Deck work begins (warning: low picture-to-text ratio)

Tritons' decks were built with a layer of fiberglass, a layer of balsa-wood insulation / support, and then another layer of fiberglass on top. Unfortunately, if any water touches that balsa wood, it rots immensely. This is bound to happen eventually, especially if the boat is fifty years old. As such, virtually our entire deck needs to be redone. This is easily the most time-consuming and expensive repair that we will have to do to Soup, and we've had a lot of naysayers.

Almost everyone we talked to, including "experts" had a different method of deck repair. Some people suggest going in from the bottom, most seemed to suggest going in from the top. Some suggested doing smaller areas consecutively, while others swore by removing the entire top layer of fiberglass from the whole deck. Some insisted on balsa wood cores, while others recommended various types of foam. Ultimately we went with a structural foam that comes in 4x8 foot sheets for $150 a pop (at discount). This foam is pliable by running it under hot water, easy to cut and extremely sturdy when saturated and glassed over. We also decided to do the deck from the top and in sections, and so we began with the bow, which was easily in the worst condition. Stepping on it caused it to squish down about three inches and felt as if it could give at any moment.

Also worth mentioning that it's now so hot that putting in twelve hour days is approaching impossible, but after five half-days we have finally finished the entire bow deck.

After cutting out the top layer of fiberglass off we were aghast at the condition of the balsa. While you could see the individual pieces (imagine a hardwood floor), it had the consistency of mud in most places, and we just scraped it all off with relative ease. I wish we had a picture of this, but we don't. Will get some of future sections.

Right side is glassed, left side isn't

The above picture is unfortunately (for education purposes) the earliest photo we have of the deck work, as quite a bit of work has already been done. We initially tried to remove the piece of lumber running down the center of the bow, only got a few sections broken off, and later regretted even touching it. The lower layer of fiberglass dips down underneath that board, creating a trough for it. If for some reason you find yourself in a similiar situation, note that it's much easier to simply work around that board.

The front stanchion was removed, as well as the first two on each side. Note that we didn't cut out all the way to the edge, as fiberglassing along that lip would be difficult, and you need some fiberglass to connect to the layers that you're laying down. Because the balsa was also rotted under those two inches or so around the edge, we did our best to scrape it out using screwdrivers, razors, chisels, etc.

After cleaning all the balsa out, the first step was to take a low grade filler and pack as much under these edges as possible. Also patched a few areas up, mostly around the sides of the center board as well as flushing out the pieces of board we had broken off.

There was a pretty sizeable crack in the bottom layer of fiberglass from the anchor-line hole to the edge of the starboard side. It's somewhat visible in the above picture -- the darker area towards the front of the bow. We did our best to flatten it out by screwing in a board from the bottom, and pouring some extra glass resin into it. Shoddy, but it ended up working out alright. The right side above has a single layer of fiberglass on top of the initial bottom support layer.

We cut two pieces of woven fiberglass to fit on either side of the board, as well as two pieces of foam. We poked small holes at one-inch intervals throughout the foam to better soak up the resin. Finally the first layer of glass went down, once it was completely saturated, but still wet, the foam went on, and a bit more resin was poured on top of the foam. We went home, got drunk, and let it dry.

Sanding foam

The next day I donned the respirator and began sanding. The foam stuck out a few centimiters above center board and the remaining edge of original glass, and there were some areas where resin had gathered and dried in pools. Everything was sanded flush, and more filler was added. The area was now sturdy enough that one could stand on it -- it still had a little bit of give, but the additional fiberglass layers remedied that.

Sanding

View of sanded foam. The 4x4 was used to weigh down the
foam as it dried (seperated with a sheet of plastic).

To finish we poured a layer of resin on the foam, added another layer of glass, poured more resin on top of it, and then put the final layer of thinner glass on top. All of this was done at one time, so that everything remained wet and would dry together. This was done in the early evening to give us more time before the resin hardened.

Finished Bow

The final result was amazingly solid and had no give. We're holding off on the final "pretty" sanding and painting until the whole deck looks like the above picture, at which point it will all be done at one time. Notice the thinner layer of fiberglass dries in a much flatter, smoother fashion than the earlier-pictured thick weave.

Hull Work, Day 2

Day 2 was do or die, since the boat was going back in the following morning. Our friends Dave and Tiffany helped us out, fortunately, and we put in a good twelve hours. Thanks largely to this weekend of work, I shed the blinding paleness and extra pounds visible in some of the earlier posts.

We temporarily misplaced the camera, and so unfortunately we have no pictures of the blister repair. I apologize to all the visual learners out there, but will do my best to explain. For each blister, one piece of woven fiberglass must be cut out to fit the hole left by sanding the blister as exactly as possible. Another piece must be cut out that is a couple inches larger, applied on top of the first. This functions to both fill the holes, and make a sturdy repair by connecting to outer areas of fiberglass. Professionals may do more than two cuts of fiberglass, but I emphasize that we're amateurs. We assigned a number to each blister with a sharpie, and then set each pair of cuts down on a large piece of paper with corresponding numbers.

A liter of fiberglassing resin is mixed with a cap full of hardener. This has to be stirred extremely vigorously in the heat, lest it harden and become useless. Both sides of the smaller cut are rolled over with as much resin as it can hold, then applied to the blister and generously rolled over again. The same goes for the second. This is a bit unnerving because of how fast the resin sets up, but it proved to be fairly easy with five people. We had one stirring, one rolling the cuts on the ground, one rolling the cuts onto the boat, one spotting and one handing the next pieces. We probably got all 40 done in under ten minutes (prep-work aside).

The temperature very much affects how quickly the fiberglass will set up. Because it was easily 95 degrees while we were doing this, it took all of ten minutes -- probably less. I wouldn't recommend this for someone who hasn't glassed before (like us), but again we had five people and these were relatively small pieces of fiberglass so it worked out. Later, when we did the entire bow deck, we waited until dusk (post on this in the near future).

After everything has dried, it needs to be sanded. How tedious you want this to be is really up to you. Professional jobs usually use several grades of sandpaper, whereas we used one. Alternately, professionals will sometimes put some layers of fiberglass down, sand it, put more layers down, sand it finer, and so on and so forth. We didn't have the time or the patience, so we used one grade, and just sanded the patches to be flush with the rest of the hull.

Finally, we were ready to paint.

Lauren and Oly painting

We wiped all the remaining dust / dirt off with acetone, and taped around the (blue) water line. The first coat was a primer that we let dry for about an hour. Ideally, we would've put on two or even three coats of this primer, but just didn't have the time.

lol art degree

Oly and I rolled the larger areas, while Lauren took a paintbrush to the harder to reach areas.

Finished (sans support squares)

Dave, Oliver, Lauren and I (very flattering)

John The Riot stopped by to admire

Starboard

Bow

Stern

Obligatory before-after

All in all it turned out to be a fairly successful weekend. We didn't get the squares where the supports rested finished, nor did we give the blisters the attention we should've. Additionally, more coats of primer and paint would've been preferable, and Oly found two or three more blisters the next morning that we hadn't seen. Still, we ultimately got everything done that we wanted to, and got Soup back in the water with her hull in much better condition.

Hull Work, Day 1 (AKA welcome to hell week)

Thanks to Oliver's employment and the (uncommon) generosity of his boss, we were given a weekend time frame to pull Soup out of the water free of charge. Work on the hull commenced immediately.

The crane

This entailed a good 45 minutes of fine-tuned movements of the crane. The straps, pictured above, are connected and then slid under both sides of the boat. This can be tricky, especially when the rudder is as far back as ours is. Pulling a boat out with a strap under the rudder could cause some serious damage to the rudder. As it's lowered, large wooden blocks are placed under the center of the hull and a bit of the boat's weight rests on them for stability.

Soup, as it looked when it was first pulled out

Step one was to scrape barnacles off, done pretty much as you would imagine it -- with large paint-scraper-esque poles. A handful of people around the yard joined in, as it's actually kind of fun. Many of the barnacles were still alive, poking their wormy little heads out and grinning wickedly. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time the boat has been pulled out in at least fifteen years, and thus there were quite a few barnacles.

Barnacle massacre (awesome name for a band, no?)

The next step was to power wash the hull and get all of the mold / fungus / seaweed / etc. off. Again, rather fun, especially in the new orleans heat. Oly and I constantly vied for control of the sprayer.

Oly wins this round.

Right before washing we put the supports (pictured below) on the sides of the boat, and removed the crane by unfastening the straps. Yes, the spots where the supports are remain unsanded and unpainted to this day.

Post-power wash

Post-power wash closeup

As you can see from the two pictures above, the power wash and barnacle scraping made a pretty significant difference (you can actually tell the hull is red!). However, there's obviously still a ways to go before it can be primed and painted. (Queue fun times).

Next step is to sand, sand and sand some more. This amounts to quite a bit of fiberglass and paint chips. Anyone who has worked with fiberglass before will tell you not to fuck around with one of those pussy dust (swine-flu) masks, unless you want to cut a good five years off your life. This alone was worth investing in a respirator, not to mention all the future sanding to be done. I think Oly got the 3M one pictured below for somewhere in the area of $100.

It's hot as hell, but on the plus side you sound like Darth Vader when you use it.

Furthermore, we donned disposable white scrub suits which we grabbed from Oly's employer. This somewhat prevents fiberglass from getting in your skin and itching for days -- but trust me when I say, you're going to get glass in your ass anyway.

Ask a ninja

Contrast between sanded and unsanded areas, and blisters

There are several things to note in the above and below pictures. First, you can see how large and far back our rudder is. Apparently this is a good thing, just annoying when it comes to hauling the boat out. Second, the difference between sanded and unsanded areas is very noticeable and approaching paintable. Third, the god damn blisters (white circles)!

Close-up of sanding and blisters

Blistering, or "boat pox" is a pretty interesting phenomenon, or it was to me at least. The cause is disputed as far as I could tell, but the most general explanation is "poor fiberglass work." Tritons, however, are known for their fiberglass integrity, so I'm leaning toward it being a more or less unavoidable outcome of boats being in water. It's essentially water that has penetrated a small area of the hull, creating a blister. It functions almost as a disease, because the more blisters you have the more likely you are to get more. Some are more obvious than others, and as you sand more and more become visible. For the most part they're raised, so the paint gets sanded off moreso than the surrounding area causing a conveniently noticeable white spot. Others are flat, and only become noticeable after they sit for a day and begin leaking water, or by tapping the hull and listening for areas that resonate differently.

Blister work

To repair the blisters, you sand them down until you're beyond the damp layers of fiberglass and re-glass them. This is done with a smaller power-sander like I'm holding in the above picture. It's tedious and hot work, but actually satisfying when you first pop the blister. Water has been inside for so long that it's fermented and reaks of vinegar. Generally it will squirt out in a good three foot arc. Let it drip until it's dried as much as it can, and sand the rest.

The immediate effects of boat pox seemed also to be disputed. The general stance seems to be "Well it's not supposed to be like that, so it needs to be fixed." That argument holds some water, I suppose (LOL PUN). If you're racing (which we hopefully will in time), the blisters will slow your boat. If left untreated for long enough, the water can potentially begin leaking into your bilge. Again, though, our boat hadn't been out in fifteen years and this didn't appear to be even close to happening -- although to be fair the fiberglass on our hull is ridiculously thick. 1959 REPRESENT.

End of day 1

All in all we had 40 blisters and probably another good handfull we didn't even discover. This sounds like quite a bit, but given the amount of time Soup has sat dormant in Pontchartrain it's actually pretty few. I've seen much newer equally-sized boats get hauled out in that yard with literally hundreds upon hundreds of blisters. By the end of day 1 and 20 sanding pads later, the majority of the hull had been sanded down and all 40 blistershad been sanded to where they needed to be, waiting to be glassed over.