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

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