Archive for the ‘Boat Repairs’ Category
Photos of Dad’s Boat ‘The Toad’
While I have put a number of photos of rebuilding and repairing Dad’s boat, I haven’t put any photos up of the finished boat. Unfortunately it would probably have been better to take these photos before breaking the mast and punching a hole in the deck.
I took a liberty with name of the boat. Dad originally had called it ‘Prince Toad’, with a view of naming his next boat ‘King Toad’ or some such. I simplified on just ‘The Toad’.
The toad logo was from Dad’s business. I vectorised the logo and the guys from Graphic Effects made the logo. They did the work on the back of the boat as well.
The cockpit was painted due to the amount of damage that had been sustained over the years, plus the new foam floor, didn’t lend itself well to varnish.
The signage and logo on the sail were done by Dad.
Undercoat nearly done
The first two coats of the undercoat have been done. A few spots that haven’t been faired properly popped up, so it looks as though another coat is in order.
The spot on the side is where the hole has been filled in. The sides aren’t as smooth as I thought. The stern of the hull doesn’t have as much coverage as I would like.
Again the front of the boat prooved a bit tricky as well, with a couple of small spots requiring respraying.
Impulse 378, After the fairing
I have now patched everything to the extent that I am happy with, the back of the boat isn’t exactly perfect but I would end up with a boat that is all filler to get everything 100%. I suspect that somewhere along the way the boat has had a solid bang in the back and put everything off kilter. To do it properly would require replacing the stern with a new piece of plywood. Something to put on the list of things to do next time!
The boat has been sanded with 150 grit sand paper, and the various parts of the boat either fibreglassed or filled with epoxy filler. The marks you seen on the boat in the above photo is either undercoat under the fibreglass on the bottom of the hull, or undercoat that is deep in the grain of the wood.
The front of the boat had quite a few bumps and a fair bit of the fibreglass was cracked. This has been replaced and filled with epoxy filler in places.
The whole in the side of the boat has been replaced by a new piece of plywood. This has been fibreglassed in place then filled around the edges, to form what is hopefully a smooth side to the boat.
The back of the boat has filled in the dints and holes from the different sized pintles used on the boat. The back isn’t completely smooth but a lot of filler would be reqiured to cover up the problem, and I suspect it won’t change the performance of the boat. As I said above to fix this properly would require removing the entire sheet of plywood on the stern of the boat and replacing it.
The self bailers also required a bit of work, filling in where I had removed the fibreglass to get to the screws. These will be drilled out when they are put back into the boat.
At the front starboard hand side the glass had a few cracks in it, and some of the glass along the keel of the boat had also been damaged over time. Both these areas had been sanded back and the fibreglass replaced.
The next stage will be painting the boat. Hopefully the weather plays nice in the next couple of days and I will be able to at least get a couple of undercoats done before New Years Day.
Stripped Boat
Well after several ear splitting days the boat has been completely sanded back to either wood or fibreglass.
When the fibreglass was laid on the bottom of the boat the original paint had not been completely removed, so a deep burgundy color and white shows through in places. For the record the bottom of the boat had 4 coats of paint, a black automotive paint, then a red paint, a light blue and finally a white paint. On the side of the boat there were 6 coats of paint! Two different coats of red paint on the side, then a light blue that matched the underside, white, then a deeper blue and white again.
I am not sure how much weight this saved, but there was a lot of effort to remove the paint. Once the paint was removed the ‘scars’ of the boat shows through.
It is interesting to note that both of these ‘injuries’ on the boat are on the starboard side, suggesting that someone didn’t give way to starboard tackers.
A crack in the starboard gunwale was my fault. Cracked on the decking when getting into the boat.
Finally the hole in the side of the boat was cut out and will be replaced with a new piece of plywood.
Once everything was removed from the stern of the boat, it was obvious that a couple of ‘problems’ had been covered up.
You can’t see it from the photo but the pintels had pushed the plywood in, and then the wingnut on the rudder had hit holes on either side. It looks like I either have a choice or replacing the whole back panel, or patch the holes with filler and paint the back of the boat. I have decided to patch and paint the back of the boat.
One last thing on the boat was the self bailers hadn’t been removed when the bottom was fibreglassed. This wouldn’t have been a problem if the screws where epoxied tight, unfortunately 6 of the screws turned, and couldn’t be removed with out digging through the fibreglass. End of the day I now have to patch the bailer holes and will re-drill the holes later on.
Starting on “Prince Toad”
A couple of weeks ago I brought Dad’s boat home to do some work on it. Well there is a fair bit of work to do, but hopefully I will get most of it done over the holidays.
Here are photos of the boat in it’s ‘initial’ state. The hole in the side had been like that for a couple of years, and I am pretty sure that Dad found either tape that matched the paint, or even paint that matched the tape.
After the tape came of, the full extent of the hole can be seen. The second photo is upside down showing the size of the gap.
At this stage I am looking at stripping down the boat. To begin with I will be stripping off all of the fittings, all of the paint and varnish. Inside the boat I will remove the extra floor battens and replace with foam sandwich. The hull will be repainted, the inside of the cockpit will be painted, and the decks varnished. Most of the fittings will be replaced.