Cut to the core!

Memorial Day Weekend.  The core is cut! Shawn for sure is doing the lion’s share of the work so far. First, he took a scrap 2*4 and marked with a grease pencil (aka china marker) the line around the flybridge. 

He took a 4 inch grinder and began cutting around the edge.  He tried a circular saw with a masonry cutting blade but that did not work well—not enough power. I am glad he had the 4 inch grinder from a previous project. In some places, as he cut, water and sodden wood particles actually sprayed out.

After cutting the perimeter, Shawn began to cut sections in manageable squares/rectangles. 

As “we” worked, I was really surprised at how much water was in the core. We could actually squeeze water from the wood core pieces as if they were sponges. Gross. And now I completely understand why the deck felt so soggy when we walked on it.  I spent more time examining the exposed wood mess than doing anything else.

We discovered something Shawn suspected when we examined the flybridge deck. There had been a previous botched repair attempt.  A boat yard (we assume) had attempted to repair the deck core by drilling holes and squirting epoxy as a filler/sealant into the core, then layering fiberglass over the deck; which made the deck wildly uneven and did not help the underlying deck problem at all.

My task was to keep the cords out of the way which I was able to do. We had a couple of close calls when I was daydreaming about cruising the ICW and forgot to move the cords, but all was well.

Shawn always deserves a nice cool adult beverage at the end of the day, but no more so than today after grinding fiberglass for hours in the hot sun! Cruising the ICW with some sun, fun and drinks sounds great today! And it cannot come fast enough!