About Me

My photo
Alaska, United States
I am owned by Pauline and Mark Blasky. My hull was built at the Duncan Marine Yard in Taiwan and launched in Dec of 1980. It is a William Garden design based on the Pixie Design and called by Duncan Marine a Freedom 45. They are the fourth owners and have owned me the longest. They have done extensive refitting to me including replacing my entire deck structure and rig. My masts are roughly 10% taller than original and now are made of aluminium as opposed to the original wood ones, which, though pretty, were always problematic. You can read more about me under "MORE ABOUT SARI TIMUR"

April 29, 2019

Progress on the Winter Repairwork

As many of you know, just before we left Guam, we noticed a leak above the port side quarterberth.  Digging around literally a week before our departure, we found some dry rot.  We quickly got at it and dug out a bunch of rotten wood from the coach roof wall.  Then puttied and glassed it back before departing to Japan.

During the crossing to Japan, the leaks got worse so during the winter in Japan, we went at it a little harder. But alas, we still had leaks.  This winter we had the cover over Sari Timur, so Mark decided he was going to attack the problem from the outside.  What he found was that the glass coating on the outside of the coach had split away from the deck.  Over time (31 years ago was when we replaced the deck) water had seeped in and started to rot the bottom of the coach.  So he began cutting the glass off from three inches above the deck in ten inch sections, starting from just behind the liferaft and working aft.  Digging out the rot until he reached good wood and then using epoxies and epoxy glass to replace it all and build it back.  We now have no more leaks.  We are not sure if it will stay that way once we begin cruising again or not.  Mark says in order to fix it permanently we should remove part of the deck and do a glass job direct deck to coach roof.  But maybe doing just what we have done, the bond may be strong enough to hold.  Time will only tell us that.

We have completed the whole port side now.  Only need to fine sand and some paint.  We finished rough sanding on Saturday.  Now just looking for a weather window to be warm enough for paint to cure.  We noticed we have the same problem on the starboard side but no leaks there yet.  However we now have a project for next winter.  The good news is we thought we were going to be replacing the whole coach when we got down to Mexico or Southern California where there is a dry climate.  Now we realize that the coach is in pretty good shape, we just have to repair the bottom couple of inches.  We probably will still lift a portion of the deck when we get down there and glass it properly but not having to replace the whole coachroof is a relief.

No comments:

Post a Comment