Talatasha chapter 3 The Lift Out

Finally she was up on blocks not level and not in the right place I knew they would move me at some time, I don't know what the driver was thinking but anyway that was that . Finally we were out of the water, we built a cover around her and work started .The first job was to start stripping all the fittings of and removing the cross beams. After removing some of the fittings and the two middle beams I started to strip back the paint work, I was pleasantly surprised at what I was seeing the condition of the plywood was in better than I had expected. So I continued what seemed a never ending task of stripping back the paint work and removing the fibre glass taping which bonds the seems together along the plywood joints. I knew the aft deck on both hulls would have to be replaced and strengthened as they were only 6mm ply and flex to much for my liking, When I removed the deck I realized the deck beam was broken and would need To be replaced with a much stronger one and the deck would replaced by 9mm Gaboon ply .So after removing the brass screws from around the edge I set the router to the depth of the ply and cut around the deck leaving a reasonable finished surface as shown in the slide show you can see by clicking on the picture Next I worked my way aft to the main beam and tried to remove it , this took a bit of persuading with a hammer and some wedges it was certainly tight. I then stripped the paint back inside the housing where the beam sits so I could see the condition of the plywood and what I would need to do to make it good, I remember praying it would be ok as to rebuild this part of the boat would not be a 5 minute job.