Haul-out weekend

The first weekend of July had been reserved for out-of-the-water maintenance. Auriga was lifted on Friday evening, and we had until Sunday evening to complete all the inspection, repairs and painting.
Our main goal was to clean the hull and renew the antifouling - a layer of special paint previnting growth of any wildlife on our hull.

Current Affairs

Another item on or wish list has been relocating the batteries and simplifying the cable routing. Previously, one battery was stored under the cockpit floor, while another battery (and the battery switch!) were in the starboard cockpit locker. Opening a locker lid at sea just to switch batteries seems less than ideal, and the inaccessible space under the cockpit looked ideal for the two batteries.

Putting the forepeak back together - the water tank

With any maintenance job, 90% of all efforts remain hardly noticeable until it all finally starts coming together with the last 10%. Our forepeak was long a pile of plywood and fiberglass, but now it is returning to its functional form.

Reinforced storage in the forepeak

Adding an inner forestay - Part 4

The yacht is slowly taking shape, as some of the long-standing projects near completion. We have finally installed the forward bulkhead (see here). After months of preparation work, we have mixed up the largest batch of glass-reinforced epoxy putty yet, and glued the bulkhead solidly to the hull and deck. Then, we added three strips of biaxial cloth of increasing thickness on each side of the bulkhead, continuing the layup down along the stem, as seen in the picture below.

Glassed in place

Flowcoat, sikaflex, bolts

Strongest eye on Auriga?

The bow and other efforts

Time is ticking. There are now only 3 month to go until we reach the end of our berthing contract at Fox's. (Let's not call it a departure date - that is just asking for trouble!) This week we decided to up our game and spend the whole weekend on Auriga, rather than just one day. I think the work paid off, and it felt like we got a lot done.

The toe-rail bolts

Work continues apace to put everything in the bow together before we seal it permanently with our new bulkhead. This weekend we worked hard removing, cleaning, covering in copious sikaflex, and replacing the toe rail bolts.

Giulia working into the night cleaning nuts and washers

We probably put in 10 hours between us, and got only halfway around the boat. Overall I think we removed and resealed 30 bolts.

Adding an inner forestay - Part 3

Preparing the bow for the bulkhead

As well as building the new bulkhead we had to shape a lip in the bow, positioned to fit the new board. This provides better sealing and, practically, something we can epoxy the finished bulkhead on to.

There was already a small lip to hold the original piece, which we used to position and cut a template from mdf. This was used to both shape the plywood bulkhead and also cut out to make a backing piece we could apply the new layer of fibreglass to.

Igor and Giulia - shaping the new template and plywood bulkhead

Adding an inner forestay - Part 2

Making the bulkhead

(see Part 1) The new bulkhead is made from 12mm marine ply laminated with a layer of biaxial fiberglass cloth on each side. All structural boltholes are reinforced with solid fiberglass laminate to withstand both radial loads and axial compression. We added two watertight access hatches - you never know when the chain behind a permanent bulkhead will get tangled! Overall, making the balkhead took many tens of hours of work. Here's the "making of".

Marking, cutting holes, sanding

Getting to grips with epoxy

A big advantage of having a fiberglass boat is the ease of making structural repairs - epoxy will readily bond to a well-prepared surface. While more expensive than polyester resins, it's good for peace of mind.
While stripping out the forepeak, we found the bulkhead behind the water tank cracked - primarily because of the unnecessary large cut-out. Also, the batten running the width of the bulkhead was not attached to the bulkhead itself. Moreover, the chopped strand mat used to bond the bulkhead to the sides of the hull was not wetted with enough resin and came away easily in some areas - and the gap between the plywood edge and the hull was never filled. All reason enough to fix it properly while we have a chance. Here's what seemed to produce satisfactory results:

Repairing the tiller pilot socket

One pieces of equipment that makes sailing the boat easier is the tiller pilot. On Auriga, it is inserted into a socket glued into the reinforced wooden lid of the starboard cockpit locker, and attaches to a pin on the tiller via a plastic end cap. Shortly before the single-handed Biscay crossing it became apparent that the wood around the socket was rotten and hardly up to the job - a consequence of pressure-fitting the socket directly into the wood and the non-slip layer trapping any moisture inside it. The socket pulled out easily, and cutting away the non-slip revealed the damaged area of approx. 10cm long, 4cm wide and 1-2cm deep. The moisture had predominantly spread along the fibers.

Affected area