The first project was to clean up and reinforce the deck on the cabin top. This is where the teak deck slides and various jib sheeting hardware arrangements have been through the years. The first time it rained, it poured through like a sieve. So, I took off all the deck hardware and the slides. I cleaned and reoiled the teak and upgraded all the hardware.

On the left, I have drilled out all the old holes and used a bent nail to clear out the old core which was bad in places. But fortunately there was no major delamination due to being stored for so long.

On the right, you can see the holes filled with west system epoxy and microfibers. I pretty much painted epoxy over this entire surface as it had pretty bad cosmetic cracks running every which way. I actually ended up sanding this area down smooth but wont be doing that to all the non skid areas !

I elected to try my hand at laying some fiberglass tape to the underside of the area inside the cabin top. I used two layers of 4" fiberglass tape with the West System before I filled the holes from the top with an epoxy putty mixutre of West and West microfibers. I didn't sand this down as I covered it over with wood as you will see.

I had a good experience with the fiberglass. You want to be sure that you measure and lay everything out. Do both layers at the same time. After cutting my pieces of tape, I mixed the epoxy and used a paintbrush to paint it on the ceiling. I thickened it a bit with micorfibers so it wouldn't drip. I rolled up the fiberglass and started at one end and unrolled it onto the epoxied surface. Using a paintbursh and a squeegee I saturated the glass and got all the air bubbles out. By the time I finished the second side, I mixed up another batch of epoxy and applied the 2nd layer of glass as the first layer was laready tacky enough to hold up the next layer. It really went very quickly and turned out rock hard.

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