Deck plywood replacement

Sunday July 29 Skip came over to help me. Seems he is having withdrawals from being away from his boat. (W32 Hull #143 Delta Belle) That means I have an extra set of hands to help me! It was nice to have another Westsail 32 owner here on my boat so we could compare notes. So after a bit of talking we got to work. Skip worked on digging out the rest of the rot that was in the openings were the samson posts go. The port side opening was the worst one with the other side being pretty solid. Mind you Skip was digging this rotten wood out  with a small pick as that was all we had that would fit in the opening.

Dig, Dig, Dig!

Here is what the holes looked like after Skip was done.

While Skip was doing that I was hand sanding on the teak cap rail near the boomkin trying to get it ready for some cetol.  It didn't help that not 30 seconds into hand sanding with a sanding block I dropped it into the drink! So I was just sanding with paper for awhile then switched to the orbital sander. I wrapped the cord around me so if I dropped that it would not end up in Neptune's chest!

I can't thank Skip enough for the help plus I made a new friend! Skip is always welcome here.

Saturday 8-4-12 I went to the boat with the goal of epoxying in some new plywood where Skip dug out. My plan was to fit as big a piece of plywood that I could into the deck. The area I had to replace was small maybe 4 locations that were 5" across and 5" long at the largest. I found that I could not get a big piece in. So like Bud Taplin (Westsail Guru) told me I used small pieces. I ended up making up some epoxy that was as thick as peanut butter and stuffing it into the opening against the good wood then "butter" up a small block and push it end. I feel confident that I was able to fill all the voids with wood and or epoxy.  The result is shown below.

Bowsprit being built by H&L

After much research on building the bowsprit myself or having it built I went with having it built. I had a couple of places give me bids. The best price for a complete bowsprit built out of a single piece of clear Douglas fir was H&L Marine in Rancho Dominguez, Ca. Yesterday I brought them my bowsprit to reproduce. The estimated time to have it built is 10-20 days. This will give me time to get the bow, chain locker and deck core ready for the new bowsprit.

Here is Cesar. He is very helpful and knowledgeable.

I must say I was impressed with H&L Marine. Their shop is HUGH! They have a ton of wood in many species and can do any custom work that you need done besides the stuff they crank out every day.  They have an area where they sell the seconds, which looked pretty good to me. I might be shopping here a bit!

I got there right at closing so I didn't get the full tour but Deena did as I was taking care of the paperwork. She saw lots of impressive woodworking.





Look at all the tillers on the wall to the left. There are more that you can't see in the picture!

Here is about 1/3 of the shop area. You can see the laminating presses on the right.