Spoke to Catalina (...again!)

Posted By: amory
Date: 3/25/08 3:33a.m.

Report: outside forum guidelines

In Response To: mast step (Allen)

Kent at Catalina, who is probably tired of me calling him by now, told me that the original construction of the cabintop was indeed plywood on the outside and inside, and some kind of polyester resin "putty" layer in between. I cut the skin out in an oval shape approximated to the mast step, but slightly larger by 1/2 inch or so. I was able to dig back along the mast wires to find enough length on all of them (about 1 inch) without significant cracks or breaks so that I think I will take my chances and splice wire to the old wires. If it fails again, I will run a new wire inside the cabin and drill a hole through the deck. I am not going to chase the moisture back as far is it will go since I want room for a 3 inch bevel for rebuilding, and the forward hatch is only a few inches away. I think I will dig straight down in an oval shape through the remaining resin and dig out the inner plywood, since the little that I can see is wet. Then rebuild the whole thing. I am tempted to just use marine plywood to create a block of the appropriate thickness and avoid any kind of resin layer in between. Oh, and I am very excited since I will be receiving my multimaster by UPS today. That should make easy work of grinding a wide bevel. My trusty dremel, BTW, did a good job of cutting the skin, with a diamond cut off wheel, but it was clearly struggling a bit.