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After the usual round of applying varnish to various parts of the boat, I took a look at the case side.

Here I have removed the peel ply and the result is pretty good. It will need sanding but that was expected. For now, I shall put it by the Rayburn to keep warm to allow the epoxy to reach full strength before I take sand paper to it.

After that I turned my attention to the transom. Armed with hot air gun and a scraper it was the work of only half an hour to remove the paint and varnish. I say paint, but I think it is a coloured varnish rather than a paint and you can see why it was put on. There are several damaged areas as well as dark areas where the wood has suffered water damage.

This is an area that needs some attention, at the top of the transom just to the left of the rudder gudgeon. Here is looks as though the plywood has been sanded too aggressively and that has removed the outer layer of the plywood. The exposed and rough grain will wick water easily and although no damaged seems to have occurred as yet, this area needs to be sealed to prevent water ingress.

This was the most surprising area. It looks to be a massive repair and I suspect that it was carried out due to severe water damage.

This is a section from a photo of Shoal Waters whilst she was still in the ownership of Charles Stock and you can see a large discoloured area to the left of the name board that corresponds to the repair in the photo I took this morning.

So, more tasks to add to the list. Remove any remaining varish, sand and fill the two, possibly three areas that need graving pieces. Carry out some stain removal to at least lighten the darkened wood. Then I will probably stain the entire transom just to stop it looking such a light colour and after that, we shall see.

Sa far an interesting morning.

Time for a cup of tea.

During my next break I sanded the transom with 180 grit sandpaper and then went tapping around to see where the soft returns were.

The green area is where I’ll certainly put a graving piece and the red areas show where I’m getting soft returns with my tapping. The top red area is a place where I’m tempted to put another graving piece rather than use the epoxy sealer. One or two of the very darkened areas of wood I’ll treat with Oxalic acid and try to bleach the wood a little, but other than that I think the transom will be lightly stained to even out the discolouring and then varnished. This will not hide the repairs and such, but they will be less noticable unlike with the varnish/paint which hid everything.

The two red area on the left will be left until Shoal Waters is next out of the water for maintenance and I can spend more time investigating and repairing.

Time for a cup of tea.

It is a miserable day today, here in the Fens of Norfolk. It has been sleeting sideways for the last couple of hours and it cold, just 2º C. Still, most of the tasks for today are in the workshop out of the wind and rain.

First up is the name board.

This is the board vanished on the front..

But not on the back. The varnish you can see here has come from being varnished in place on the transom. The trouble is that having no varnish on the back has caused the wood to warp and with screws in the middle of the sides instead of on the four corners, the warp has pulled the top and bottom away from the transom and varnish has seeped down behind the sign.

So, to carve the name I had to first un-warp the board. It’s currently resting on the Rayburn, varnish side up and is starting to get flatter.

Next I took sandpaper and scraper to the rudder stock for a little energetic work to warm me up.

Next, trimming the excess glass mat and epoxy from the case sides. This one worked well.

The port side not so well. The trimming and sanding around three of the edges came out correctly.

But I screwed up when putting the peel ply on the aft section here and it overlapped the inside face where it should not and I had to cut away the glass matt to get it all out. It’s not too much of a problem, I’ll just have to mix up some epoxy and patch the gap.

In the meantime, I drilled out the pivot bolt holes, put the case sides together inner face to inner face, put the metal plates on the stiffeners and put the bolt in place with the spacer on the outside. As you can see, the bolt is about 5mm too short ! It has to be long enough to screw through the nylon locking ring, it is not called nyloc for nothing, or be long enough to allow a lock nut.

So, one 10mm longer is on order. This one will do for the next phases, the dry fit possibly even the real fitting, but the longer one will be needed before the boat goes into the water. There will be six layers of sealant, two either side of the spacer and one each under the metal plates and one on the outside of each plate and under the bolt head on one side and the nut on the other. All those sealant layers will probably mean that the shorter bolt may not fit. I have M10 studding from which I can cut a longer bolt but since it is mild steel it will only be good enough for the assembly.

Still, not having the correct bolt will not stop progress.

It has stopped sleeting and is now snowing. Still cold.

Makes one glad for a workshop.

Since I have the poop deck removed I decided to continue the theme of getting ahead of the brightwork where possible and give it a coat or two. I was sanded in the workshop, brushed off and then brought into the workroom for its first coat of varnish. Being an outside piece of varnish it needed a good sanding but has come up nicely as a result. This might only need two coats. I might put more on, after all it is going to be out in all weathers when sailing and under a piece of canvas when on the mooring, so more coats of varnish will be better than less.

One of the things on my list of upgrades for Shoal Waters in the future is to replace all her old blocks with new ones. In the meantime I will replace the old blocks with Tufnol blocks that I have left over from building Naiad.

Shoal Waters’ blocks are currently like the one on the left and the spare ones I have are the others. I say spare but the fact of the matter is that I ordered exactly enough blocks to dress Naiad’s mast, the five new looking blocks on the top row. But they didn’t arrive. After a month or so I got back to the supplier and asked what had happened and they had no record of the order being fulfilled, so they sent out a new set of blocks which arrived within a few days. All well and good. Naiad was launched and I thought nothing more about it until about nine months later when the original set of blocks arrived in the post.

I contacted the supplier and they said that since they still didn’t have a record of those being fulfilled and dispatched I was free to keep them. They have been sitting in my rigging kit box for the last seven years!

So, Shoal Waters will have her existing block replaced by these Tufnol blocks and I’ll make some shiny new wooden ones for another season.

For now, since it is Sunday and I have already carried out a number of tasks, I shall call it a day and rest for the remainder of the afternoon and evenong.

Time for a cup of tea.