Luckily, he had brought along some attachments for a drill, including a rotating wire brush and a couple of grinding bits in various sizes.
It took no time at all to knock away the wet and rotted fiberglass along the inside of the keel trunk. First we started with the wire brush bit. Once the hole was exposed, Pops set to work with the grinding bit to clear away any broken fiberglass and create a smooth surface.
I have to give Pops some credit here, as he was very meticulous in making the surface and surrounding edges as smooth and even in contour as possible. I guess he was really enjoying the work.
Once the inside of the keel trunk looked fairly smooth, a 5" sanding pad attachment for the drill was applied to the outside of the keel trunk to smooth out the edges and form a base from which we could start the repair.
Meanwhile inside the cabin, Anthony set to work cutting into the cabin floor to expose the keel trunk and bilge from the inside. This would give us an idea of exactly how much water was still in the bilge, and how much rot there might be on the inside.
He cut a long and narrow square hole under the port side bench closest to the bulkhead. Here you could see there was some rotting fiberglass from a previous patch job that was done very sloppily. I guess the Insurance Adjuster might actually know what he was talking about.
This portion of the trunk was hollow, and the fiberglass and epoxy left from the previous patch job appeared very thin. We could see the line along the keel trunk where the previous repair was made and decided that would be a good place to start when refilling the glass, working our way forward to the V-berth. It looks like this hull repair might not be as simple as we would like it to be, but it is still fairly straightforward to perform.
Anthony worked his way forward into the V-berth using his newly purchased Dremmel Multi-Max with the wood cutting bit. At first he only cut a small portion from the floor, right next to the head.
Here you could see straight through the floor, and subsequently straight through the hole in the keel trunk. This was great! We could be able to easily access the hole from the backside in order to form the fiberglass correctly during the repair. As Anthony removed more flooring to give space, he started to notice the amount of wood rot under the berth.
After a bit of discussion, we decided it was just a better idea to pull up the wood and replace it with treated wood painted with some marine-grade paint. Apparently all I had to do was give the word and Anthony started going crazy, cutting up the plywood platform.
After pulling up all of the platform, we found that the original foam from 1973 still existed in between the frame. Depending on the rot and damage to the frame, we will most likely pull all of it out, along with the foam.
Though none of this will be expensive to replace, I would still like to save as much as possible as I am keeping to my budget and would like to stretch every last dollar to the max.
At the end of the day, we looked back into the cabin and noted the path of destruction. Here is a photo of the cabin before we started working:
Here is a photo of the cabin after the work today:
Of course none of this is a big deal and all of it will clean up easily, it is still a bit intimidating to slowly disassemble the boat you enjoy so much. But, we have most of the flooring up, and the outside of the hull cleaned out. From here we just need to wait for the moisture to dry out on the inside so we can sand down and start laying in the fiberglass. More to come...
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