Removing the Self Tending Jib

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Then, I discovered during the winter that it leaked badly, dripping through into the main cabin. Fortunately, we had a mild winter, but taking it off was getting more important!

Finally, I had to take it off to rebed the grab rails/dorade protector bars.
I didn't shed a tear!

Underneath the teak blocks was a very, very ugly thing.

It was also a wet thing, but fortunately not a rotten and delaminated thing. Whew!

Here's what this self tending setup looked like in May of 2001. My first thought when seeing this was "That's got to Go!", but I figured I'd sail with it for a year, since I had other Priority One projects to finish (like the rest of the rig...) I noticed during sea trials that the sheeting angle worked well, the sail filled nicely and pointed very high at that inboard angle. I also noticed that off the wind I had horrible sail shape. I mean, embarrassing sail shape. The kind of sail shape that would make me want to hide whenever another boat came by and looked over at my sail.

I drilled holes around the wet places, until the drill bit came up dry. Then I covered it with heavy plastic, suspended about an inch off the deck to create a warm greenhouse with air flow. Inside the boat I stuck a 125 watt heat lamp up at the wet area. Within minutes condensation formed on the plastic and began to drip off the edges. I worked on other stuff, and in 10 days drilled a couple of exploratory holes. It was dry.

You can see how it turned out (left.) No big deal. I washed off any wax residue from the paper, filled with a new layer of putty and set them back on the teak molds. There were still a couple of ripples and a couple of big bubbles, but at this point they were way too thick so I trimmed the edges and sanded them down to shape.
Below, you can see the top and bottoms.

So I have to cover the area, or else do major gelcoat work. To be honest, I have yet to be able to do even a "fair" job at gelcoat matching. Compound that with the nonskid surface and the fact that the area is scarred up,
and it was clear that I'd need to just hide it.

I took the old teak blocks and cleaned them up with a belt sander, then covered them with wax paper.

After smearing with a nice 1/8 inch thick layer of epoxy thickened with fairing compound, I laid three layers of fiberglass tape over them. Each layer was wetted out with a thin paste of epoxy and MicroFibers.

I worked each layer in well with one of those slotted rollers. I worked it too long, and the bottom layer of putty started to kick, then rippled up. So I stopped rolling the tape in, but it was too late.

The next step was to fill in the surface imperfections with a thick putty of epoxy and colloidal silica. On top of that I set two more layers of tape, worked into place with a thin mixture of epoxy and MicroFibers.

I rolled the tape under, so that the edges were extra thick.

Finally, I went to town on them with my big bench belt sander, and worked them into the final shape, then wet sanded.

They're really kinda cool looking at this point. You can see how the putty filled in the imperfections nicely. I think they're strong enough to live on the deck.

All my fiberglass pads under the deck hardware are painted black, so I put four coats of black on these and took them to the boat to see how it looked.

It looked just a little too Gothic.
Bad Idea! Yuck!

I tried two shades of Blue before settling on Interlux Ocean Blue. It's remarkably close to the Pacific Blue that I use for my Sunbrella projects. Six more coats of paint gave me 10 coats total. That should hold, and if it wears off the black will show, giving me time to do something about it before the sun starts hitting the epoxy.

I'll use this same blue sparingly on other deck stuff, and when I get around to painting the top sides will also use this Blue for the accent stripe and boot stripe. Eventually, it will be a nice unified and pretty package.

Personally, I think it looks rather nice now! You can never have too many padeyes, and these will come in real handy for tying stuff down.

Of course, now I have to lay track for the 90 head sail...

Update 2007 -

Those padeyes have come in really handy.
They're a great place to clip halyards, and are just far enough away from the mast to avoid slapping, but close enough to avoid interfering with the sheets when sailing.

A couple of years later I added two padeyes down on the foredeck, which allow me to strap the dinghy down on the foredeck without interfering with
easy access to the bow.