Work Starts (a long road ahead)

The refurbishment started with taking off all fixtures / fittings and the floorboards. This was not an easy task as many fitting were fixed with heavily corroded screws, nuts and bolts. The worst corrosion was located on the transom where the outboard bracket was thoroughly attached, the remedy, after trying several methods came in the form of an angle-grinder.

Once the outboard bracket had been released from the stern we focused on the floorboards and revealing the bilge.  Fortunately this was in an ok material state but in desperate need of a clean and tidy up as there was lots of paint chipping, sand, silt and mud clogging the bilge pump inlet and rotting the floorboards.

The floor boards will need to be replaced, as the aft floorboard was rotten and snapped in two as it was removed, however we can use the old boards as templates for new ones.

Finally we stripped most of the fittings from the deck (again problems of dis-similar metals and corrosion made this a laborious task). We are keen to re-spray the deck white so we will fill all holes and wet and dry the deck in preparation over the next few months.

The priorities are now;

• Pricing a deck re-spray and preparing surfaces
• Cutting new floorboards from marine ply then epoxy treating them
• Fitting an new outboard bracket

Further investigations need to be made into:

• The forrad bulkhead interms of its water tight integrity
• Placing a drain hole through the forrad winch / mast foot section of the bilge into the rest of the bilge, so that water can flow away from the winch base.

New photos can be viewed on the flikr photo stream on the right hand side of the blog or at GBR_K1790

Pressure washing grime out of the bilge 

Most deck fittings removed