I haven't been posting much here as I've mostly been working on our YouTube channel, however, I thought I would show some pictures of the new mizzen mast foot support work.
Water had damaged the mizzen foot bolt holes so I used a 44mm hole saw to get to dry solid ply. I've already removed the wet wood below the 5 leaking deck glands and filled with thickened epoxy.There was no backing plate, the original bolts just had washers beneath the deck head. The plywood support between the bulkheads fell off, not attached anywhere apart from by the headlining.This is my new FR4 backing plate (well it isn't really a backing plate as the load is down from the mast foot). Attached with thickened epoxy so that the load spreads evenly onto it. I'll be using 10mm bolts with large washers to attach the mizzen mast foot.I've filled the holes from the top with thickened epoxy. Notice the extra holes at the sides to make sure that there are no voids between the deckhead and FR4 sheet. I'm going to put a sheet of fibreglass on top of this to provide abrashion resistance and bind it all together. Then butyl before the mizzen mast foot.These are the new support beams, I've epoxy coated them (apart from the ends in the workmate, I'll do them tomorrow).These show where the support beams will go. These will be through bolted to the remaining port and starboard bulkheads and the 3 upright posts that we have added (plus glues with thickened epoxy and I'll add fibreglass tape to the joins with the deckhead. There will be a plywood "pad" filling the gap between these and the FR4 sheet. The goal is to tie everything together and make sure that the loads from the mizzen mast are carried without distorting the structure.
I am also adding some fibreglass tape to increase strength where we have cut away the starboard bulkhead to provide access to our "pullman" style double bed.
While doing this work in the aft cabin we have also finished (at last) the chainplate backing plates in the aft cabin. They were the first we did and we over complicated things with a full length plywood backing plate, plus a shorter plywood backing plate for the 3 shroud attachment points. Anyway the FR4 plates have been added and so that part of epoxy work in the aft cabin has been completed.
We have also been working in the lazarette on supports for the solar panel frames. As part of that work we found and fixed a void in the stern at the hull/deck joint and the damage caused by the davits that had been fitted without backing plates.
Now back to the video editing that will show all this.
