May 13, 10 - Spring Spring came early this year, but I was tied up with other work and didn't start work on Tortuga until May 1. I started wrk this year by replacing the last frame forward of the galley. Things have gone a bit slowly because I am also doing the pre-launch work on my sailboat, which has a May 24th launch date. Yesterday I finished the frame, so today I started tearing out the galley, which is all that remains of the interior.
This picture was taken at about 2 PM today and shows the view looking aft from the head. You can see the partial bulkheads that separate the galley area from the main cabin as well as a bit of the galley to port.
This is the starboard side of the galley area. The cutour in the counter top iss where the stove was located. I had already removed the cabinet doors and drawers when I took this picture.
This is the port side of the galley showing the counter top and sink. Again, I had aready removed the cabinet doors and dwarer when I took this picture.
Here is the port side of the galley area about an hour after the pictures above were taken.
The first step in tearing out the galley was to remove all the cabinet doors and drawers. Next I set to on the starboard side. After about an hour I had the cabinets out. I also removed the old bulkhead, removed the ceilings up to the third stringer and cut out some of the sole. I was surprised to find that the frames I had left to work on had been partially sistered. The sisters extend from the shear down to just below the turn of the bilge. After I finished on the starboard side, I started wotk to port and found the same sort of sistering arrangement. The sister frames are all sound and they are bronze fastened. That means that my task is much easier than I thought it was going to be. I was expecting to have to replace the frames from a foot above the waterline on one side to a foot above the waterline on the other side. That would have meant laminating five approximately 12 foot long frames and scarfing them into the sound upper parts of the original frames. Finding the sound sister frames means that I only have to make up new wood for the 4 feet or so between the port and starboard sisters. Furthermore the pieces I have to laminate are not particularly curved, so the lamination will be much easier than doing the strongly curved 12' long pieces. This will make the remaining frame work go much more quickly than I originally planned. In addition to scarfing in new wood between the sister frames, I will remove the original frames to a bit above the waterline, remove all the old iron fasteners and plug the resulting holes. The result will be a lighter hull with no iron fasteners below the waterline. Tomorrow I will finish tearing out the remains of the galley on the port side.
May 14, 10 - This morning I finished ripping out the port side of the galley as shown in the picture below. However, once I for the ceilings out, I discovered that things are not quite as rosy as I thought yesterday. What a surprise on a 74 year olf wood boat. What I found is that the sister frames are not all on the same side of the old frames on both sides of the boat. Two sister frame pairs line up, but four do not. I haven't yet decided how I am going to deal with that discrepancy.
Looking aft at the galley. Everything is now ripped out but the cabin sole which I am leaving in until it has to come out because it provides a work surface.
June 15, 2010 - This afternoon at 4:10 PM I finished putting the last new frame in. The picture below shows the inside of the cabin looking aft. Compare it to the picture immediately above. The last 6 frames took a bit more time that I expected because I had to move four sister frames so that the sisters would be aligned on port and starboard. Moving those frames involved moving a thru-hull (take old thru-hull out, epoxy a plug into the hole, drill a new hole and install a new thru-hull with backing block and proper seacock. In addition, when I took the steam bent sisters out, they relaxed a bit and didn't fit when I went to replace them. Since I am working alone, drawing them down to the hull involved drilling through the plank and frame at several places and using through bolts to draw the frames down to the planking before screwing the planks to the moved frames. I also spent considerable time getting my sailboat ready to launch and then launching it. Of course, I couldn't neglect the sailboat, so I had to go sailing a few times. Anyway, the major structural work on the boat is now done except for replacing the stringers I took out, putting in a few bungs and some painting. The next phase is to replace the six planks I removed.
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