June 26 | Maintenance Day

With a new Lavac Popular marine head in hand, and a lead on a quality custom-built-for-a-Triton holding tank, I headed out to the boat to take some general measurements for planning purposes. I also knew that I would need to deal with my frozen head discharge seacock before I would be able to pull the old head and install the new.

Thanks to the bilge flood that we experienced this spring, we were afforded the opportunity to remove our old, nasty cabin sole and replace it with a beautiful red birch affair that was both seamless and exceedingly solid under foot. While this was not a project we were looking forward to tackling this spring, we are thrilled with the final results!

Well it's been a pretty horrid spring here in Maine, with two large April snowstorms, followed by a tremendous rain-and-wind northeaster that slammed us on Patriot's Day. But as it always does, the weather finally began to improve by mid-month and on April 24 I finally got the cover off the boat. Unfortunately, there was a nasty little surprise waiting for me.

Yes, I know its been almost two years since I built this thing, but now your incredible patience is being rewarded. Here at last is the highly-anticipated New [sic] High Performance Icebox writeup!

Yes, it still looks like that—I haven't gutted the rest of the galley yet. More patience required, folks!

One of the projects that has been looming since we bought the boat is the sprucing up of the head compartment. The head was full of peeling paint, and was generally just sort of yucky. Additionally, after sailing with the boat for two seasons, it became very clear that the hanging locker was basically a useless waste of space. So after some thought about what to do with that area, I decided to rip out the hanging locker and build in some nice cabinetry—storage drawers and lockers—thereby making the space useful for storage.

On initial inspection of the boat, it seemed clear that the mast beam would likely need repair or replacement. This initial reaction was supported by the survey results. There is a clear inward bulge in the center of the overhead and there is also clear evidence of movement of the mast beam, especially on the forward face of the bulkhead and along the doorway trim. Additionally, all of the tabbing has broken loose from the beam. Discussion on the Triton e-mail list revealed that many boats do not have any tabbing between the mast beam and the bulkhead and overhead, suggesting that perhaps someone had attempted an ineffectual repair or "upgrade" at some point in the past.

Initial Inspection

Last fall (2001) I removed the mast step and all of the bolts holding the mast beam in place through the bulkhead. I had a bit of trouble with this, since the bolt heads had been glassed over on the forward face of the bulkhead, so I had to grind through the glass in order to remove them. At this point, the beam was loose, and I was able to remove the sister plate, however the main beam was still loosely held in place by the tabbing. No problem. Using my 4-inch grinder, I cut away as much tabbing as possible. Unfortunately, this still left enough tabbing to prevent the removal of the beam, and my grinder was too large and awkward grind away what remained.

Fortunately, I was able to get a Dremel tool on loan from Tim Lackey, and spent almost 2 hours grinding/cutting away the remains of the tabbing. The Dremel was small enough to get into the tight spaces, but unfortunately just doesn't cut very quickly! Eventually I was successful, and the beam slid out with only slight coaxing with a pry bar.

Once I got the beam off of the boat, it became clear that removal, rather than repair and strengthening, was the correct choice. Besides the hole that was drilled through the beam as a conduit for wiring, the beam has 2 checks, about 14 inches long running lengthwise along the beam. These checks were not visible until the beam was removed.

One interesting thing I discovered, though, was that the "bulging" of the overhead that we had noticed, and assumed was due to deck compression, actually appears to be part of the original layup. The mast beam and the bulkhead are actually shaped to accommodate this bulge. This discovery is somewhat relieving, actually! However, at this point, I am undecided as to whether to try to shape the beam to fit back up there (several hours with a plane and belt sander), or if I will attempt to fair the curve of the overhead by laying in additional glass (several hours of cussing at glass and epoxy over my head). More on that when I head out to the boat with the beam.

A New Beam Takes Shape

My original plan for a new beam was simply to cut the shape of the beam from marine plywood, and laminate those together. This would have been simple, and probably sufficient. However, when I was at the "Triton Factory" in Rhode Island this spring, I was bewitched by Dana Berube's beautiful laminated oak beam. I had to have one. Simple as that! Time for a modification of the plan.

My new beam is built up from laminated Ash strips. I secured the assitance, and use of space, of a family friend who has a cabinetmaking shop. I picked up about 18 board feet of 4/4 ash from a local dealer and headed over to the shop. I purchased substantially more wood than I anticipated needing, to allow for selection of undamaged strips for the lamination. I ended up using only about 1/2 of the wood that I bought, but better safe than sorry. Plus, ash is cheap.

The first step was to joint one edge of the boards, which were about 7 inches wide by 10 feet long. The boards were a bit cupped, so I ripped them to 3 1/2 inches wide before running them through the planer. Although the wood was nominally 4/4, it actually was closer to 5/4, so even after planing, the boards were just hair under 1 inch thick. With a bandsaw, we resawed each board into two, then sent them all through the drum sander with 40 grit paper to remove the resawing blade marks, and to provide some tooth for the epoxy. The final thickness of the laminate layers was about 3/8 inch. I cut the boards to 5 foot lengths, and we were ready to start the lamination.

Lamination begins

This was the first time I had ever done anything like this, so I was not exactly sure how smoothly things would go. The first step was to wet out the strips with unthickened epoxy. I then mixed up another batch of epoxy, thickened with high density adhesive filler. Working quickly, we applied a coat of the thickened epoxy to one side of each strip.