Boris has said I can go out to play

At last the marina reopened a couple of weeks ago and I have been able to get down to the boat again, she was still there although looking a bit grubby it is amazing how dirty a boat will get even internally. The engine started first time after the enforced lay off. This week was the first time I had got down to some serious work I started by having a good clean up internally and then filled several holes in the lifting section of the cockpit sole, originally there were two latches which had rusted away and when I removed them I filled the fixing holes with nuts and bolts I hadn't sealed them and they always let in some rainwater so I removed the bolts and filled the holes with thickened epoxy after putting a layer of glass mat and epoxy on the underside to stop the filling from falling through.

Today I started on improving the two doors to the heads, when I bought the boat the doors and frames had been removed and the openings in the bulkheads opened up to increase the height of the doorways. When I came to address the replacement of the doors I decided to reinstate the round topped opening so that I could reuse the original doors subsequently I have been thinking that it would have been better to have made new doors and kept the enlarged opening as the new door frame would have been a much simpler proposition particularly as the original doors are not in a particularly good condition. However I didn't so today I took another look at the two doors and decided to see if I could tidy them up. The doors are veneered on one side with the foil backed wood veneer used on the rest of the woodwork, I don't know what sort of coating Marine Projects used to finish it with but it is certainly tough and awful stuff to sand off, the inner faces are finished in the same pale blue laminate used for the heads bulkheads. The door from the saloon had been over coated in varnish which looked a bit thick and tarry so I started trying to sand it back but it just clogged the sandpaper so I tried using the tungsten carbide scraper which removed the old varnish easily although it did not have much effect on the original finish.

After using the scraper

Just removing the old varnish has made a considerable improvement as can be seen above.

After removing all the old varnish

I am not sure at the moment how I intend to finish this door off but it does look much better I may try and give it a go with some wire wool. The next job will be the forward door I don't know what this one has been over coated with we shall see next week.