I haven’t been posting much lately, but I’ve been making progress on the side decks. Weekends and evenings are the only time we get to work on the boat the last few weeks and it seems like things are going slower than usual.
The last of the teak decking is off the boat, black adhesive gone, the screw holes are finally filled, the holes for the cleat hardware are filled and the wood spacer blocks are glued down. Jeni’s been stripping the teak with a heat gun and sanding everything down to bare wood. Since the lower trim on the sides and front of the coach house were installed on top of the teak decking I was planning on removing and lowering it to deck level. Then Jeni showed me a boat on Yacht World that had removed their lowers altogether and I like the way it looked. The problem with either lowering, or removing the lower trim altogether is that the corners were mitered at an angle. Of course, I can’t just leave it like that with unfinished miters at the end; that would look silly. But at least I can salvage what I removed to make new filler strips for the side corners that go all the way down and finish square to the deck.
As I was pulling off the vertical trim strips back where the cockpit coaming meets the coach house wall at the boom gallows on either side, I noticed what looked like an old repair. The trim had been removed and new pieces spliced back in, and who ever did the work actually did a pretty good job of tying it all back together before slathering it in brown Cetol. Unfortunately, as I was prying the trim off on the starboard side, old glass and filler material started flaking away from the coaming to reveal (much to my chagrin) some serious rotten wood hidden inside. Apparently these areas had seen some rot before, and hence the need for the repair. Problem is, they never actually fixed the leaks that caused the initial damage in the first place so it just continued to decay. Now, I’m blessed with the task of cutting it all out and filling it in correctly. Maybe this is why we get those annoying little drips coming through the ceiling just above the aft galley countertop every time it rains?