Replacing the rotten wood
As we mentioned a couple of weeks ago we found another leakage (click HERE) that we thought was in one of the hatches and the water had found is way down to the plywood below where it got stuck due to the styrofoam placed on the plywood. As mentioned in the other post our hull is sandwich material, but the core is not wooden in the structural parts of the hull. And from the aft cabin a part of the hull can be seen, as the deck continues in under the cockpit. The cockpit is then kind of built on top of the hull. Hard to explain, but the point is that we can feel the edge of the hull and it feels really strong.
But the more we have started removing the rotten wood we have found weaknesses and also the leakage, or at least one of them. The leakage is in the starboard hatch in the cockpit wall and right next to our starboard winch and a mooring bollard. And at some attachments the plastic is really, really thin. So we will not only repair the leakage but also reinforce this part. On port side we don’t seem to have the same issue, but maybe we will do some reinforcements there as well, just in case.
Some water had also found its way down to the wall between one of our big hatches in the cockpit and the aft cabin. Probably some water had been standing in that hatch and made the wall between rot. There was an old drainage hole into the storage under the aft bed that was sealed. We removed the rotten part of the wall to replace with new fresh wood. We also drilled a new drainage hole from the storage hatch but this time we drilled it in direction towards the bilge instead of into the storage.
We cut the beam that followed the hull further up and the wall it self below so that the cut wouldn’t be at the same place. This way it becomes stronger, which will be good even though this is not what holds the boat together.
Will try to make a new blog post soon again, we have been pretty busy with a lot of stuff and also we mostly been finishing the interior work, so not so much new stuff anyway. We are very, very soon finished with that so at that point we will have some before and after pictures to show and we will also start with other jobs.