SV Appa

Week 4 or 5 now.  I lost track.  Between working, school, kids and life, I just plod ahead.
This is the final layers going on.  The front of the keel stub is getting 7 extra layers to build up that gap we saw a couple posts ago.

Sam standing next to a wooden fishing boats prop!

helping me clean the old Mercedes!

I think this is the final layup.

This is 14 layers of fiberglass

You can see the old and the new

New holes drilled.

The stub has all it's laminates on it now.  The next part is "potting" the keel.  The top of the keel and the bottom of the stub are not perfectly flat.  I hired the boat lift guy to come over to Appa and lift her up.  Then we slather on thickened epoxy to the bottom of the stub and the keel top.  The top of the keel has a plastic sheet on it that does not allow the epoxy to grab it.  We are making a mold in a way.  The boat gets lowered onto the keel and allowed to sit overnight while the epoxy hardens.  Then after it is all set, the boat is lifted again (again I pay at $150 a pop) for the travel lift to come over and do the lift.  The boat and keel should separate nicely.  Which they did.  Now the bottom of the stub is a mirror image of the top of the keel.

We let that sit and get to work on the inside of the boat.  We have to tear out the bulkhead and also grind the keel sump grid down to accept new fiberglass.  A TON of work.

The aft keel bolt with 1/2" plywood acting as the new backing plate.  The real backing plate will be G10.  Strong stuff.

After the "potting"

Tearing the plastic off the epoxy.  It went perfect!!

Travellift at Appa once again.  We have to use it twice more.  Once to put the keel on a final time and once to splash the boat in the water.  

I was feeling left out so I asked to start grinding the inside of the boat.  Watch what you ask for...

This was all covered in brown (??) gelcoat.  I grinded this crap off for 6-7 hours.

The dust gets everywhere

Me in my bunny suit!!