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Refinishing the Boom

Since I will probably be hitting my head quite a bit on this, I decided that it should get some attention. Stripping the fiberglass off the upper deck became a bit boring so I took some time and sanded this down and began varnishing it. It's coming out nice so far.

Reworking the Centerboard

Finally got the centerboard out and began the process of restoring it. I began by stripping all of the old paint and primer off from her. I, then, wirebrushed the loose rust off from it and ground it to expose fresh metal. The original attempt was to try to get all of the pitting out of the CB but that just wasn't going to happen. After the CB was brought down to fresh metal, I ground the ragged leading edge and made it a fairly consistent straight line again. (It still has some wobbles in it but not as bad as before). This brought us to the priming stage. I used 6980 Rustlock Metal Primer, applying 4 coats per side to the CB. I then finished it off with 2-3 coats of Easypoxy Topcoat paint.

Centerboard Horrors

After we had gotten the hull off the trailer, we started work on lowering the centerboard. It is a 70 lb piece of steel that is pivoted towards the bow. Mounted inside of the cockpit was a pulley system that didn't seem to be working properly. We removed that and restrung it with new rope and wire. To our amazement, the centerboard had blistered along the leading edge from rust and was frozen in place. We finally got her to drop after trying to use several patient methods of removing the rust. It ended up being a case where brute force made more sense and out came the 2x4 and a 5 lb. sledge. She finally dropped, and we spent another 2 hours rotating the boat to get her out. As you can see from the images, between the blistered paint and rust, she was in pretty poor shape.

More pain and pleasure - Boat Images

Here are some more images of the boat as the progression as of late has been great. The first thing we needed to do was get the hull off from the trailer so that we could lower and remove the centerboard. While it was off the trailer, I took some time to remove some of the wood screws holding down the decking out and replace them as they had stripped out. This closed up the gap in the seam on the port side between the deck and the hull.