Why To Not Use Particle Board

In the process of removing some more hardware yesterday I discovered another interesting build detail.

I was attempting to remove the sink from the galley, so I looked under the galley counter to see if there were any fasteners.  There weren't any, but I did notice a lot of water droplets hanging off the underside of the counter.  This was strange, as the boat has been pretty dry for the last couple weeks.

To remove the sink, I moved back up to the top surface of the counter and started scraping away the top surface around the sink.  Here is what I discovered:

Galley counter.

The galley counter was built from particle board with a plastic veneer glued to the upper surface.  The stuff was completely waterlogged, and was just a pile of mush between two intact sheets.

The best and most satisfying method to remove this stuff was beating the hell out of it with a hammer to break up the outer surfaces, then grab it by the handful and pull it out.

This entire surface was removed with those two tools you see.

Elastic Sealant

Spent a few hours yesterday removing more hardware from the boat.  There isn't too much left at this point.  Still have the stbd stanchions, both pushpits, the pulpit, the winches, and a handful of other things that I'll have to remove the tarp to get at.

In the process of removing a lot of the older fittings, I discovered that most of them were installed using an elastic sealant.  Well that's just great because around every single one of those fittings, guess what I found.  Thats right, black, soft balsa.  I will not be repeating this mistake.

Going up into the mountains today, but tomorrow the plan is to get some PVC pipe and fittings and try to set up a better frame for the tarp.  My current tarp setup does not give enough clearance for air flow along the port side, and there is no way that I'll be able to do the cutting and re-coring with so little clearance.

First Rot Sighting

Tonight, in the process of removing the cable thru-hulls near the mast step, I uncovered the first rot. The fittings were thru-bolted in 4 places each and the only bedding material used was a very flexible sealant. The balsa was a lovely shade of dark grey, and offered almost no resistance to my screw driver. This is the first section of deck core that I have opened up. I have a feeling that the whole deck is like this.

Starting The Drying Process.

Yesterday, I removed the port stanchions, port windows, and the remainders of the electronics from the boat.

Removed windows. Fein Multimaster with the scraper worked great for removing the old sealant.

Former site of compass on end of cabin.

Former site of electronics on back of cabin.

 It was pretty cold out today.  The bit of water in the bilge was frozen solid.  The bucket that I had been using to catch the drip from the foredeck hatch was frozen solid, about 5 inches thick.  I kept picked up a 1500W space heater to keep on the boat while I work on it.  It only managed to melt a bit of the frozen condensation from the inside of the cabin top.  I am borrowing power from my landlord here, so I can't keep the heater going all the time.

My main goal for the day was to cover the boat.  The tarp is a little oversized, which I am a bit concerned about.  I did manage to get it wrapped pretty tight around the boat.  It is draped over the mast, so there is a pretty good air gap to get air through.  I left the foredeck hatch off, the windows are removed, and the companion way hatches are off.

I've got to get down to the boat over the next couple weeks and remove the stbd windows, stanchions and the deck gear.  It should warm up a bit over the next week or so and the boat will start to dry out.

Final Sail Inventory.

After scrambling over the Christmas weekend, I managed to get most of the place cleaned up before Kimi came home from vacation.  I have gotten the sails sorted out finally:

Final sail inventory.

Starting from the left:

• Mariner Sails code zero (in blue bag).
• Mariner Sails PBO main.
• Spinnaker pole.
• Mariner Sails D4 main (in long orange bag).
• Unknown dacron main.
• Mariner Sails D4 selftacking jib (in orange bag).
• Auckland Sails dacron storm jib (in long yellowish bag).
• Unknown 130% dacron jib (in yellow bag).
• North Sails spinnaker (in blue bag).