Well, it's been forever since I posted here, but my Falmouth Cutter is now in New Hampshire! Here she is sitting in the yard, with a bit of fog.
All of the chainplates, save for the bowsprit stay fitting, need replaced. This is a shot of one of the whisker stay fittings. Note the cracks radiating from the bolt hole. I'm pretty sure I'm going to either go with round holes, or ease the holes on the new ones.
The forepeak area was pretty crowded when I bought her, with a propane-powered fridge, storage racks, sailbags, fenders, etc, etc, etc. I've emptied a lot of that stuff out, and removed the ~30 year old carpet that was doing not much more than absorbing water and odors. Here's an in-progress shot that shows what some sanding can do to remove old carpet adhesive.
I've also removed the bowsprit. It has some insect damage, and a little bit of rot around where the pulpit screws in, but it's salvageable. I bought some "Git Rot" penetrating epoxy, which seems to be working well. I'm going to follow the original finish schedule of a painted rear half with a bright finish forward of the bitts. Here you can see what it looked like after some work with my sander.
Speaking of sanders, I have to put a plug in here for the
Festool RO 90. It's rather expensive, but (depending on mode) can be either an aggressive rotary sander, a random-orbit, or a random oscillating detail sander. The small head size (90mm, ~3") is a downside when doing large panels, but a definite benefit when working on a small sailboat interior. Festool makes abrasive disks for it, but
Klingspor sells some that are also highly rated, at about half the price. Either way, if you hook this thing up to a shop vac, you get almost zero dust when sanding.... VERY nice in a small space!
