Restoring my first boat

Repairing the nose: The joint between the inner and outer mouldings had been badly damaged around the stem head. A combination of crashes and being dropped (plus being dropped-on I suspect). This is a difficult area to repair and involves a lot of filling, which is not ideal. This was worked on whilst the hole patches were curing.

This truly awful photograph shows the bow damage. (The boat is actually upside down on a workmate, I have turned it over) The bow is to the left over the white dot. The smashed outer moulding has been ground right off  with the flap-wheel. The damage to the inner, red moulding needs to be repaired before the outer moulding can be built up.

After grinding out nearly all the loose and cracked fibreglass, but leaving enough to show the shape of the inner moulding, the missing part around the stem was built up in packing tape and masking tape to form some sort of support to the new fibre glass. Very gently a single layer of glass and resin was stippled on and allowed to cure. This stiffened enough to allow another three layers to be applied.

Now the boat was turned over so I could see what I was doing. About six layers of glass and resin were applied and allowed to cure. This was then cut back to the depth of the moulding using a thin wooden batten bent around the gunwale to give me the depth. Then it was sanded and fibreglass filler paste used to fill up the bulk of the depression. All of the gaps were now sealed and the whole was stiff. All the packing tape shaping the stem was removed and any remaining loose bits of the old moulding ground off.

The three final layers of fibreglass matt and resin just about completes the rebuild. This is carefully sanded off flush with the level to the underside of the existing gunwale. A thin wooden batten was again wrapped around the edge to establish this line. The whole edge is sanded smooth, but is still uneven and needs final filling and smoothing.

This shot shows the bow awaiting its final sanding down, to complete the fared shape. It is still a bit rough underneath, but that cannot be smoothed until it is turned over again. This shot also shows the big cleat, access hatch and massive U-bolt I have installed on the foredeck. The hatch is to deal with the "buoyancy" (more about that later). The U-bolt was a mistake from another boat, but here it will act as a fairlead to a painter from the cleat and also as a strong point for securing the dinghy down at the boatyard. Other repairs to damaged gunwales can be seen.

On to stage 3 >>