The Westlake Pirates

The majority of work on Saturday was done by Gary and I, while Kristin fulfilled her obligations at the cat shelter she volunteers at. We did some work on the engines, getting them fired up, scrubbed up, and in general working order. Nothing major there, other than replacing one hose and re-sealing a gasket. Dinnertime finally rolled around, as did Kristin, and we called the major work complete for the evening, so Gary departed and we went off in search of the grocery store.

A word of warning when moving or generally spending an overnight in a new location - bring silverware and dinnerware with you! Although the stove was working, we had nothing to cook with, so we picked up some microwave dinners, fruit and snacks. We had to stop at a McDonalds to beg for some plasticware, and luckily the cashier was friendly and gave us not only forks, but knives. So, crisis averted, we had a lovely meal. Another word of warning - don't get frozen mashed potatoes, for they don't heat up very well when contained with other things such as chicken or corn. Regardless, it was a meal well earned at that point.

That evening we discovered the first of the more serious issues in need of attention. The futon in the stateroom (reference pictures in the previous post... it's the one with the blue and white striped comforter) had a soaking wet corner. When we pulled back the dry comforter, we discovered the mattress had functioned as a giant sponge, and the small leak that was dripping in had mildewed a large corner of the mattress and the carpet below. Needless to say, this was a critical problem. We extracted the mattress and futon frame (wet, but still functional) and put them under a covered awning outside, and pulled back the carpet to assess the damage. The floor beneath showed signs of water damage, but the wood itself remained fairly sturdy. The more pressing matter was locating the source of the leak and determining the amount of damage to the side wall... but that could wait for the morning and Gary's expertise. We located a space heater in the office and set up the futon in the front room, and called it a night. The bullfrogs croaked us to sleep, punctuated by the Doppler swoosh of passing cars substituting for waves.

Sunday rolled around early, in part due to a lack of curtains on a few of the windows. We set to work vacuuming the dark, dusty corners where the carcass of many a dead fly had found final resting, and proceeded to start disassembling the leaking corner of the stateroom. First to be extracted was a fiberglass panel that acted as sheltered corner where the bed would normally be partially inserted when not in use. Upon release of the many screws, a stream of water poured out that had been held in place by capillary action between the fiberglass and wood above. This drained, we removed the surpisingly dry insulation and verified that the water was coming down in a narrow band near the edge of the window. Gary suggested we remove as much of the exterior flashing as feasible to get at the exterior shell and see what the wood beneath looked like. As we removed screws we saw signs of rust on many of them, giving hints of the spongy swamp below. We removed the port window, popped the neighboring panel, and set to work stripping out the rotten and squishy panelboard behind.

There's something immensely satisfying to me about removing old, rotten wood. I'm not sure if it's the way it peels without the need for a hammer or saw, or the resounding and squishy thud it makes as it gets tossed into a waste bucket. Regardless, we hacked, scraped, and vacuumed our way to the root of the bad wood and scraped down to the good wood beneath. We were pleased to discover that the leak appeared to originate in a narrow area of the flashing surrounding the top of the window, which had been poorly re-sealed following an earlier leak, and formed a convenient dam where the water could back up and leak in through joints in the outer frame. This isolated, we determined the approximate edge-points of the waterlogged wood, scraped them out as best we could, and set out to start drying the area out. Since Gary runs a Catamaran-building business, he's planning to "have the boys whip something up to fix this real good" this week, as soon as the sun and portable heater have had their say in whisking away the remaining moisture from between the panels. After that's done, next weekend we'll come back down, seal it all back up properly, slap some 5200 on the seams, and provide a proper outlet for rainwater to channel down to the deck and over the side, like it was originally designed to. After that, like a good pair of Huggies, we should be leak-free.

Meanwhile, during the destruction derby that was my adventure in the stateroom, Kristin demonstrated that she's no tool when it comes to working with a power buffer. The bow portion of the hull was still in need of a proper buffing and waxing before the final coat of paint was applied, and she worked the rotary buffer like a professional. If you need your car waxed up nicely, she's reportedly willing to do it for the right price. After she got that all nice and shiny, she took the caulker and sealed up the remainder of the upper flashing to ensure we don't have futher leaks like the one in the stateroom. The gaskets and sealers are, like the boat itself, now nearly thirty years old, and eventually they do dry out and crack. The new sealant should last at least that long, if not indefinitely, thanks to the advances of modern technology... and well past our likely ownership of this boat.

If all goes well this week with the inspection, next weekend we'll be applying the final coat of underwater paint, sealing up a newly repaired stateroom corner, and putting the finishing touches on corners and bolts to make sure they're waterproof and going to last. We'll try to take a few pictures next time, but this time we were either too busy or too tired to get the camera out and document the work in progress.

This boat may be a much better deal than the previous one (and probably in the end it'll have a LOT less issues), but we're earning this discount in sweat and sealant-covered fingers and hair.