OK, long story short but the boat got damaged. That's why we haven't updated the blog in a little while. More money. Anyway, the helmsman (I'm not saying who) just kissed the dock when we were docking at low tide and the rear euro strut broke. It was obvious that it had been done before as previous repairs were noted. The strut was repaired (poorly by my standards) and it was quite rotted under the fiberglass so Dan and I repaired it by the West Systems book. We cut out the bad areas and replaced with the best plywood we could find and added several layers of fiberglass to strengthen the patch. The boat yard will finish and paint to match. More money. It is interesting that many of the new euro style trawlers do not have the aft struts.. hmmm, I wonder why... My guess is that it is common to knock them off... so now that we have a strong one will we wreck something else???
And then, and then when Chris and Dan were unhooking the electrical cords to bring the 'Belle" to the boat yard at Tarpon Springs for a new bottom, the 120 volt umbilical cord was difficult to pull off and later they found major burning of wires. More money!! Today, I went to the yard and replaced all of the bad stuff and found out the the swim platform ladder could not handle my weight as I got on the boat... all 150 pounds of me. More money...
Does anyone see a pattern here...
We are anxious to leave on our adventure but will not compromise our safety just to make a predetermined departure date.
This is a shot of Dan doing fiberglass repair work. The break was somewhere between all the dots. The dots were holes to shoot in epoxy into dried but delaminated plywood. We filled in the areas between the dots with two layers of plywood at different lengths per side to get maximum strength. In 200 years they will find little of the 'Belle" other than this rear strut.
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