Yep, stuffs been going on. I actually took most of last week off from work to work on the boat. I have the bottom just about wrapped up. -- A lot of work there, scraping to bare wood, a quick sanding, tedious seam compound, and a first coat of bottom point.
Lapstrake boats are not built, or intended to be caulked at all like a carvel planked wood boat. The planks are overlapped and riveted every 2 inches, tight plank to plank with nothing between them (except for Chris Craft lapstrake sea skiffs, which were plywood planked and built with a bead of Thiokol in the lap.) Anyway, .... As a lapstrake boat ages the rivets can tend to loosen up a bit and the wood doesn't swell up and expand quite as much as when it is new, so often times some level of 'caulking' is needed. The trick is "how much?". You really want to use as little as possible, and whatever is used should remain soft so that it can squeeze out of the seam as the wood expands when it gets wet. A bit of a catch 22, ..... especially after 15 years of drying out, the bottom is really dry (light coming through a good number of laps), so it needs some caulking, but how much?? Yes it will leak like 'an old peach basket' when tossed in the water, and after 2-3 days (with luck) it will be pretty tight. However for those couple of days you do need to be able to pump the water out faster than it comes in, so caulking is necessary.
I decided to 'caulk' all the seams I could with a soft underwater seam compound that will squeeze out as needed. That meant going over about 500 feet of seams with a 1" putty knife, kind of tedious to say the least.
Things just sort of seem to go on forever when under there!
There are also hundreds of rivet heads that need re-puttying.
When the boat was built the keel had some small 'defects' in the wood that had "Dutchmen" installed. A couple were loose, and one had fallen out years ago, so I replaced that. ------- When you have a 25 foot long x 3 inch thick x 17 inch high stick of oak for a keel and it has some small defects (knots, sap pocket, etc) you aren't going to scrap it, you repair the spots by putting in Dutchmen. These are just small cosmetic repairs.
Here is one that actually had some depth and had two layers set in
Here is the one I replaced (white oak set in roofing tar).
After the caulking was addressed and the first coat of bottom paint on it was time to begin the process of actually getting her ready for some water. Since last Sunday I have had a garden hose with a spray nozzle just barely spraying a bit of water in her bilge. I have been moving it here and there a couple of times a day. At first the water was going out as fast as it was going in. after the first day or so that began to change, and now I can really see where the "lawn sprinkler" has slowed up. More is staying in than going out!.
Because I can only wet so much of her bottom from the inside she will still leak like a sieve when she goes in, but I hope this will make it much more manageable.
- Grandad
