The wet, damaged sections located forward, near the shop vac in the image above, were easy to remove. The aft section remaining in place in the above image was much more difficult to remove. In the end I did remove all of the exposed core.

The leak came from a hole drilled thru the deck by the first owner to place a guide for the spinnaker downhaul (my best guess). The second owner removed the eye and filled the hole, but obviously it continued to leak. I pulled the chainstays last year and repalced the core around the chainstays thinking that was the source of the moisture. Since the soft spot continued to grow I knew there must be a second source. Now I know.

I started removing the wet core first. It was the easiest to remove and I wanted to allow maximum drying time for the laminated surfaces.

I used a circular saw to do most of the cuts on the deck. While it is easy to control the depth of cut with the circular saw, the task ruined two blades. To finish up the corners and awakward places I used a grinder with a cutting wheel. One must be very careful to not cut too deep with this tool, but it did a much better job of cutting the fiberglass.