Osmosis - The battle Begins

Another spell of rain was predicted a few weeks ago, so I was reluctant to pull the tarp back on the boat. Instead I slowly went around the hull (yet again), inspecting every inch very closely. From the very beginning, I'd had no illusions about osmosis in Sentina. Its to be expected in a boat of this vintage. I knew she'd probably have it bad, and boy was I right. She seems to have a very advanced case of the dreaded pox.

As I was inspecting the hull, I noticed a little globule of water just hanging from the propellor aperture. There was no sign of run off on the hull's surface, and it hadn't rained all week. I also noted a bit of a puddle on the ground beneath this area. Looks like it'd been dripping for a while.

Detective that I am, I figured the water was coming out of the laminate. My earlier research into the treatment of serious osmosis cases, led me to understand that the entire gelcoat would have to be stripped off. Then the laminate underneath must be allowed to dry out, before rebuilding with barrier coats of epoxy. Apparently this is a bastard of a job, requiring the use of grinders and/or 'gelcoat peelers' (like an electric plane). When I made the decision to take this project on, I had naively figured I'd get this particular job done by professionals. Of course, in my financial situation, I now realise that this is not an option. I'll have to do the job myself. Since the gelcoat was already popping off in many places (presumably due to the hull shrinking as the water escaped), I decided to see if I could scrape some of it off by hand.

I grabbed an old paint scraper and had a bit of a dig into a blister.

The gelcoat easily came away, leaving the laminate exposed. I kept going along seams of loosened gelcoat. The exposed patch got bigger.

And bigger.

And bigger.

By the end of the afternoon, I'd gone down the entire starboard side of the hull. The laminate was absolutely soaked. I couldn't get it all, but I've made a significant dent in it. At least now the water can get away a lot more easily.

Yesterday I got stuck into the port side of the boat. As I suspected, the gelcoat didn't come away as easily here. I'm assuming that's because it gets a bit more sun on that side, and so is slightly drier. My scraper may have been a factor too (getting smaller and oddly shaped, from bits breaking off). Where I couldn't properly get underneath the gelcoat, I at least worked on opening up the blisters and letting the goo flow.

The blisters were pretty juicy little buggers too. Here's a short clip of the fun. I hope it works ok.

So if you're stupid enough to take on a project like this as well, and the hull is similarly delaminating, then the lesson learned is to make sure you try to get as much off as you can, as fast as you can. 

After the fun and games were over, I swept up all the fallen flakes of anti foul/celcoat from the ground and bagged it up. Then, not quite ready to knock off for the day, I began trying to clean up the compasses. They both look pretty knackered, but hopefully I can salvage at least one of them. 

I don't know anything about the box compass yet. There're actually stalactites hanging off the bowl underneath.

The hand bearing compass is a big old thing, that I've seen being used in a number of older voyaging/cruising books. I did some surfing on the net last night, and found out that its a 'Sestral' hand bearing compass, made by Henry Browne & son in England. Apparently they're a good bit of kit and quite expensive. Hopefully parts are still available, and I might be able to get it restored properly.

For now, I've pretty much drowned them both in WD40 and left them soaking. I'll keep you posted on any developments.