Core Repair COMPLETE! Vlog 1.5

We FINALLY got the perfect weather window to complete the core repair! It’s something we’ve been putting off and I almost forgot how terrible fiberglass dust is.  But was quickly reminded.  On day 1 Erik got out there with the angle grinder to bevel the edges of the seam.  Such mess!

When Erik was grinding he noticed a little more moisture past where our initial repair went.  He just ground out the fiberglass and scraped out the moist wood and laid in foam.

Day 2 he put the finishing touches on the beveling, and we laid fiberglass mat, fiberglass cloth, mat, cloth, and polyester resin to give the seam strength.

And on day 3, we mixed up white gel coat with brown and yellow pigment to try and match our boats off white color the best we could.  We got pretty close! We used silica thickener and a roller to try to match the texture of the non-skid surface the best we could.  After a sanding, I am so pleased with how it looks!  Right now you can definitely tell it is there because its been a LONG time since the boat has had a bath and the old gel coat is oxidized, kind of giving it a dull appearance.  We matched our color to the ground down fresh gel coat, so hopefully over time it will look better and better.

Now that big project is complete, we can go ahead and move aboard!  We plan on living on the boat for a month or two to get in the swing of things and figure out boat life.  Things like how much water we will use on a daily/weekly basis, how often will we need ice (seriously considering getting a compressor at this point), how to cook real meals on our non pressurized alcohol stove (i got a set of nesting magma pots and they’ve been great so far!), etc.  We’ve got a few more projects to wrap up, a few more things to organized, but I think we will be ready for the grand adventure in the near future!