Cockpit

I dropped off the starter motor at South Eastern Auto Electrical services in Maidstone last Saturday morning unfortunately being a bank holiday nothing would happen until Tuesday they confirmed on Wednesday that it was in very poor condition but could be refurbished I had a phone call on Thursday to say that it was ready for collection the intention is to collect the motor tomorrow morning, Saturday, ready for installation on Monday.

In the meantime I decided to get on with smartening up the cockpit the top surface on the benches was a mixture of non slip deck paint and Treadmaster, the Treadmaster was coming unstuck in a number of areas so I decided to remove it all and repaint with non slip deck paint. I began with the starboard side locker lid the old Treadmaster came off easily. At some time it looked as though some attempt had been made to stiffen up the locker lid with three pieces of ply secured with countersunk machine screws and nuts however as the Treadmaster was coming away water had been allowed to leak through into the ply some of which was becoming soft in places. I removed the ply and in the three recesses on the underside of the lid I laid up three additional layers of GRP starting with a single layer of 600g woven rovings followed up by two more layers of chopped strand mat, the choice of materials was governed entirely by what I had to hand.

Ply replaced with additional GRP

There was some stress cracking evident in the top outside of the locker lid which is possibly why an attempt had been made to reinforce the lid with the plywood. Once the additional GRP had cured I opened out the stress cracks and the countersinks for the machine screws on the upper outside surface of the lid and then filled them with some thickened epoxy.

Countersinks and cracks after filling

Apologies for the inclusion of the shadows of the photographer and the steering pedestal. True to form some of the Treadmaster came off easily and some was stuck like s#*t to a blanket, turns out some had been stuck with the proper Treadmaster epoxy adhesive which made it a devil to remove and the rest with contact adhesive which came away much more easily but still leaving the usual sticky residue to be cleaned up. The hinges to this locker lid were secured with overlong countersunk stainless steel machine screws which were much too long and all of them were loose so while the lid was off I cut all the screws down to a much more appropriate length. If I had used bolts that were that much over length when I was an apprentice my ears would still be ringing I was taught that the bolt/stud should project through the nut by one and a half threads. There were also some stress cracks in the gas locker lid which I opened out and filled, for opening out the cracks I used the corner of a tungsten carbide pull scraper in the same manner as that used for the stress cracks in the hull topsides, see previous post of 27th October 2017.

Photographs showing areas where Treadmaster has been removed

The next task once the starter motor has been replaced and tested will be to clean up all areas where the Treadmaster has been removed and apply the non slip deck paint bur if the weather is agreeable the aim will be to get some sailing in as a bit of a shake down watch this space.