Yes, we are still alive, just crazy busy trying to get the Memory Maker ready to hit the water. So much has happened since I have last posted it may be hard to catch you up on everything. But here goes.
Back on March 21 st we started taking our girl all apart in preparation for repairs before we painted her. That was March, this is May, and still not done. I told Cindy from the beginning this was going to be a big project. I think she understands now why I said that.
Well lets just say taking a boat apart is much easier and quicker than putting one back together. It did not take much more than a afternoon to have her emptied out and stripped down. Then the real work could begin.
While the Memory Maker sailed great she was starting to look a bit long in the tooth for lack of better terms. She was showing her age and we just knew that hiding under her ugly exterior was a real beauty of a boat just waiting to come out. It was up to us to bring out her hidden beauty and along the way fix those naggin leaks I never was able to completely stop. But I think more important to Cindy was that we had to fix them because we now have a slip and it is 30 mins closer to our house! No more launching and recovering each time we want to sail. We are both pretty excited about that.
So once we had her stripped down it was time to fix the through the hull drain for the sink that we had removed and remove and repair a second cockpit drain that someone had added. I am thinking someone had too large of a outboard motor that made the boat list to starboard which kept some water from draining out of the original drain. They had a good idea but just really hacked it up in the process.
This is the sink drain after I have ground and feathered the edge of the hole in preparation for glass and epoxy. I was impressed to see that the hull was over a 1/4" thick in this area
This is the extra cockpit drain on the outside of the stern after the first coat of glass and epoxy. It was much easier to fix the hole on the outside than the one on the inside but I finally got it.
The rub rail was hiding all sorts of surprises. When I removed it I discovered a lot of damage to the edge of the hull where she had been beat and banged around through the years.
Someone had ran her nose into something going a bit too fast and smashed it. I had to cut and pull the nose rail back into shape before I could repair it.
Being 32 years old she had lots of stress cracks in the gel coat, especially on the pop top. I was surprised to see the majority of them around the attach points for the locks on the pop top instead of where the struts mounted to it. Someone must have really over tightened the locks at some point which pulled the top down and deformed it to the point it cracked, a lot!
Only real option to repair them is to grind them out and then fill them back with epoxy. This is just one area. There were lots of areas like this all over the top of the cabin. Lots!
By April 18th I was ready to pull her out and start sanding on the stripe to see if I could get it sanded. Cindy had already pulled off all the striping tape that was on her which just left the brown strip and hull paint. The cabin top was the original gelcoat so all it needed was scuffed where it was not cracked.
It has been so long ago now I can barely remember this day. But I do remember it was nice for April and kinda warm.
We had to work around weather as much as anything else as it did not always cooperate with when I had time to work on her.
One of my better selfies, if I do say so myself! On to scraping the latex and copper paint off the bottom of the hull now. Oh boy, can we say fun???
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