The Rot is Out

Yesterday was a gorgeous Saturday afternoon in Minnesota, and Dad's visiting from Boston. I talked him into helping out with the SeaCamper. We only spent a couple of hours working, after a late brunch of gingerbread pancakes and bacon and needing to get ready for an early show at the Brave New Workshop comedy theater.

I worked on the transom, and dad tackled the faded "woody" stick-on material. All of the printed on fake wood grain is faded, and the brown color itself no longer shares even a slight resemblance to wood, so the plastic contact paper type material just has to go. Dad scraped, picked, pulled, and scraped some more, managing to get a six or seven foot long strip by about eight inches peeled off.

I spent the time in the engine compartment, digging out the last of the rotted plywood. At the end of our work-session, I am glad to report that all of the rot has now been removed from the SeaCamper. Of course, this is just because all of the material capable of rotting has been removed. There's barely a molecule of wood or any other natural product remaining in her. As Glen, the service manager described her, "she's a wet noodle."

Next steps - hopefully next weekend - sanding out the last few fragments of plywood that are bonded with the transom and preparing the transom for new fiberglass including sanding the areas around all penetrations down to the 12:1 ratio needed to securely install new fiberglass patches. The rest of the brown fake wood needs to get peeled off. A little bit of existing fiberglass needs to be ground out of the areas where the rotten floorboards and waterlogged foam were pulled out. After all that sanding and grinding, demolition work will be complete, and we'll be ready to start the rebuilding process.

The hull will be restored to waterproof integrity, which will wrap up this fall's activities. I'll let you know how it goes.

Sorry there are no photos, I intended to take the camera and get a few shots of Dad working on the boat, and have him take a picture or two of me grinding and chipping away in the hold. Next weekend I'll do better.