The Excitement of Removing Duct Tape Residue

During the rains, the windows were sealed from the outside with plastic sheet and duct tape. It held well through wind-driven rain, no leaks. On the inside, during the layup, duct tape held the backing forms. Since I am too cheap to buy the expensive tape that supposedly doesn't leave residue, there was a lot of it.

On the outside, two weeks of sun reduced the residue to a powdery substance that came off easily with a scraper, followed by Goof-Off, then Acetone, then a little more sanding to ensure there was nothing left to cause the paint not to bond.

The inside was a different story. Protection from the sun left the residue so thick and gummy that a scraper was hopeless. The chemical 3M recommends for cleaning it off just made it giggle. I sat there thinking about it for a bit. Then it occurred to me: Fire!

I lit the small butane torch and quickly discovered that duct tape residue is quite flammable. The torch made it bubble and fizzle and smoke a lot, which converted it to a consistency that made scraping easy. The problem arrived when I didn't keep the scraper, which had built up a big ball of the stuff, far enough away from the flame. It went kerfluie! This in itself was not so bad, but the cabin overhead currently consists of naked polyethylene foam, which also wanted to participate. It took some lung power to get things back under control. I felt like Captain Jack Sparrow, blowing trying to put out the fire with each rotation after the restless natives had lashed him to the rotisserie spit. At least mine was above me and I could run.

All's well that ends well. The surfaces are clean and smooth, and after a little more bondo and a lot more sanding, the inside will be ready to accept paint as well.

Comments About Cabin Window Interior

I have receive a couple of comments about how I will handle the interior of the window repair, with the ugly fiberglass bordering on the slightly less ugly wood. Thank you for your questions.

I guess the photos make the wood look better than it really is. I decided years ago that the plywood laminate on the inside of the cabin sides was too far gone to save. There are many areas beneath the removed big windows and smaller opening ports where water seepage has caused the wood to delaminated, including the big area I repaired with fiberglass that shows in one of the photos in the March 21st journal.

The vision for the interior is to be mostly bright white with varnished teak trim here and there. So the plan is to fair the joint between the fiberglass and wood, sand off the finish on the old plywood, soak it with epoxy to seal it, fair with filler, and paint it gloss white. This deals easily with the fiberglass/wood issue.

I am a very long way from realizing the interior look. At this point, it's an awful mess throughout. First I need to replace the other 8 opening ports with ones that thru-bolt rather than screw into the fiberglass with 1/2 inch screws. I need to restore the integrity of the main beam across the underside of the deck at the mast and attach the main bulkhead to it with more structure than it currently has. I think I want to install another deck beam under the mainsheet traveler just forward of the companionway for additional strength. I need to install the new stainless exterior handrails and any other deck hardware and restore the foam insulation in the cabin overhead. Then there's the galley and other cabinet work, including a redesigned dinette area with an additional seat/tool storage bin. Etc.When I get to the finish work, the big refit will be coming down the home stretch. When I write stuff like this, the departure date seems almost certain to be in 2016 rather than 2015. I hope not, but...

Window Fiberglassing Completed

Today I laid up the last layers of fiberglass in the windows. It took a total of five templates (2 paper and 3 wood, each had a purpose), 28 layers of X-mat, 14 on each side totaling 112 square feet of fiberglass, 3 gallons of resin and hardener, only 5 paintbrushes and a couple of yogurt cups. The layup actually went quite smoothly. The starboard side is MAS epoxy and the port side is WEST. The only reason is that I had some MAS left and when I went to buy more, West Marine had stopped selling MAS, and the Port Supply discount made WEST epoxy so much cheaper. I had switched from WEST to MAS about 15 years ago when Ralph at KKMI Richmond boatyard explained that MAS wets out the cloth better when you use a thick cloth like X-mat. He's right about that - you can see a color difference with the MAS wetting the cloth better and air bubbles are easier to eliminate. But after grinding and sanding both now over the last two days, I don't think the MAS is any stronger. They seem identical. I see no dry fibers or anything after grinding on the WEST side.

Three wood templates, two paper ones to make two of the wood ones.

Backing form on the inside - packing tape used as mold release (not shown).

9 layers of X-mat built up to the level of the rabbet.

5 more layers of X-mat over the whole thing to surface level.

First grinding and sanding. Uneven original finish caused the
sander to remove some gelcoat at the bottom.

The secret weapon for fairing:  Bondo.  It sticks well to epoxy.
Note the map of South America. I sanded it off, but since I have
this handy photo to use for navigation, I won't have to buy
expensive charts if I go around the Horn.

The small brown spot that you can see in the middle part of the new glass is cat barf. After cutting the X-mat using the templates, I stored the pristine sheets under my office desk to ensure that they would not be soiled or molested in any way. Naturally, one of the cats needed to barf on something and ran in there to do it. Needless to say, the bond at that point is probably less than optimal.

Finished and ready for paint.

Next up: more sanding and fairing, then paint. Oh yes, and the outboard runs great!

Drought/Rain

By January 1 this year, Marin County had received only 24% of its average rainfall for that date in the current rainy season. This dry pattern prompted me to start the cabin window project that was scheduled for the summer. A few days after removing the windows, the rain started and it's been off and on ever since, with dry periods too short to do the back-to-back layup required to glass in the openings. California residents should appreciate that Kuewa and I have now gotten us to 52% of normal rainfall accumulation for this date.

While this rain has been collecting, I've completed the taxes, built an outboard motor stand, and have been cleaning and servicing the motor. I squeezed some lube into all the zerk fittings I could find and replaced the gear oil in the lower unit before yesterday's rain drove me inside. Reportedly, it's been at least 5 years since the motor has run and I'm looking forward to seeing if it will start.


The latter half of the coming week looks drier so hopefully the marathon epoxying will begin.

First Journal Entry

Greetings!

It's the first day of Spring, appropriate for the first journal entry of Kuewa's rebirth, of sorts. There are either 346 or 711 days until departure to the Marquesas, depending on how well the projects go this year. Currently, the two big cabin windows are out of the boat and headed for the dumpster. I say headed for because I'd rather not take the plunge and eliminate them completely until I'm sure the plan will come together.

Windows before removal.

The plan is to fiberglass in the openings entirely and then cut out new pukas and install 4 new robust Newfound Metals stainless steel opening ports. These are the gold standard in ports these days and I thought they might be overkill for Kuewa. But as is often the case, when I see how much labor and cost for other materials go into this type of project, and after researching available alternatives, I end up going with the gold standard. The difference in cost shrinks to insignificant when the waves are pounding aboard.

1" rabbet to overlap fiberglass layers.

The most important engineering question for this project is how to make a strong joint between the old fiberglass cabin side and the new lay-up. The cabin side is just 3/8" of fiberglass and 1/8" of (not so) decorative plywood on the interior. I routered out a 1" wide rabbet around the opening, about deep enough for 5 layers of X-mat. There should be 9 layers or so of X-mat filling in the rest of the opening. I use epoxy resin.

For additional strength, I may also add small carbon fiber dowels, or "pins", around the joint, epoxied in place.

Repairing delaminated interior wood with fiberglass.

Advice I received from four good sailing/engineer friends varied from "a butt joint of fiberglass to fiberglass with no overlap or pins will be plenty strong enough" to "the pins will be stronger than the 1 inch overlap" to "I don't think the pins are a good idea at all" to "a scarf joint is the strongest and is the correct way to go, and don't use pins."

For various reasons I won't go into now, I'm going with the rabbet joint, 9 layers up to rabbet level, then 5 more layers up to gelcoat level, maybe pins, maybe not. We'll see how things turn out.


Also today I received via UPS an outboard motor that left Helena, Montana on Wednesday. I found it on eBay. It's a 1985 Evinrude 15 hp 2-stroke. Only 4-stroke outboards are sold new in California and old 2-strokes are very hard to find. I want 2-stroke only because of the higher power-to-weight ratio, since I'll be hoisting it on and off the dinghy alone a lot of the time. Even in Montana, these motors are very pricy for their age. Outboards this old seem to be available only in fresh-water areas, although perhaps a good newer one could be found in Hawaii or Chuuk. This one looks in good shape, except the shaft seals appear to be leaking oil. I could see this in the photos posted on eBay (the seller was honest enough to show this), and I seem to have gotten a $150-$200 discount because of it. I was out-bid on eBay four times before this one.

Next task: laying glass.

P.S.  The other tabs above give complete information on Kuewa's history, hull and sail plans and specs, and incomplete information about the crew, etc. This info will be expanded in the future.