After our longer-than-anticipated maiden voyage, we returned to Tom’s family farm and rested for a few days. We hope to complete all major boat projects in two months, but we have to split our week between the boat yard and our shop in central Florida, two hours away. Luckily we have Ogre to travel, live in, and haul materials with.
We returned to the boat for our first round of work – Tom had his goals, and I had mine.
We were aware of several areas of the boat which became wet, but we needed to take apart the boat a little in order to determine the source of the leak. I took on this project, alongside removing any damaged material I came across.
The first spot was the compartment closest to the door. It didn’t open, so I had to figure out a way to take it apart. When I moved the settees out of the way, I found the original 1989 blue carpet!
The carpet was damp in areas, and probably had been for a long time, so I removed it. It came away from the fiberglass easily, but the triangle piece was stapled into the wood, so I used pliers to remove the rusty staples.
Both settee sections were also waterlogged along the bottom edge. We may install desks in this area instead of the settee, but if not I will replace the damaged wood when I reupholster them. For now, I’m leaving them propped up so they have a chance to dry out.
I wanted to remove the top of the compartment, but after peeking through the small access hole on the adjacent wall, I realized it’s screwed in several places from underneath. In order to reach those screws, I had the remove the entire adjacent wall. Tom plans to install the inverter and other solar system components in the space behind the wall, so it would’ve had to come out sooner or later!
I was able to get most of the screws out, but had to enlist Tom to help out with a few I was struggling with. Once we removed the wall, we saw a waterlogged plywood board on the floor. We unscrewed that and moved it outside to dry, so we could use it as a template to replace it later.
Now we were able to remove the top of the odd-shaped compartment! But when we looked inside, there was no water damage, so we no longer suspected the source of the water leak could be from there.
While it was open, I took the opportunity to remove the damaged decorative wood.
I used one of the drywall tape knives to separate it from the plywood base, and it came off fairly smoothly that way.
Once I was removed, I used some of the cleaning products already on board to scrub the areas that had been affected by water intrusion. The fiberglass underneath cleaned up to almost brand new!
Meanwhile, Tom had been washing the salt water off the boat, and I noticed the window weeping! The water traveled forward and along a channel beneath the window and down at a split in the channel. Eureka! We can reseal the windows and call this one solved!
