Wild Weather

There has been some wild weather here at Yaringa these past few days, and more to come yet.

The new beam has been coming along great. It has been fibreglassed and I pre-drilled then filled holes with bog to help keep it water tight. Some images are attached.

Fibreglassing the Beam

I had a lot of trouble fibreglassing the beam, but I got there in the end.

The first problem I had was that I cut pieces of glass and wrapped around the beam. The pieces were too long and overlapped which gave me no end of trouble as I tried to roll them flat and even. The edges of the beam were not round enough either, so much of the side consists of large air pockets.

One end got so bad I pulled the fibreglass off and attempted it again much later. You can see in the attachments that the fibreglassed beam looks quite terrible. Not a problem as it will be well hidden once placed inside the boat.

Sealing

I wanted to prevent the same thing from happening to this beam as had happened to the previous one. I pre-drilled all the holes that would be going into or through the beam with a large drill bit, covered one end and then filled with bog. After it has been installed and the final holes are drilled there won’t be any way for moisture to find its way back into the plywood.

Installing the Beam

It was a beautiful sunny day when I got up and so I got to work mixing the resin with talc powder to make the bog. About halfway through this process I heard some very loud thunder. Looking outside the hatch of my naked uncovered boat full of holes I saw to my horror the massive storm clouds.

Working as fast as I could, the bog was slapped onto the top of the beam and quickly pushed into place. I had prepared bits of ply with holes drilled that I screwed into the beam from the deck. This would help hold the beam into place until it set. Tarps were pulled over the boat in a cautious hurry as to not tear them or add any more holes. It was about half a minute later that the hail, then the rain started pouring down.

But I am happy to say that the beam has been installed and that has been a huge milestone for me. Next up I will work on sorting out the mast base which has a bit of a twist to it. Perhaps a new one will need to be fabricated.