Travel Outward: Sailing Outward; Log -- Bumbré's Projects

As with any boat you plan on taking for an extended cruise there is a long list of projects which need to be done before you can head off. Bumbré was no different, with a list of projects including things as serious as filling voids in the rudder, to deciding whether or not to install refrigeration. What gets done or not done will depend on time and priorities.

Rudder Voids

Upon inspection of the vessel, my surveyor found a few large voids in the skeg rudder of my Cal 28. A void is basically a big blister where the gel coat has separated from the core of the rudder. Everything I read indicated that I should grind it down and expose the core, then I can resurface and paint the rudder so it's as good as new. My surveyor, having found that no water had gotten in through the voids and that there appeared to be no damage to the rudder, suggested another route. Only time will tell whether or not it is effective. The method required drilling a few small holes in each void, then fill the voids with epoxy resin and seal them. This

Bumbré's rudder

would avoid the costly and time consuming job of grinding down the bad spots and resurfacing them. After speaking to others, it seemed like this was a relatively common method, so I decided to try it and hopefully not to regret it later.

Drilling the Holes
After doing some sanding and cleaning of the surface it was time for the most painful part of the whole process: drilling the holes in the voids. It is psychologically never an easy task for someone to drill a hole in their boat, especially under the waterline, but it had to be done. My best advice is to work slowly and carefully, and trust yourself. For this stage, I used two different bits, a bigger 1/8-inch bit and a small 1/16-inch bit--the bigger one to ineject the epoxy and the smaller ones for allowing air into the cavity so the epoxy would fill the void evenly.

Filling the Voids
After mixing up the epoxy I injected it into the hole using a ball pein hammer to lightly tap the outside of the void to get the epoxy to fill the hard-to-reach areas. Once the holes (which I had drilled at the top of the void) started to overflow, I covered them with masking tape. After giving the epoxy some time to cure, I covered the holes with the proper filler before gel coating over them. After a few layers of gel coat and sanding around the drill holes I was ready for some paint to finish the job.

Installing a Bimini

Since we were planning head south for the winter, I knew we would need a bimini. I very fair skin so I have an excuse when I go to the beach and show my white fish belly. Without a bimini I would have to slather myself with sunscreen everyday day just to sail

Putting together the bimini at home

down the coast. Since one of the only things I find more annoying than having to put on sunscreen is dealing with a bad sunburn, I decided among the first add-ons we needed to install on our new boat was a bimini.

After a lot of measuring and making sure that what we were ordering was the proper size, we finally ordered from Boat Covers Direct. We had decided to order from them rather than get someone to come to us and make a custom bimini because we'd save over a thousand dollars. While the fit would be perfect if we spent the extra money the only other benefit would be stainless steel tubing instead of plated aluminium. We decided to go for the savings and install it ourselves.

When it arrived I put it together in the house (out of the wind) before taking it to the boat for installation. It was very easy to put together, but once I was at the boat and by myself, it was a bit tricker to install.

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