Back from a break

I have been travelling for the past week and a half, most of which spent in the Seattle area for a friend's wedding. It was a blast and I loved all I saw of the Pacific Northwest. Once all the pictures are sorted through I will post a write-up of the trip for all to enjoy. But for now its back to work unfortunately. It feels like forever since I've been on Windsong to do any work, so hopefully I can commit to getting some things done this week.

When I last left Windsong I cut open some larger sections of glass on the underside of the cabin rooftop to expose the wet core. The little section I took out in the previous post seemed to dry out pretty easily after just a few days of exposure. I wanted to test this on a larger scale and get an idea of how far the dampness went in from the handrail holes. As you can see in the pictures below, the darker area of the core is the dampness and ends less than a foot away from the holes. The area on the sides where the windows are did not get wet as it is a separate core piece. If I go back to the boat and find that this exposed core has dried out well enough, I plan on just cutting out the entire damp area, letting it dry out for a while, then patching it up with some glass.

I have gotten so many differing opinions on how to deal with this damp core issue ranging from leaving it be to completely gutting the core and repairing. I've decided to go an intermediate route by drying it and patching the glass. Leaving the core wet might not be horribly detrimental, but it would surely cause mold and mildew problems, and might delaminate the deck if the water inside froze. The differing opinions of marine repair seems to be a common trend, and a finely worded quote from a fellow blogger Jon Vigor sums it up well:

"The distinguishing mark of a yachtsman is that he never, ever, accepts advice from another yachtsman. He has to learn for himself the hard way, by bitter experience, again and again. I think it’s probably Nature’s way of keeping the numbers down, so that the anchorages don’t get too crowded."