Coronado15 Rebuild

Just checking in. How is everything?

 

Was a bit slow to recover from my surgery (hiatal hernia). But I'm recovering nicely. I hope you are well.

Not much has happened on boat..but I do have a plan. I picked up a 4x8 sheet of 1/4 inch birch.. gonna cut two new 8' long stringers, give them a good coat of epoxy then I'm going to slide them in one at a time from the open transom while #4 monkey is down below/forward. He'll be able to reach through the (new last year) bulkhead and we'll press the new stringers against the old (where there is old ;-)). Then we'll use the paint roller on a stick to run some tape along the top joint, and probably tab it to the hull (which it never was before) at the bottom. I hope to at least get the new stringers cut and wet out Saturday afternoon. If we actually get them in the boat.. so much the better.

 

Some frustration here. We cut and wet out 2 5" x 8' stringers out of 1\4" birch. I then mixed up a batch of silica thickened epoxy. I coated the top half of one side with the thick mix, then passed the plank in from the stern to No.4 Monkey,who was below decks. The 1\4" rounded the bend nicely and we tried to wedge it in p!ace with some wood scraps but we can only wedge it to where we can reach. Which isn't far. We will have to see fi it holds at all. On the other side I decided to try and tape the top to the side of the cockpit as part of initial install. I wet out an 8' piece of 4" tape. I ran it along the top of the plank with a 2" overhang. Then passed it into the boat to my helper, Still Monkey No.4, unfortunately the tape slipped and came off before we could smooth it to the side if the cockpit. Too long a run, with too little access. I ended up pulling all of the tape out and trashing it. we then wedged the forward end in place and aft I was able to put a clamp on the old to and new stringer. I was then able to put about 8" of tape on the top edge. Once that dries we can see if we can get some on the forward end as well. I'm not sure we can get an 8 foot piece in there. The epoxy is both too sticky and yet too slippery for the limited access we have. Gravity is also not my friend. . I'm def. Feeling discouraged.

 

Glad to hear you are on the mend and back at it. Just sat down after a looooong 6 day week. Might head out to hit some golf balls and then stop at a place called J-Dubs.

Installing the stringers first might just limit space enough to make the other jobs more difficult.

 

Hah well that's encouraging..

I actually came back out and made some levers that I can put in there to apply pressure to the stringers 5 or so feet in.. hopefully it will at least hold them in place. So that we aren't trying to put tape on a house of cards.

 

Good News, both stringers appear to be holding in place just fine, so now I think we'll be able to go in and tape the joints with the use of the paint roller on a stick.

 

Post some pictures if you get a chance.

 

I have some updates for you, but the pictures are terrible.. went back out with #2 monkey (my 16 yo daughter) and #4 my 10 yo son..He went below and I passed a 6' gooey piece of epoxy and tape to him, with him forward and me aft we stretched the tape over the seams for the new stringers, I then had #2 run the roller along the tape to get it to adhere to the surface. We did the tops which where flat to the cockpit wall, and the bottoms which where 90 degree bends to secure to the hull. It isn't pretty but it is solid and more than what was originally in there.

2nd adventure.
#4 and I dropped the boat off of the trailer onto the front yard and rolled her over to tackle that underfloor. It's rough going in there.. I'm open to ideas here. it's crumbly and crappy to the cb trunk, particularly just aft of the barney post.. which we removed prior to flipping. I'm not sure how to get way back in there to fill in. I'm afraid I might have to cut the floor from the cockpit.



Since it wasn't a 1 afternoon project I had 4 neighbors come over to help me get the boat up on bench/sawhorse in the garage which is where she sits now.

3rd adventure... #4 and #5 and I got invited to spend a few days down on the Chesapeake Bay fishing with friends so we did that and came back yesterday. I was home about 3 minutes when I noticed something amiss with the boat trailer. See I had to park it on the street when I left. Well turns out a friend of ours fell asleep at the wheel and ran into our boat trailer, launched it about 100 yards down the rd. smashed in the rear most rail, which also supports the bunks which cracked and shattered, and the waterproof LED lights are smashed to bits...


He said he'll take care of it and sent me a text that he's put in a claim on his insurance so hopefully I won't have to fix that myself.

 

I suspect that the old wood will scrape away in large pieces. Maybe with a putty knife. If you need an estimate on repairing the trailer you can drop it off at a trailer place. They are very common around here. I'd guess $400 or $500.

 

It's a bummer about the LED trailer lights. Around here, those trailer businesses are very easy to find. You could fix the damage yourself or have a pro do it.

 

Update: I managed to get the old wood chipped out, my oscillating tool with a chisel blade was the go-to tool, and once I got over the apprehension of duct taping my expensive tool to a long pole, I was able to chip out the bad wood forward to the cb trunk. (I'm gonna need some goof off to clean up my oscillator now :-() Even though I got the rotted wood out, this was not a perfectly flat surface..



so I decided to make a sandwich. I cut the 1/4" ply to fit the space, then coated in epoxy.



The next morning I laid biax matt over the board and thoroughly wet that out. I made a toothed epoxy spreader by cutting lots of v's out of my regular plastic putty spreader and used that to spread thickened epoxy over the biax. I wanted to make sure I got contact everywhere, so I wanted the epoxy to have "legs".



Then I lifted this board up/flipped it over and slid it into my overturned boat so it lay on the "underside" of the cockpit. ( for clarity, that's old boat floor/thickened epoxy with legs/biax matt/epoxy/plywood).

That's when we noticed that the cockpit was bowed.. it was sagging toward the floor. So #4 came up with the idea to slide in my maul, my sledge hammer, our wedges.. anything that would fit that was heavy.. the good thing about the long handle tools is they could go forward, while the shorter ones we kept closer to the transom hole. I also put a jack underneath the boat with a large board and pressed gently up on the cockpit floor which removed some of the sag. We then left it all to sit overnight..



today with great anticipation we removed the jack, and the weights and there is almost no flex from pressing on it.. before it was extremely flexible. So we are calling this a win (at least for now.)


I might add some epoxy and glass to the sides and tie the new underfloor to the stringers just for a little extra.

we also dropped the trailer off at a shop today to get an estimate on repairs. They hope to get to it by the end of the week.

Stay tuned for future work !

 

I don't see the cockpit stringers in the last picture. I thought they went from forward all the way aft to the transom.

 

They don't go all the way to the transom, they stop about a foot forward.

 

How's it going?

 

I'm supposed to hear about the trailer today.. might be totaled. I hope not. Not much exciting beyond that, at this point.