Ariel of Greystones

A beautiful evening sail with Alan who is great company and a handy photographer. Great conversation, lovely sunset and an enjoyable sail, oh and great pictures.

Boom end

Sunset over Bray Head

Bowsprit

Boat launched and taken in a shakedown sail.

2016 Opener

On a Sunny September the two young men cruised the Mulditch Bank.

While the sun was out we had 14 knots of breeze form the south, along with a south running tide this made for a grand wind against tide sea state.

With one reef in the main and medium stay-sail. we had a lovely sail out to the Mulditch Bank and back.

The pictures form Aidan Coughlan paint the picture nicely.

Ariel of Greystones finally launched

The rudder was stripped down. I also stripped the tiller fitting and had it hot dipped. The rudder was made from layers of marine ply and is still in good shape. I stripped back to clean wood and sealed with epoxy.

The pick above shows the colour I have cloosen. It is close to the original green and is a mix of Toplac  Donegal green and Mauritius blue.

The rudder fittings are bronze from Classic Marine.

The mast step was sealed in polyester and glass matting, and while looked OK it had a hollow sound when tapped. I opted to replace  the mast step too. As the forward bulkhead was bonded to the mast step this too needed to come out. The mast step was as it materialised heavily decayed. It looked to be made of Douglas or similar. The picture below shows it replaced with iroko.

Mast Step and frames

Note the bulkhead is removed. I have stiffened the hul with a glue lam frame made up of 5mm strips of Douglas. The deck beam of iroko can be seen.

The original sole was marine ply sitting on what I think was Douglas floor boards. Both were showing plenty of signs of decay. As I had committed to replacing the keel band the floors need to be removed to assist in this process.

Each floor was replaced with with an I-Beam approach. The I-Beam was made up of good quality Maine Ply capped top and bottom with 50mm square Iroko  a shown in the picture.  Each I-Beam was wrapped in poxy and 300g glass cloth which hermetically sealed the entire floor prior to binding in the hull.
Each flow was bonded with a large filet of thickened epoxy and class matting over the filet.

The picture below shows 4 floors fitted. Note I have removed the ply bulkhead.

The pictures show the floors just before the cockpit sole was fitted. The sole was again marine ply that was sealed with epoxy on the underside bonded and screwed to the floors.

Floors ready for Cockpit sole

Floors (stern view)

Note the stern bulkhead and locker space and the forward open section.

The marine ply sole sealed with epoxy on the underside and all edges before being fitted. The sole was sealed on the top with 300g cloth and epoxy. Pealply was used to get a clean epoxy finish.

The new keel band is fabricated out of 4mm 316 stainless steel. I made a new bobstay fitting too.

Bobstay fitting

The band will be fixed with new 8mm CSK machine screws backed with a length of 50mm x 4mm 316 stainless bedded in Sikaflex. The surfaces will be primed with Sika 205 primer prior to the assembly.

Band fitted prior to bonding

Counter sunk 316 stainless steel machine screws

With the keel band bonded as shown, it was time to move to the next task of the interior fit out of new floors etc.

Bonded Keel Band

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As the keel band was heavily rusted, it needs to be replaced at sometime so why not now as i have the ballast out. It was bedded in with denso tape and as horrible as it is to work with it works!. In the vicinity of the through-hole bolts the denso was still tacky. The bands were in roughly 4 foot sections, but definitely the keel band needs to be replaced as can be seen below. I will replace with Stainless Steel reusing the existing holes.  I will not use denso, but opt for Sikaflex or 3M 5200 [plenty of it] and use stainless as a backing for the through-hole bolts again bedded in Sikaflex of 3M. The bob stay fitting I will have re-fabricated in Stainless to the same size.