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Here it is beginning of Oct. and it's been well over a year since I've posted anything here because, well.... nothing is happening. That's not entirely true, I did spend part of a day working on it a few weeks ago but nothing much to show for it. I really would like to be out there making it happen but the sad truth is that I've been to busy making a living. Make hay while the sun shines you know. In this economy I feel very fortunate to have had as much work as I could handle the past couple of years. I'm still counting on winning the lottery of course, but until then.............

This is the base where the bow pulpit was attached. Both sides looked like this.

This deck has seen better days

I finally managed to get back to working on the boat after a very long time. I owe this to my son who was visiting for a week and kept insisting that we work on the boat. We managed to remove the bowsprit and some of the toe rail. I've been so busy with work that I couldn't find any time to get out to the boat. I guess I should feel lucky that I have so much work since so many don't these days. Working on it during the day these days is impossible as it gets very hot in there. After removing the bowsprit I removed the forward decking in handfuls. The Samson posts didn't look so good either. Now I get to add rebuilding the bowsprit and the Samson posts to the list.

Since I haven't had any time to work on the Mariner lately and have nothing new to share I thought I'd show you my other boat. Azul is a 1972 San Juan 24 ( built the same year as my Mariner ). I've had this boat for about eight years. I also bought it as a project although she was not quite as much of a project as the Mariner. I stripped everything off and epoxy barrier coated and then sprayed linear polyurethane. This boat is a lot of fun and I'll put her up for sale when the Mariner is about to go back in the water.

4/1/2009
Haven't had much time to work on the boat the past couple of weeks. Went on a road trip to Oregon for about four days and bought a few gallons of epoxy and some glass cloth just to get started. It will take at least fifteen gallons to do the decks.

A photo of the underside of the companionway hatch. Might need a little work.

At the end of the day.......

So I had to start removing the decking in the cockpit to see what I was dealing with there. The original cockpit plywood decking had been replaced at some point with a foam cored fiberglass material I think is called Divinycell. The Divinycell was bedded in 5200 and screwed to the deck framing. The original teak decking was reinstalled. I got part of this pulled out today and exposed enough to get an idea how much rot there was. It wasn't to bad. Except for the forward beam and some rot at the hatch door frame, the framing looked pretty good. These photos shows how far I got today.

Well I continued ripping and tearing today. The aft cabin bulkhead wasn't attached at the bottom due to a lot of rot and was hanging on the beam. This bulkhead needs to be replaced but the deck beam where it used to be attached at the bottom is completely rotted as you can see in this photo.

Well I finally got started. It felt really good to do something. As you can see in the photo I got the old coach roof removed. It was easier than I thought it would be. Very little cussing involved. I'm really motivated to work on it but don't have as much time as I'd like.