Lead

This past weekend I drove up to Maine to check some boxes off of my list-

• visit friends

• buy some gear at Hamilton Marine

• eat smelt

• buy some lead

• find Steve

With snow blowing in it was questionable whether or not driving 5+ hours was a good idea. As anyone who lives in NYC knows, getting out of this place on a Friday afternoon can add hours to any trip...but for some reason it never stops people from making their escapes for a peaceful urban-free weekend. Nor did it stop me.

I landed in Portland after a 7 hour drive and got to my friend's house as she was going to bed: check.

We woke up to snow flying and cold temps. Perfect weather to go shopping, Hamilton Marine it was: check. 

Six hours and inches of snow later it was time to head up north to catch the night tide. 

The word on the river was that the smelt weren't biting, but we were hungry for a fish and what else is there to do on a Maine's winter night?

Around 10 pm we caught our only fish and fried her up in a beer can. She was a beauty and a tasty fellow: check. 

We headed back to Portland after the tide had gone out.

At 7:30 am I was to meet a guy in the parking lot of Whole Foods to buy some lead. I am still on the fence as to how to best wrap up this keel ordeal, but had to make a descision of how much lead to buy- 300 pounds, 400 pounds, the full 450???

300 hundred pounds was the final descision. This means that I'll probably end up with a keel filled with 300 pounds of lead and 150 pounds of concrete. There, done: check.

The next project was to find an allusive man named Steve. My buddy and I met a dude named Steve last year around the same time while I was looking for a project boat. I found a guy on Craigslist selling a Flicka project. It turned out that this guy owned over 50 sailboats in all states of disrepair. The Flicka was beautiful, but the logistics of moving the boat, the money that I would have to put into her, and the condition that it was in put me off.

What Steve had though was a sailboat junkyard with tons of used parts that he would sell for a song - sails, lines, chain, deck hardware, anchors, spars, rigging, etc. I had just sold my boat so I had no need for collecting more junk at that point. Fast forward to now, I have the need and Steve had what I needed. But how to locate some dude who's address was forgotten, number misplaced, and Craigslist add long expired? Technology.

At Steve's place we shot a thousand pictures of various cool boats, project ideas, and this insane space littered with countless sailboats.

I never thought that geotagging photos was that useful of a technological advancement until this moment. Within a few minutes we had our destination determined.

After buying the lead my buddy and I headed out hoping at the very least we could establish contact with Steve again. 

But what we found was a heart breakingly gut wrenching scene.

Nothing, nilch, nada. Just a small clearing in a Maine forest. It was like we had drempt the whole thing. Not even a sign that there was ever a sailboat that had washed up there. Unbelievable.

We stood in the space for minutes reckoning what had happened, what could of happened, and how on earth all those boats just went away. Then we were both struck with a profound sadness and grief... What ever became of that Flicka? The potential of that little seaworthy vessel. I was kicking myself that I didn't save her when I had the chance.

Big mistake: check

My only hope is that she's in a better place.

Digging In

Now that the deck has been lifted off, I can jump into some of the bigger projects. I have decided that I am going to reballast the boat. Whether I am going to use lead/concrete, iron/concrete, lead/epoxy, or iron/epoxy still has not been decided. That is a bridge I won’t have to cross for a while.

Right now, I think that my order of operation is going to be: 1. bust out keel concrete 2. strip the hull of hardware 3. dewax and sand the inside of the hull down to bare glass 4. pull the boat hull off of the trailer and turn her turtle 5. make all exterior glass repairs to the hull 6. repair the trailer - new axle, hubs, wheels, bunks, lights, well everything really 7. epoxy coat and paint below the water line while boat is flipped 8. put boat back on the trailer, add the ballast, and finish the interior 9. rebed all hardware 10. join the deck and hull with epoxy 11. paint the rest of the boat.Man, now that my anxiety level is through the roof let me get to what I have done: item 1. Bust out the keel concrete.

For anyone planning to do this let me save you some trouble, sweat, and grief and advise you to obtain a hammer drill by any means possible. I exhausted two different back breaking futile methods that led me down the hammer drill path.

After some solid sage advice from my wise father, I bought a Dewalt hammer drill off of amazon and raced it to my boat shed. Luckily the drill beat me and was ready to work when I was.

I spent about 3 hours pounding the frozen concrete. When my back and body couldn’t take anymore I started on some minor projects - chiefly shoveling snow away from my shelter, removing deck hardware, and removing the quarter beth plywood. The high temp was 17 degrees F, so I pulled the plug after 5 hours outside and retired to a local bar.

The next day, I was only at it for 2 hours and I had the rest of the 450# of cement out of the keel. I removed the ice encrusted foam that is located where the quarter berths once were. Appropriately, I used a full size ice chipper to separate them from the hull.

After cleaning up my mess and vacuuming the, now almost bare, hull I was feeling pretty good about myself and the job. I have almost obtained - blank canvas state. The potential of what I could do with this hull excited me and I drove back to NYC happy and invigorated.

       

         

       

        

Deck/ Hull Seperation

I walked around this boat a hundred times, looking, wondering, and questioning whether or not I should separate the deck from the hull. While circumambulating I was trying to settle an internal battle, repeating and repeating to myself, "Should I? Yes, it will be a lot easier to rebuild the interior.

Should I?  No, I can make all the repairs with the deck on, I'll just be a little cramped."

  

This was getting me nowhere, so it was time to make a POA.

Remove the rubrail and check things out.

I used a heat gun to warm up the rail and make it more pliable. 

This strategy worked well and the it came off without much trouble.

From what I could tell the deck and hull are held together with a sealant and rivets. I have read from others that the adhesive used to seal this joint is 3M 5200. According to Don Casey in Sailboat Refinishing, a polyurethane sealant, such as 5200, has a max seal life of about 10 years.

After removing the rubrail and investigating the joint it was clear that the joint has been compromised for quit some time. Kpeting is 35 years old...so, as expected the sealant has reached the end of its life.



The glass was in bad shape. It seemed to me that only the rivets were holding the deck and the hull together. After going down below and checking out the joint, it was clear how bad the situation was. There was light coming through the seam everywhere.

Something had to be done. I was contemplating patching the gaps with an epoxy mix, but it didn't sit well with me. My internal struggle about whether or not to crack the boat in half was over.

I drilled all of the rivets and punched them out. I am not sure if I'm going to re-rivet the boat together again, but I highly doubt it.

The glass around one of the chainplates was in incredibly bad shape. This area is going to have to be rebuilt...later.

Once the rivets were all punch out I cut through the sealent with a sawzall. It took almost no effort to cut through it.
As you can see:



The next symbolically frightening  step was to lift the deck off...there's no going back now.

I am glad that I did this and now I can contemplate bigger projects like reballasting the boat and stiffening the hull.

The only other boat project that I have done was on a Pearson 26, a relatively larger boat. This may be the cause, but I am continually shocked at how flimsy and under built this boat seems to be.

I have only read good things about Com-Pac 16s, but I have to say that so far I am less than impressed with the care that was taken in building this little ship.

The glass layup seems subpar in many areas, there were almost no backing plates behind any of the hardware, and the concrete looks like it was poured haphazardly. This is not a boat that I would want to take into the ocean.

Perhaps my expectations are a little too high for this boat, but I hope that one day I can say with confidence that she is a stout little microcruiser.