Decks

We pulled up the Plasteak that was on our decks this week. It was a job that we were both looking forward to and dreading as the glue on the Plasteak was seriously failing, and we wanted to know what was going on with the decks underneath.  To our surprise, we discovered that we don't have core in our decks.  Yeah, I repeat, no core.  Frank had spent the week drilling out the failed epoxied screw holes (left over from the original teak decking) and re-epoxying them with West System 105 mixed with some 404 filler.   In the process of drilling, he discovered that we have core only in a small section of our bow and on our cabin tops.

A drilled piece of our deck, notice it's solid fiberglass...

No core!

Had to redrill hundreds of holes and refill with West Systems epoxy

This was great news as we were anticipating having to address wet core issues, and having to possibly cut up our decks and replace rotten core.  So now, we no longer have to worry about that.  Though we may still need to cut up some of the core on our cabin tops, at least, we don't have to slice up our decks.  

Bye bye Plasteak.  Good Riddance.

With that being said, let's not forget the Rule of Three's here.  With every morsel of good news, the rule of three's counters it with a mouthful of bad news.  The fiberglass on our decks is wet, not wet core, but saturated fiberglass.  This, we suspect, is due to the original teak holding moisture against the deck for 25 years, and then the Plasteak holding more moisture for 5 more years.  While this is not a structural issue, it is still rather inconvenient as it will prevent us from painting and sealing the decks until it's been dried.  We also think that that was why the Plasteak had failed, because the previous owner had put the stuff on before allowing the decks to dry out, thus preventing the glue from adhering.  So now, we're thinking we may have to strip the gel coat, sew a boat cover, and let it sit for a few months (covering it on rainy days) so that it can thoroughly dry out for the barrier coat.  After that goes on, we're going to fair it, seal it with a primer, paint it, and non skid it.  All with some extra fun sanding in between each coat and process.  Can't wait for this as it's really going to change the look of the boat.

Looks so different already