

The plan had been to do a strip of scraping and then another boat task, but in the end I just carried on with the scraping. Now it was time to do a few other boat things before starting on the other side.

Today I decided that the first boat tasks would be to make a start on the new skeg.

The piece of Cedar I bought was rough sawn both sides which meant that the first thing to do was to plane off the majority of the saw marks.

That didn’t take long. Notice that the end of the board has started to crack. My fault entirely, I should have painted the ends as soon as I received the board.

One edge had been cut square and it was a quick and easy job to cut off the live edge. I’m using a long, straight piece of metal as a fence extension to keep the board straight and a roller support to take the weight of the board at the start of the cut.

I used the cardboard template to mark the skeg on the board allowing just the width of the saw blade between the two pieces.

To make the angled cut I used hot glue to fix a piece of wood against the timber that will hold the board at the correct angle to make the cut.

Not much later I had two skeg-shaped pieces of timber.

Now it was just a case of glueing them together. The timber is pretty flat so I’ll just use cramps for this job.

I used Titebond III as the adhesive, I did think of using epoxy but decided that since the skeg is going to be sheathed in epoxy and fibreglass cloth and that Titebond III is a waterproof glue, there was no benefit to using the more expensive epoxy.

One question that I have been considering since I removed the rotten part of the transom, is whether the entire thing should be replaced. This would not be an easy job all due to the bevel that would need to be cut on the replacement transom. This would be a rolling bevel, meaning that it changes angle from one end to the other and it would also mean that the new transom would need to be inserted from the bottom when looking at the upside down hull.

I had cut back the transom until I reached good plywood so the question became how likely is it that the other side of the transom has suffered the same problem. It sounds good and the surveyor didn’t note any soft returns from that side of the plywood so the chances are that the rest of the transom is sound.

I looked closer at the corner of the boat the lower right as you look at it in the photos and I could see that part of the hull itself was a little rotten. On looking further I saw that this was not a big area of rot but I noticed that the hull to deck joint had cracked and that seems to be the point at which water had been getting in resulting in the degraded plywood. I wondered if that corner of the boat had hit something hard when being sailed which had cracked all the glue joints in that area. It would certainly would explain why just hta corner allowed water in.

I scraped away all of the soft timber that I could reach and applied penetrating epoxy using a brush and a syringe with a large bore blunt needle to “inject” the epoxy into the split joints and then coated the area around where the soft wood had been.

Time for a cup of tea.

Next task, once the glue on the new skeg had set up a bit, was to cut the bottom with a shallow vee-shape to fit the sloping keel.

Firstly I glued two mixing sticks together with hot glue, resting them on either side of the keel whilst the glue cooled. Then I measured the angle so that I can set the table saw. My handy-dandy protractor gave a 10º angle, so I set the blade to 85º and made two cuts.

The result was pretty good, as you can see.

Here is the skeg resting on the keel. It isn’t upright but I’ll trim that out during the fitting of the skeg. The bottom needs to be hollowed slightly since the keel is curved. Something for another day, methinks.

Time for a cup of tea.

Moving on I decided to prepare the plywood for the transom. The original plywood was 3/4″ thick, which is 19mm, or thereabouts. I don’t have any good plywood that thick and I don’t want to spend around £100 getting an 8′ x 4′ x 18mm sheet of Marine Plywood only to use a quarter of it. However, I do have 6mm Marine Plywood and I can laminate three layers of that to get 18mm, which will be close enough.

So, having cut the three pieces I set up the paraphernalia to vacuum clamp the three pieces together. Again, like the skeg and for the same reasons, I decided to use Titebond III. But before I could do that I had to clean out the pump on the top of the glue bottle as it has become blocked with old glue and would not pump glue any more.

That was a bit of a chore, but now I know how the pump works and how easy it is to clean it.

I used a 25mm thick piece of chipboard that had a smooth veneer on the surface as the base for the clamping. It was flat enough for this task. Then it was get everything cut and ready for the glue up. Once the glue had been applied and the laminates stacked, the netting was put on the top, then the plastic cover that already had the vacuum and gauge fittings fitted. I had laid out the butyl tape on the base board before starting to apply the glue, so it was just a case of remove the backing tape, press the plastic down on the tape and start the pump.

The pump is only pulling about 0.5 bar in the photo but I did go around after taking the shot to close up all the leaks and eventually get a vacuum of 0.95 bar, I let the pump run for an hour before stopping the pump and removing the various parts. Usually the glue sets up enough to be unclamped in around 20 minutes, so an hour was more than enough for this job.

Tomorrow I’ll take a look at shaping the plywood.

I really want to get the transom repaired before it is time to turn Shoal Waters the right way up so that the hull is not deformed in any way by the procedure due to the reinforcement of the transom. Preferably, I’d lie tp get it done before I start sheathing the hull as I want to sheath the transom up to the waterline to ensure that the hull to transom joint is strengthened and sealed.

For now, that is a good days’ work.

Time for a cup of tea.

2026-07-28 – Transom Rot

Mark Austen Repairs

As I approached the aft end of the hull with the hot air gun and scraper, I decided to take a look at the gap the surveyor noticed between the hull and the transom.

I removed the antifouling and topside paint at the very end of the hull a portion of which you can see here. The curved piece, still painted green, is an end capping put on the the edge of the transom to protect the end of the hull. As you can see, there is a gap which has been filled and which is falling out.

The surveyor thought that this gap might be the fastenings though the hull and into the transom not holding because of the soft transom, but this hull never used fastenings and was glued instead.

I pulled the capping piece off and part of the transom came off as well. This was obviously the soft area that the surveyor mentioned in his report.

I set to with the multitool, chisel and hammer and soon had the transom cut away to reveal good wood. Looks quite dramatic, doesn’t it, but it is not a difficult repair. The hardest part is going to be fitting the new laminated piece in place since the hull curves inwards. Still, the first thing to do is to make a template to fit the widest part and laminate up a piece to fit in the space. I will probably step the edge of the remaining transom to make the fitting and glueing easier.

Sometime in the past a primitive repair had been carried out by glueing this piece of plywood to the inside of the transom. Completely ineffective.

This is all that remains of the transom, it came out in flakes. No wonder the surveyor noticed “soft returns” when tapping this area of the transom.

Time for a cup of tea.

2026-07-27 – Deeper and Deeper

Mark Austen Refurbishment, Repairs

I had said in my last post that there were a lot of scratches under the antifouling but that “None of the damage is deep, no more than a millimeter”.

I have to say that I was wrong about that.

This one, is nearly 5mm deep and since the hull is only 10mm thick, this once can be considered to be significant. This is one of the scratches photographed before, but after I had removed the filler.

These are not quite so deep but deeper that I had expected.

There is also patches of a black substance that looks like tar, but the paint has stuck to it, so I expect that it is not tar or bitumen. I’ve tried using various solvents, except Acetone as I don’t have any, and nothing shifts it. This patch here is after being sanded as well as the solvent tests.

I laos tried to use the belt sander on the hull but the surface is too uneven to allow it to work properly, so I went back to the orbital sander.

This is the progress to date. nThe section of antifouling between the bilge runner and the keel has been removed and I think that this is probably the hardest part of the job. Trying to scrape away the paint at a stretch is not easy on the muscles and I think that when I start the other side, I shall do this bit first.

Scraping progress has been slow this last week as I have been on my own for a week and that means looking after the horse. That in itself isn’t s problem except that the time I had been spending in the cool of the morning between getting up and starting work was now taken up with feeding duties and pooh picking. Frankly, most days it was too hot to do any significant scraping in the afternoon after work, hence the slow progress.

However, that all changes tomorrow and I will be able to get back to scraping first thing and progress should improve,

Now that I have quite a lot of the wood under the waterline exposed, I can see that some of the scraped line up. The one highlighted above shows one such line.

I wonder what I’ll find on the other side.

Time for a cup of tea.