In stripping off the boot stripe, to which muddy red antifouling paint had been applied, RJ unearthed about 15” of dry rot at the starboard waterline, just outside of where the helm station seat back attaches to the topside framing. The area around the rot is in excellent shape, so we are adopting a Dutchman strategy for addressing the issue.
As you see in the clip, RJ has routed about 3/8” into the strake’s face, save for the area in the middle of the cut where the rot passes all the way through. He will create a Dutchman having a raised area that will fit into the void, while the balance of the patch will mate to the remaining strake material. Placing a block inboard of the repair will afford us a solid mounting surface when we insert the Dutchman bedded in Thixo Thickened epoxy.
We will keep you up to date as these issues are addressed.
RJ has also finished scraping loose paint from the bottom edges of the topside planks, and discovered some separation that we could not close with using hammer and shoe to tighten the clinch nails. (They are uniformly very tight along the strake overlaps.)
So we have applied white 3M5200 to the entire topside strake overlap seams.