What Lurks Beneath

Unfortuneatley Michelle Pfeiffer didn’t show up to demonstrate the finer points of sanding anti-foul off 50 year old planks… we did ask

Heron’s been moved into the main workshop and we have begun stripping the hull back to bare wood.

Anyone with their eye in may have noticed already, the keels got a hog in it. Yeah I know, I had no idea what Al meant when he said that, first thoughts were ‘can we eat it?’

Basically it means that the keel has warped or snapped, in this case both, and is deforming the hull by pushing the keel up into the boat. Obviously this isn’t good news but we’ll be replacing the centreline anyway. Middle left photo is kinda neat because it shows the planks lines deflecting upwards ever so slightly about a third of the way back from the bow, thats the pointy end.

The topside planks have been preserved really well, Bob thinks that the silvery grey primer is some type of zinc-oxide which acts as an anti-foul and penetrates the structure of the wood, meanings its a complete pig to remove but whats left underneath is sound.

We think the plank material is Khaya, wikipedia says “Khaya is a genus of seven species of trees in the mahogany family Meliaceae, native to tropical Africa and Madagascar.”

Fancy!

Our plan is to flexi-epoxy coat the entire hull and bright finish all the wood above the waterline. She’ll look stunning. The darkening visible around the nail heads is ‘nail sickness’ a side effect of electrolytic action occuring between copper nails and salt water. We’ll replace all the nails with a larger gauge as the heads have been sanded down and this should provide a good tight fit, whilst the epoxy coating will prevent the sickness reoccuring.