Joe wrote:
Damn..sounds like you've been busy.
If you put the thru hulls in properly it should not be an issue.

Joe

This boat has too many thru-hulls anyway. But I can
work on reducing those later.

Right now I'm thinking about removing the rusted steel
mast step, and building a new one out of fiberglass. It is
rusting and flaking off in big pieces and I can't seem
to get at it from all sides unless I rip out the cabin sole.
So refurbishing them seems like a perpetural problem and
requires drastic action taken--ripping out the cabin sole
to get access to pull the water tanks.

I'm thinking it will be better to make a mast step out of glass,
and likewise the frames for the floors. The other option
is to make a mast step out of aluminum and weld it to
my existing Aluminum ring frames. That might work out
well, as long as I can keep that area dry--unlikely.

My keel is encapsulated, but there seem to be some
J-bolts, according to the sketches I've seen of the boat.
However, I can see no sign of these. They must be
potted into the bilge with epoxy filler. I can get some
keel bolts and backing in if it looks like a good idea.

One weird thing is the steel is attached to the aluminum
frames. I can't tell exactly how. I feel uncomfortable with
that. In any case, either steel or aluminum will corrode in
a bilge. I think fiberglass is the best option and it would be
the easiest one for me to do myself. My idea is to buy
some solid fibgerglass sheets and build it into a T-shape
on one side and tab it into the hull witha fillet and about
10 layers of tabbing. Perhaps I'll use some carbon
strapping like Doug used on his dinghy to secure the
area around the bolts I'll use to tie into the ring frames.

The top of the T is what I'll use to attach a teak and holly
sole for the floors, and if I'm clever about it, I can design
these with removeable sections for access to the bilge
and water tanks.

This work never seems to end, but I feel like I'm on the
home stretch.