The Deck

Work has kept me busy lately, but fair weather and time ashore have given me enough time to return to Eurydice. I’ve thought about her a lot during the lapse, but I haven’t been idle. I honed old skills and learned new ones during an intense six-day Fast Rescue Craft training course, and I’ve been read a number of sea books which I’ll address in a future post.

            Eurydice’s deck is far less problematic than her hull was. For the most part it’s even intact, except for a small portion on the port side where she seems to have suffered some trauma that also affected her hull above the waterline. Whereas her hull was patched, however, her gunnel was left broken and bruised. Uncovering these blemishes is part of a larger progress of seeing her history revealed through wounds, patches, paint-jobs and neglect. As far as I can tell, she was mended several times in her original form, had one major rushed overhaul, and was generally patched poorly after that.

I know she was used as a training boat for Sea Cadets before my friend acquired her at auction, and I’m guessing it was then the rushed overhaul was made. All Sea Cadet Albacores in her family were painted sky blue from stem to stern, and that colour that shows up between the initial patches and the latter, shoddy ones. It’s like the layer of burned earth indicative of destruction that archaeologists discover when unearthing an ancient city and use to mark the phases of its life. Eurydice has her own Troy I and II, and Troy III is currently under construction.

Yesterday I spent much of my afternoon removing hardware and sanding. It was incredible to see the difference worked by years of salt water exposure on ferrous metals – whereas the stainless bolts were basically spotless and came apart without complaint, all of the straight steel ones had rusted solid and needed to be broken and then pounded-out with a nail-set and a hammer. One piece of hardware fixed with a stainless bolt on one side and a non-stainless on the other. The stainless looked new, whereas the other had devolved into a rusty clump.

I went to work on her deck with two electric sanders, removing the dings, blending where the paint had chipped, and giving the whole thing a roughing-up to prepare it for paint. As usual, my own previous mistakes were my worst obstacle. As stated in an earlier post, I had connected her deck back to her hull with pop-rivets and fiberglass. With the hull upside down, I’d been unable to appreciate what a sloppy job I was doing on the underside, and now I was faced with lumps of fiberglass covering the broad heads of the pop-rivets. I feathered this mess into the deck, but I left the rivets in place.

Next I filled the holes left by all the removed hardware, choosing only a few to leave open where I knew I’d be returning something to its original home. I also discovered plenty of other holes where bits of tackle had been removed in years prior and the holes left gaping. These, too, got the Bondo treatment. I was forced to sand out a chunk of the port bow a couple inches long that had a deep fissure, and this I made a tape mold around and filled with the short-stand filler. I don’t think it’ll be visible at all when I’m done.

Sanding the cockpit was the stuff of nightmares – uneven, covered with paint and fiberglass runs, and paint flaking-off everywhere. At a certain point I had to remind myself that Eurydice isn’t entering a beauty pageant, and that if I wanted the cockpit to look like new I may as well commit myself to a week of work. She’s already a beauty to me, and I’ve got to balance the finishing work against getting her in the water and sailing. The point here is to sail, not paint. Even still, I re-enforced the scupper-catch with fiberglass and sanded it smooth, and intend to do the same with the mast-step.

The ugly break in Euyydice’s port gunnel patched more easily than I expected. Am I getting better at fiberglassing? It was significant enough to have warranted previous attention.

First, I cut out the damaged area and sanded the edges smooth to receive the fiberglass. This removed the rotten section that had succumbed to repeated soakings.

Next I filled, sanded, and repeated.

Because the break extended vertically, I used the same technique I had used before to replace a whole missing piece on her starboard side; a mold of tape to create a reservoir for the filler, and sanding flush with the gunnel afterward.

            With all the fill-work sanded pretty, it was time for the paint. The Interlux Interdeck paint I intend to use for the deck and cockpit requires a primer where it will cover existing paintwork, and it just so happened that I had enough Petit primer left over from the hull to cover the deck, but just barely. The paint had separated entirely during its long wait, and I stirred for twenty minutes to bring the two parts back into harmony – alas, it was not stirring enough, and the first few strokes I rolled on showed clots that refused to undo themselves. These I will have to sand-out before the Interdeck goes on.

            The result of priming was that Eurydice now looks strikingly handsome, and very close to how she’ll appear when everything is said and done. I frequently have to remind myself that while the paint serves a practical purpose, it is essentially a cosmetic feature, that the real work on the hull was the strengthening and binding provided by the fiberglass. In any case, the last few days have been beautiful and sunny, and the singing of Spring birds has spurred me on to get the old Albacore into the water as quickly as possible, all delays made for good seamanship excepted.