More Boat Parts, and boats apart

January 15, 2022 by s/v sionna 8 Comments

New bronze stock, eventually to become Siona’s new chainplates! Might as well be made of gold, the price of the stuff these days…

Hello? HELLO? Anyone there?

Yeah, we’ve been very quiet. Mostly that’s because Sionna hasn’t been in the water for the last 16 months. And partly because the process of tearing a boat apart so you can put it back together is, frankly, fraught with misgivings and moments (sometimes days) of ”What have I done…” – wide swaths of existential angst, and really, who wants to hear about that?

Sionna’s deck, sans bowsprit, lifelines, cleats, rub-rail, toe-rail, ports… Well, pretty much everything has been removed, actually. Even the chainplates are gone now.

It started with the paint. The four summers she spent in Florida we not kind to the paint on hull and deck. Sionna looked tired, and nobody likes their boat to look tired. We also were seeing a lot more leaks in the deck, spots where water from above was finding its way below, and aside from being a nuisance, that’s not good for the boat in the long term.

So we made the decision to remove everything that makes a hole in the boat – all the screws and bolts and vents – repaint her properly, then remount everything with proper sealant and attention. And while we’re at it, those chainplates – which hold up the whole rig – have been in there, uninspectable, for close to 60 years. Probably time to replace those too…

And so we find ourselves up to the nostrils in the deep water of a major refit, with more parts of the boat on shelves than on the boat herself.

It’s more than a little scary some days, let me tell you.

Sionna’s bowsprit coming off

The good news is, we have a plan. The bad news is it’s too cold in the boat-shed (loaned by a friend for the duration of this project – Bless you Gordon!) to do much of anything right now unless it’s small enough to take someplace heated. So that’s why there’s 20 pounds of bright, shiny brass on our kitchen counter. I can do the lay-out for shaping and drilling the new chainplates in relative comfort.

New diesel heater (black box uppper left), ducting (orange), etc. Looks much neater now that I’ve secured all the wiring, etc – and it works!

But speaking of heat, there’s more good news! Sionna now has heat! One of the jobs I did in December (to take a break from destruction) was to install a diesel forced air heating system. We’re very excited about the possibility of having a warm cabin on those chilly July nights here in Maine!

Meanwhile I’ve also been scraping old paint-

Love that teal color of the original factory finish? Hey, 1960!

Reinstalling the centerboards which I reconditioned last summer-

Forward centerboard going in

Located a couple of damaged deck spots I was looking for. Epoxy to the rescue once it warms up enough to use it.

We’ve been chasing a leak in the aft cabin for five years – now we know why

So that’s about where we are here in the second week of January. With any amount of luck and skill, we should be able to get her back in the water by the end of June.

Keeping fingers crossed, knocking on wood, and saying our prayers.