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.
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