The Periwinkle and Stargazer Blog

I'm completely unsure of exactly how many parts this is.. all projects have been rolled into one, engine, galley, head.. Either way, here is Terry's latest!

First, an iPhone self portrait showing the non-functional knotmeter above the compass in the aft cabin bulkhead. It's gone now, and the hole is filled in, along with various other bolt holes on both sides of the companionway.

The light is shining into the open end of a seat back where I am about to take the piece of fiberglass on the bench and glass it into the floor of the storage space behind the seat. The original plywood stopped about an inch short of the hull, leaving a gap that small objects dropped through, and since it didn't connect the seat to the hull, it also didn't provide any strengthening to either the hull or seat. The top and aft end of the seat back were not properly connected either.

This shows the port side aft on the boat with fiberglassing tools and the holes in the forward end of the cockpit where the engine instrument panel and blower had been. These have now been filled in. Details below.

**Quick note by Graeme** - If you have ever seen the show "Breaking Bad" on AMC you'll quickly realize how much Terry looks like the character Walter White. It's uncanny here...

I have connected the seat back and seat to the hull, filling the gap, and am about to install a level floor in the storage compartment, which will more securely attach the seat to the hull.

The floor and upper connections to the hull are in place, along with a connecting fillet to the aft end bulkhead, but are not cleaned up yet.

The hole in the aft cabin bulkhead where the non-functioning knotmeter was removed prepared for fiberglass repair.

This is the space where I have to work to strengthen the aft bulkhead under the cockpit, and install supports for a diesel fuel tank. It's roughly the size of a coffin, and may become one if the fiberglass fumes become too strong while I am crammed into there. On this occasion, I was doing preparatory grinding on the aft bulkhead and hull to prepare for fiberglassing. It's actually much longer than it looks in the photo, which sort of telescopes the aft end forward.

While I'm under the cockpit grinding fiberglass, Marlise is getting the dinghy painted in it's new colours, which will match the new paint scheme on the boat.

The holes in the forward end of the cockpit where the old engine control panel and blower were have been ground to a taped edge and blocked off with wax paper and plywood to create a temporary backing to fiberglass against.

This stick is jamming a piece of plywood and wax paper against the aft bulkhead of the cabin where the old knotmeter hole is to create a temporary flat surface I can fiberglass against.

Here is how it looks from the cockpit side of the hole with the blocker in place and the hole ground down to a taper so the fiberglass will get a good bond without creating a bulge in the bulkhead. It will later be reinforced from the inside.

Meanwhile, back at the rudder shaft, I need to remove the old bolts holding the lower end of the shaft to the aft bulkhead so I can replace the corroded bolts and reinforce the bulkhead and rudder support. The bolts had unfortunately been crudely fiberglassed over, so I had to chisel the fiberglass away from them, and from various other areas where it had been poorly laid up and was not well bonded, saturated with resin, or had air bubbles around sharp bends that had not been radiused off to a gentle curve that the glass would bend around without forming a bubble. More on that later.

Back at the cockpit bulkhead, the holes have now been fiberglassed in and the area is ready for a couple of layers of mat and roving wrapped around the sides of the cockpit to restore it's strength.

A small hole where the sink drain pipe had been run aft and out through the side of the bunk support was also filled in.

The damaged bunk sides where some past owner had sawed them in half to remove a sewage holding tank were also repaired.

Back in the aft lazerette at the lower rudder shaft post support, I chiseled off a large air bubble that had formed when someone had tried to bend inadequately saturated fiberglass around a square corner; something that never works. The bubble had gradually filled over the years with dirt and debris including grease and needs to be removed and replaced with a solid well saturated glass layup around a properly radiused corner. This is typical of the things you find when working on older boats that have had many owners, some of whom were not what you might call craftsmen, or even competent. The fiberglass reinforcing that someone had added over the original rudder support was poorly saturated, full of air bubbles, and not well bonded (or even bonded at all in places ) to the hull and bulkhead. It was also covering the bolt heads, making it impossible to replace corroded bolts without chiseling it off the bolt heads. It all needs to come out and be restored properly.

The storage locker behind the seat back is now properly glassed to the seat back, seat, hull, top shelf, and aft bulkhead of the locker, sanded out and ready for painting.

The hole where the knotmeter had been is now glassed in from the outside and the inside has been prepared for glassing the reinforcing support in place.

And the reinforcing fiberglass is now in place on the inside, completing the repair of that particular hole except for fairing the new fibreglass in to the aft cabin bulkhead on the outside and restoring the vinyl cabin liner on the inside. This is how fiberglass work is supposed to look: clear, completely saturated, and with all excess resin and air bubbles rolled out.

And that's it for this set of updates. The fiberglassing of the knotmeter hole was completed around 4 AM, so time to head for home and do the laundry and have a good shower to get rid of some of the itchy fiberglass dust and particles. This is one job I'll be happy to see disappearing in the rear view mirror.

This entry was posted on July 9, 2011 at 10:22 PM and has received 179 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

This is a few days late just due to an immensely busy life at the moment...

Anyways, Terry has made great progress and we're going to see a lot more out of him the very near future as he's busy working hard on getting the boat ready to go back in the water. Here are some pics and details of what he had to do recently (from Terry):

I needed to get the damaged area around the three holes in the aft bulkhead cut out more or less square and filled in with a piece of plywood that I can fiberglass against. The first thing I had to do was relocate the wire coming through one of the holes. This wire is supplying all the electrical power to the boat, so I had to disconnect and remove the old breaker box, relocate the wire, put a temporary plug on the end of it, and plug it back in to restore power so I had lights and could use the Sawzall and grinder.

Here I am cutting out the rectangular hole in the bulkhead from the cabin side below the cockpit floor. The rudder post tube is in the foreground with the grease nipple. Had to be careful not to cut that.

The working area appears roomy in the photo, but is actually about the size of a coffin. You can see the old damaged area in the cut out pieces. Very difficult to try and get it more or less rectangular in these conditions. There is a lot of stuff on the other side of the hole I have to avoid cutting into, and the fan on the Sawsall is throwing all the fiberglass dust in my face.

The replacement piece being cut to shape. This took many many trips between the boat and the bandsaw in the shop, up and down the ladder and crawling back under the cockpit each time to try it against the hole again until I had a good fit.

Looks like snow, but it's actually horrible itchy fiberglass dust from grinding the inner hull. Not fun. (from Graeme here, I know exactly what this stuff is like... it's really horrible and gets in everywhere and anything)

Sweeping up the worst of the dust. (from Graeme again, Terry is very brave and careful to do that, I would just get a strong shop vac in there to get it all out instead of sweeping)

The bottom swept out a bit revealing the smoothed over filled in through-hull holes ready for glassing on the inside. I only got about a quarter of the grinding done last night.

Dry fitting the new filler piece of plywood in place.

Epoxied in place. Lots of cleanup to do here when the epoxy sets. I needed to get this done tonight so it could be setting up while I am working in Richmond tomorrow (well, today, actually). Finished up about 5:30 AM; got home about 6. It's coming up on 7 now, and I have to get a few hours shut eye before heading for Steveston, so into the shower and off to bed.

More to report soon!

This entry was posted on June 23, 2011 at 10:14 AM and has received 116 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

To go with the engine replacement topic that we've got going, all of the work below needs to be done before the new engine can be put in at all. Lots of pics, amazing work from Terry. I'm not sure I'd have the courage to do so much.

From Terry: I have to divot into the glass around the through-hulls being filled in to create a space for the filler glass layup to go, then glass them in and fair them up on the outside. Next, I have to do a similar divot on the inside down to meet and bond to the outer layup, and then lay up some heavy mat and roving on the inside for some distance all around the patched area, especially the three holds near the keel and engine beds.

The first step to filling in the holes where the through-hulls and various bolts had been was to grind out saucer shaped divots around them down to a tapered edge at the inner edge of the holes so they could be filled with multiple layers of fiberglass cloth and mat without creating a bulge in the hull at that point. Here two through-hulls where a seacock and knot-meter impeller had been and a couple of bolt holes are being divoted out with a grinder to receive the new fiberglass patches.

Which gives this:

To have a solid surface to fiberglass up against, a temporary blocking patch is jammed in against the holes with a layer of wax paper against the hull so the glass patch won't stick to it, and then some blocking pressed against it.

Here three shores jam wax paper and blocks against the two cockpit drain through-hull holes and the holes which were located just ahead of the old engine bearers for the cooling water inlet and knotmeter impeller.

Close up of the blocking against the old cockpit drain through-hulls being filled in.

Laying up the many layers of glass to fill in the bolt holes where the boarding ladder had been bolted on to the transom.

Wetting out the freshly ground glass before starting to apply the first of about 15 layers of mat and cloth in the deeper holes where the hull is thicker. Old gallon plastic containers make good fiberglassing resin holders. I usually use a 3 inch short bristle roller; not a fluffy one that would tend to wrap the cloth around it and would not create sufficient pressure to get out the air bubbles.

A completed patch where an old unused exhaust port had exited below the counter just ahead of the transom. This is how a patch should look when done: translucent clear with no air bubbles.

The two old cockpit drain holes are filled in, with the larger holes near the keel visible at the bottom of the photo.

This multi-layer patch covers the three sets of holes ahead of the engine bearers with several full size layers over the smaller circle patches that brought the three holes up flush with the larger divot before feathering out into the hull. You can see the weft of the heavier roving as straight lines fore and aft. It takes a while for the resin to completely saturate the heavier roving and render it translucent.

With the outside patches in place and ready for fairing in with the grinder and hand sanding, the next job is to remove the blocking and shores from inside the boat and grind the glass down to get a good bond with the larger patches that will cover the holes on the inside. These patches will not be divoted into the hull, but will be laid up as patches over the existing hull glass for greater strength. The larger holes by the keel and the two holes where the cockpit drains were will be covered by the new engine bearers, so they will have additional reinforcing on the inside.

This entry was posted on June 17, 2011 at 9:42 PM and has received 103 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

This is primarily about replacing the engine and cleaning up the area, the galley stuff seems to be put on hold a little bit as there is a lot of work to do in the aft end of the boat.

From Terry:

The hull and aft bulkhead after washing but before removing the corroded nuts and wooden washers from the aft bulkhead and starting to scrape the hard black resin material off the underside of the cockpit floor (above the photo) and the hull. Don't know what that stuff is, but it has to come off before I can fiberglass this area.

Closeup showing the corroded rudder post nuts and wooden washers and the crude holes hacked through the aft bulkhead for the exhaust pipe and wiring. I will have to relocate the wire and then cut out a rectangular hole encompassing the three holes and glue in a new filler piece, and then fiberglass it in heavily on both sides of the bulkhead, and eventually cut a new hole for the exhaust pipe close to the right hand side of the photo. The fuel tank will be filling the space to the left. This photo shows a bit of the black resin substance on the underside of the cockpit floor just above the hole on the right where the wire goes through the bulkhead. There were patches of it here and there around the underside of the cockpit floor. I have no idea what it is: might be something to do with the old fuel tank that was once in this location, or it might be some kind of mould growing there. Either way, it needed to come off.

Close up of the crudely hacked holes in the aft bulkhead that need to be filled and repaired. The rudder post shaft is just visible to the left side of the large hole on the other side of the bulkhead. I'll have to inspect the bolts more closely for corrosion. The nuts were quite corroded. The other end of the bolts are buried under fiberglass in the aft lazerette. If the bolts are corroded, I will need to chisel the glass off of them and replace them. There is a bit of soft wood around the bolts, but otherwise the aft bulkhead is surprisingly sound, considering it was not fully glassed on either side and is exposed to some rainwater leakage around the rudder post on the lazerette side.

eneral view of the area as I am cleaning up the resin substance and aft bulkhead. If you look at the size of the tools you get a better idea of the crammed working space. Fortunately, I don't suffer from claustrophobia.

Good job! More from Terry to come as I get it all organized.

This entry was posted on June 9, 2011 at 10:24 AM and has received 92 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

All right, we're almost there. It's about time too, I'm a bit tired of working on this project and it seems like the worst has yet to be done! Varnishing..

Anyways, an update. I finished off my last post with the doors and trim going in, for this update I'll be talking about all kinds of fitting and cutting. Here's what I'm talking about

Those there are the new shelves. Granted, they're not quite perfect there but it's a very close rendition of the final product. I really hummed and hawed about this as I wasn't entirely sure if I just wanted to put back what I took out, at least in style. But it turns out that it just makes sense and looks good. The difference with mine though is that I've shaped the shelves to the hull instead of just running a piece parallel to it. This way it looks parallel to the front of the counter, which makes more sense to me and looks better.

I haven't cut the front pieces for the shelves here, the pieces that stop stuff from falling off, but I got on with that yesterday as you'll see below.

Once I had the shelving all figured out and cut I put them away to take home to do the finishing touches. Here's another angle:

Next up are the fiddles. There was a lot of fiddling around with the forward fiddle.. but I got it shaped up reasonably well enough to call it a day on them. The front one is just a one piecer that will go in the middle and leave two areas to the forward and aft to allow sweeping off of crumbs or whatever. For the remaining bit that isn't covered by the fiddle, I'll make a bit of trim to cover the white of the edge. Something very thin, I'll explain in pictures better in another post.

They're just clamped on for now to give me an idea of what they will look like. Pretty good I think:

Which reminds me, I managed to get the stoppers in for the doors. They stay closed now. Not too difficult a job, it's a just a bit of a pain lining up the pin to the latching part. They're done now. It may not be apparent from the images, but you open them by putting your hand in the top part where I've routered out a small finger opening. Just a little ledge to get fingers in and open the door. Looks clean I think.

Another fiddly item was the paper towel holder. I just knocked it together with a few pieces of spare mahogany I had left over:

and clamped it into place for now:

I can't put it in permanently until I'm done the ceiling piece above the water tank. As you can see in this picture too, there has been some painting going on. I cleaned off the chain plate that was previously painted over and then masked it off so that I wouldn't do the same. Turned out nice:

I got the aft end piece painted too with a couple of coats. It's really coming together.

Once that was all done, it was off to home to do the final bits for the trim and shelving. These are the pieces required:

That's a lot of measuring, cutting, routering, sanding and cleaning and then staining:

Next thing to do is varnish, as I mentioned at the top of this post. Once that's done, it's back to the boat to install it all. Now that's exciting.

I should note, I've never ever done this before.. I'm really hoping it will all turn out and not have anything go wrong while I'm under way. Whether sizes are just right or too big and not accounting for moisture swelling, definitely makes me nervous, at this point in time it's all coming together well. So we'll see!

This entry was posted on May 24, 2011 at 10:16 PM and has received 101 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Hot on the heels of the last post from Terry, we've got another update on the Periwinkle II!

Lots of progress being made, Terry has been hard at work cleaning up the engine area to get his new engine in. It's a really messy job with a lot of oil all over the place and the old mounts needed to come out to make way for some real fiberglassing by Terry to firm things up. There are also a whole bunch of holes in the bottom of his boat now.. so those need a proper fixing too. Anyways, on with the pics!

*Carefully* cutting the old engine beds away from the cross braces with the Sawzall. Don't want to hit the hull with the blade. Note holes where old through hulls were.

Terry cutting the cross bracing from the sides of the old engine beds.

Cutting the cross bracing into sections for easier removal. Note old "Bear Shit" - Asbestos mixed with fiberglass resin - smeared around old beds for additional support. That's tough stuff to chisel out carefully.

Front cross brace removed. The old beds were not securely attached to the hull as over the years the vibration and oil had gotten under some of the fiberglass fillets and soaked into the unpainted plywood.

Prying the fillets loose with chisels and wedges. The plywood engine beds have now been pried off the fiberglass fillets and are sitting loose beside them.

Getting the chisels under the fiberglass fillets. Looking straight aft down the propeller shaft.

The old fiberglass fillets and cross bracing removed and leaning against the bunk. You can see the light areas where the fiberglass fillets were still well bonded, and the dark areas under the main engine beds where the oil had seeped under the fiberglass and it was no longer bonded to the hull properly.

Cleaning up the debris. Looking straight down the propeller shaft. Once it is all cleaned up and the oil removed, I can lay up additional fiberglass to strengthen the hull and the bond with the bunk sides before glassing the new engine beds in place.

Looking right down the propeller shaft at the cockpit drain through-hulls. Note old rusting steel angle iron supports on the sides, probably for a fuel tank that was under the cockpit in the past. They have to come out also.

Cleaned up a bit before dashing off to a job. Lots more clean up to do. Note that the fiberglass fillets holding the old engine beds in place were much better bonded to the hull at the aft (uphill) end where they were not being contaminated with engine oil.

This entry was posted on May 12, 2011 at 8:06 PM and has received 107 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.