Marathon sits at the dock in the Abaroa Marina Palmar – but one of the extensive array of Abaroa-owned marine facilities in La Paz. Marathon’s mast has just been removed by a crane, all in anticipation of repairing the mast compression post step, along with many other things that need to be fixed while the boat is on the hard.
The compression post step likely started to collapse when the teak block that held the load started to compress as a result of getting wet (see earlier post “stuffing box blues”). The fibreglass step was sagging and allowing the deck to also sag, meaning that the rigging was not as tight as it needs to be and the more it was tensioned, the more everything sagged. After much discussion with multiple people it seemed that the best fix would be to replace the teak block with epoxy, rebuild the step, fix the cabin top, re-step the mast and Bob’s your uncle!. However, sailboats are never this simple.
Fixing the compression post step went well and, fingers crossed, has solved that problem. Fixing the cabin top is turning out to be much more complicated. Conceptually, the plan was to drill some shallow holes in the cabin top and inject epoxy into the “voids” in order to restore the bond between the fibreglass skin and the wooden core. This has hopefully been achieved with some of the now many holes in the cabin top. Sadly, some of the holes ended up going through solid glass and into the interior. These are being plugged with thick epoxy. Some of the holes went through solid glass and into the wiring channels in the cabin top. Plugging these with epoxy is going to be challenging. Some of the holes, are where they need to be and are filled with Smith’s penetrating epoxy. All going well these will do the trick!
Next the entire cabin top deck will need to be repainted in two part polyurethane to help cover the holes and to fix the gel coat disaster caused by the Jordan series drogue vinyl bag – a bit of a mystery but a very ugly one.
All of this is being done while the blisters on the hull continue to dry out. We have not fixed any blisters for about 6 years so I guess we were due! The good news is that they really dry fast here compared to Vancouver so by Friday, they will be epoxied and hopefully the new bottom paint will be applied on Saturday or Monday. Back in the water, all going well by Tuesday, two weeks after being pulled out.
The good news is that the rust issue on the keel seems to be much better than last time Marathon was out of the water back in 2013!