Wednesday, June 05, 2013

Cockpit renewal ... a back-breaking task!

After almost 30 years of teak mounted onto steel, it is time to replace many boards and to repair the damaged steel underneath.  This translates into lots of hours resting on ones knees while bending forward, plus climbing the ladder uncountable times to make things fit.

I have nice leg muscles to show for my effort ... my back, however, is less happy!

Now, the time has come to glue the new boards back into place (we used Iroko, instead of teak, similar characteristics), and to fill the remaining gaps between all the boards.  A slow job, and - as it seems, everything has to be done bent forwards without support:  a back breaking job.  And it is a very, very messy job, no matter how carefull we were.  You don't see the mess (could not take pictures, guess why!?), and you don't see all the stuff we have to sand off.  And, again, many more hours on my knees to clean things up!!!

While wood in the cockput looks great, wood on steel has it issues.  We cross our fingers that this will last another 30 years.  By this time ....?

But we are hopefull that our sailing season will start soon!

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