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.

First Weekend, etc.

I moved in with Oliver and Lauren on May 20th and that weekend we headed to Mandeville to work on Soup. None of the work done during this weekend was particularly interesting, although it was necessary. Oly and Lauren had previously worked to gut Soup's interior, and this weekend was really just a continuation of that.

Oliver and I lugged the ancient Atomic 4 out of the hull and left it sitting on the dock. As far as I know it's still there -- heaviest thing I've lifted in my life. Tritons were built with A4's, so this was likely the original engine. If the photo isn't evidence enough, take my word for it when I say it was beyond salvagable. This opened up enough room to potentially include another bunk below Soup's cockpit. We now have nice little antique outboard, but more on that later. The cushions you see in the background were actually in decent condition and we're hanging on to them.



I spent a little while foot-washing several ropes that came with the boat. Most of them were too shitty to keep around and got tossed. We need new ropes. (That's our friend Tiffany Sudar in the picture - why she willingly volunteers to work on the boat I have no idea. <3)

Oliver checks our halyards.

• We pulled out the nasty antiquated fiberglass water tank. It was an odd shape that fit right into the v-berth, but needless to say it wasn't something you would want to drink out of. We need a new water tank.

• We stretched out and measured our sails. The boat came with two mains, two jibs, and our spinnaker. They had a couple of patches but were in surprisingly good condition -- also likely the original sails.
  

• Hooked up the bilge pump to our car battery and it ran fine. Got a few inches of misc. rain water and mosquito breeding grounds out of our hull.

• Finally, we scraped a ridiculous amount of paint and wasp nests off the interior.

Starboard wall immediately inside from the cockpit

Cockpit

V-berth to the cockpit

Cockpit to the v-berth

Then we all went home and got pissfaced.