The Rebuilding of Majic Carpet

There are many very good posts here on rebuilding J30's. I have been reading through all of them and using that information as the basis for the work I intend to do over the next several months. For the most part I will use video to show what I am seeing, how I worked through the problem and then hopefully the results and I will post links to updates here. These will be very simple and quick productions to minimize the time it takes to put them together and get them uploaded.

I have no problem with any comments on my solutions and processes, so feel free to add them here or on YouTube.

This is a new to me boat and I have not even sailed it at this point. After moving the boat from Hood River, OR to St. Helens, OR about a 95 mile trip my friends and I had the boat hauled out and put on a trailer I located so that I could put the boat next to my shop. While I have never rebuilt a monohull of any sort I have done many large projects in the past so it not overwhelming to take on the many issues this boat has. I am confident that between the information available here and elsewhere on the web that I can work through each issue successfully. I am in no rush to get this work done and am currently shooting for late next spring to relaunch.

I have a survey scheduled in a little over a weeks time and that will form the basis for several parts of this project, but certainly not all of it. The highest priority will be for anything related to reliability and preserving the boat itself.

This boat was not in "bad" condition or would even have been considered a "project" boat when I started. But there was a lot of deferred maintenance items owing in part to lack of access to yard to do work where the previous owner lived in Hood River. From what I can tell this boat started out on the right coast and sailed in Boston then went to San Diego before going to Hood River. So it has been around a bit and hopefully I can extend the life of this boat by a good many years.

Here is the link for the first installment:
Majic Carpet Rebuild

I cringed when I first saw the images of the chunk taken out of the front of the keel, anticipating damage aft at the hull to keel joint. After viewing the progress in the video it doesn't look too bad--that small crack is typical. Good luck we will following along!

Thank you for this excellent video. We are rebuilding the inside floor this winter. It is nice to see the details ahead of project.

Does anyone have images of new cabin soles. I have ideas about how I would do it, but I really like seeing someone else's solution first and what did and didn't work. For sure there is going to be much more ventilation underneath the sole. I haven't checked the level of the cabin for reference points yet, but even if this area in front of the engine and between the sink and cooler are slightly low, so what? Sooner or later water laying in this area will either migrate to the bilge, or should get wiped up if the marina you are docking in is so tame as to not ever rock/tilt the boat very much. It is the dam that the vermiculite makes that is the problem by retaining the water in this area IMHO.

I was all into going down the quartersawn white oak path when I heard from the 1st in command that mahogany might be preferred. I think either would work well. I also looked at Ipe, but it doesn't like being worked or glued.

Making headway getting this thing out cleanly, but it is not easy.

coastie,

I did the same project, should be on an older thread. I used an oscillating saw all along the edge of the existing sole, pulled it out as one piece and refinished it. Once i had all the vermiculite chipped away and cleaned up, I used wood which I glassed in to hold the redone sole at the correct height and orientation. A few stainless buttonhead screws through the sole and into the wooden stringers keep it secure and allow me to remove it again anytime I need access in the future.

keep the pieces you've removed and use them as a template for the new one

I have saved the floor bits to use as a template for replacement, but do not intend to do the removable piece the same and will also add an inspection hatch between the cooler and the sink. It sounds like you made a monolithic sole, or is it in sections?

I left the "wings" of the floor sole (areas just next to the engine compartment running to the swinging cupboard area) attached. The rest comes out as a unit if any inspecting is required. Held in place by eight screws.

I have had discussions with my engineer friends and we are of a mind that all that fairing compound actually served a valuable purpose in that it provided a crush zone to absorb and dissipate a lot of the energy that was directed at the keel. I will be building that area back up with what might be a bit stronger material that has some fibers in it.

The other part of this is that in my part of the Columbia River we have sandbars, wing dams and various kinds of junk in the river that would be relatively soft to hit. Whereas I think the Hood River section has hidden rock outcroppings that were likely responsible for the nasty hit this keel took.

That might be giving a lot of credit to the Pearson yard rats of the late seventies and early eighties. The first J/24 was built in 76 right? Three years later there is a production line for another design, I doubt they were calculating for kinetic dampening effect of vermiculite. I'm likely wrong.


She's a tough craft, even the old ones. Have found my way onto something harder than water a few times in the last few years. CYC has a shallow bar off the port side end of the floats and several unmarked mooring blocks that sit in 5' of water on a super-moon low. That's just what I've found in the mooring field..., Maine's got a lot of shoal-y topography it turn out. She'll survive, even without the verm. '79 fastnet anyone?

I've been told there are three types of sailor. Those who've run aground, those that will, and liars.

Even better than that, every now and again you can coax her into moving pretty quickly too. We took 3rd in our beer can division this year and even took a 3rd overall in the larger Gulf of Maine Racing Association standings. Believe me, if we can get her moving competitively, you can too.

Glad you're breathing some new life into one of em', she hasn't let me down yet and most everyone here, who mostly have far more experience than I, I think would claim the same.

Good luck with the rebuild

Nope - never run aground when I had Rhapsody. This just appeared when I hauled the boat....


I can tell you where almost every rock is on Narragansett Bay!

That is funny!

I have been having fun this week building my arm and back muscles up. Using both a 4.5" and 7" grinders to get through many coats of bottom paint and the gel coat. The large one does a great job, but I can only swing that beast for short periods of time, the smaller one is far more manageable. I have lots of pox to get through and I plan to get through all of it, then start the multiple washes and let the hull dry for most of the winter.

One person at a commercial yard I was talking to thought that leaving the hull bare for a period of time was a bad idea. Every thing that I have been reading says that letting the fiberglass dry over a long period is a good thing before sealing with epoxy. Here in the Northwest it rains a fair bit during the winter months but the boat is tarped off and I don't think the hull will be particularly wet.

I have now gotten the entire cabin sole removed. The wing area back by engine were the last bits out. No more vermiculite except for some small bits back under the engine I can't reach, but they no longer form a dam. Next is to give the hull under the sole a light grind to remove the last of the vermiculite residue. If this area turns out to be dry I will epoxy seal it and move on. Survey is Tuesday and I have cleared everything out of the boat removed the light plywood bulkheads, and all of the storage covers.

I have been eyeing the water damage inside the hull that has come from the leaking toe rail. My inclination is to pull out all the cabinetry to get better access and then get after that toe rail. I have to believe the best fix is to waste the old toe rail and then glass that joint over and replace the toe rail. I don't see how trying to just reseal the toe rail will provide much relief. We want to get the ash strips on the hull looking good and as long as there are leaks there is no chance.

I should also mention that I just brought home several Bubinga boards that will comprise the new cabin sole. Going to be seriously cool to look at and was $11 per board foot compared to $28 for teak. I think that when it is encapsulated in epoxy the life will be more than adequate and will be a visual focal point for years to come. This will be just one of a few things we plan to do to really make this interior be a little more interesting.

I doubt it is the teak toe rail leaking but the deck joint itself.

On the deck joint once the damaged area is recored/fixed, I recommend cleaning out the deck joint with a narrow blade / putty knife to get out as much of the 5200 that you can access. Clean it with acetone and blow it out with an air gun. Tape the deck joint above and below to leave a clean line where you can apply sealant.

Get some of the Boat Life Liquid Caulk Sealant. This is a one part polysufide based caulk that is available in white, clear and black. It goes in as a liquid and skins over so you can shape it over the joint using your finger and mineral spirits.

If you want to reduce future maintenance work, scrap the teak toe rails and replace them with a synthetic such as Star Board.

ps - I forgot to mention something that I thought was obvious, but probably isn't. Remove all the toe rails before you do the deck joint sealing described above.

I signed up for this.
It's true, I like older boats that are kind of needy. I was hoping the boat I recently bought might be a little less needy than it appears to be, but for a boat that has been out there, first on the right coast and then later on the left coast always getting its heart pounded out racing around the buoys it stands to reason that it now needs a little heart surgery to get it into its next life. There are parts of this boat that are totally up to date, winches, traveler, 1600 watts of amplifier for the tunes, but there is a long list of items that have been horribly ignored. The part that I and likely many other owners of similar aged boats get to deal with is saturated balsa core in the hull and decks. On my boat the biggest problem is in the hull and for the faint of heart it might be actually fatal. If you were paying someone to do this work it would never make economic sense for a boat this age. But I rarely pay anyone to do anything, so this project fits right in with the other insane projects I am always working on.

I was not unrealistic about the costs of ownership of an older boat. The purchase price on this boat was $13,000. I don't know yet if the sails are totally consumed, or if they still have some useful life in them. I do know the cost of their replacements if that is required and it likely is. I have no expectations of a free ride here. I bought this boat for the very purpose of learning the ins and outs of a fast monohull. I could have bought a newer boat with fewer issues, but I wouldn't have learned the anatomy of the boat in any detail. Nothing I plan to do to this boat will likely make it go any faster, but the things I do should make the boat go much further in time.

What I do want to do is give some others that are thinking about older boats an idea of the work and the expense involved in bringing an older boat back to its full glory might be. I will attempt to explain all of the expenditures I encounter both in dollars and effort. The expenses so far include the boat itself, the trailer, the haul out and various supplies and components. Just so you know that there is no "great deal" here, the following are some of the big ticket items so far:

Boat $13,000
Trailer $ 5,000
1st Haul out $ 650
Survey $ 600
Misc. supplies $ 300
Combined licensing
Titles, documents,
plates $ 250
This year's repair $9,000+
budget

I had planned on replacing the standing rigging and several other items, but may need to wait on that. For sure I will replace the old tired life lines and sort out some repairs to the pulpits and stanchions. I have a little war chest for this year's boat repairs and upgrades and getting the boat back into the water that nearly equals the boat purchase price. So now I get to sort out the replacement of a big bunch of soggy boat hull. Right now I am leaning towards doing the recore work from the outside of the boat because it offers the unobstructed work. I think I have some ideas on how to manage the overhead work and since all the joints I plan to make will end up being covered in new glass with epoxy resin I can get a two fer. My plan is to test this work approach from outside and if I can sort it out proceed that way, if it turns out to be impractical then a bunch of stuff will have to be removed from the interior to provide all the access needed to complete the work.

Here is a video of what I am seeing, what I'm doing now and where I am going.

I signed up for this

When I got Judicious The hull was sodden but the core was still good like yours and it was suggested that to drill holes in the hull at a rate of 9 per sq foot tent off the boat and use infrared heaters and dehumidifiers. which would work like your vacum after boat dried out the holes were epoxy nailed.The holes were drilled from the outside through the outer skin then a flat nose drill to clean the inner skin so that the epoxy would stick to the inner skin it worked a treat.

So you used just infrared heat and the holes?

The idea of adding the vacuum is to boil off the moisture and the heat would just make the boiling happen faster. There is a lot to be said about this approach if it works reliably.

I had a similar issue on my starboard hull. I cut the skin off from the outside, being careful to keep the skin intact as I peeled it off. I then replaced the balsa core with foam core, and reapplied the skin. Then, faired the cuts and glassed over to seal it all up. Worked quite well.

My issue was from the back of the keel. There was a tiny crack at the back of the keel where it meets the hull. This crack went through the solid glass in the middle of the boat to the starboard side where the core was. This was the source of my leak. I'm not sure the screws by the deck are the issue on yours. I think you would see wet core down the side of the hull as well, which doesn't appear to be the case. Plus, the hull where the screws go through up there is solid. The core basically stops at the outside edge. There is then a flange of solid glass that the deck and toe rail screw into. At least, that's how it was on my boat.

Just watch I was also told not to give it too much heat as this can cause the core to delaminate from the skin

There is a small crack at the rear of the keel where it meets the hull, but to look at it I would think it was only in the filler. Maybe I need to seriously excavate that thing and see what is happening.

The surveyor said that simply applying the vacuum was adequate to "boil" the water at ambient temperatures and that adding some heat just helped. For sure I can see how actual hot water would not only delaminate, but likely degrade the balsa itself. This is a tempting approach, but to make it works requires a fair bit of setup and patience vs. just getting it done.

Scott, how big were each of the sections that you opened up? Meaning were you cutting open 12" x 12" or ? I was thinking that something like 6" x 36" would be manageable and allow the new foam strip to easily conform to the compound curves. I was thinking to use a 1/4" ply backer, with some attached blocks to stand the strap off and covered with HDPE and then use rachcet straps fully around the boat to compress the new structure.

For years I thought the small crack was nothing, and kept grinding it a little and doing a little filling. Each year when the boat was hauled, there would be a little weaping of liquid, sometimes with a greenish tint. I finally tore into it last winter and did about a 2'x2' square behind the keel and reglassed it all. As I ground, you could see the crack continue into the cored area on the starboard side.

I would do sections that I knew I could easily (with the help of another person) get back into place without much hassle. I think I probably went up to about 2'x2', and maybe even a bit longer if it was a skinnier piece. The trick is to not bite off more than you can easily get back on and hold in position while you set up the braces. I used a process similar to what you describe, but without the straps. I did a lot of work where the keel hindered the use of straps. But, I would use a backer, and had lots of long strips of wood that I would use to apply pressure and hold it in position. I would do the core in one step, and after it cured, I would fit the hull piece and sand down the core where needed to make everything fit just right.

I've tried replacing the core from the inside, and it's just too difficult to get where you need.

Unlike Scott, I found on Rhapsody it was easier to work from the inside when replacing core. I was able to work on my hands and knees, and gravity was my friend when bonding new core to the outer skin. I skipped the section under the ice box, but could have done that from underneath. I did do the center section behind the keel (and for about 12 inches forward of the trailing edge) from underneath the boat.

Check out the blog in my signature for pictures and read this thread if you haven't already.

Coastie you are my #HERO Thanks for taking the time to restore Majic Carpet

Bill, I have been using this site extensively to research and understand what I am getting into. There is extensive history on the rebuilding of these boats, but one thing I have come across multiple times now is that several of the important blogs that various people created some years ago are now defunct. Likely the poster stopped paying for the service or the host no longer exists. In any case the images and info are lost.

The photo albums on this site seem to be just historical in their order and there is no obvious way to sort them into the technical shots that would be helpful in these rebuild projects. I just don't have time to wander endlessly through them to see important images of technical details.

Might it be possible to create an Image Album that is just a place to put technical images? It wouldn't help recover old stuff, but would give us a place to collect new images. This album could be further divided into hull, engines, rigging etc.

In the same area, might it be possible to create a list of these rebuild blogs? The forum search tool on any of these rebuild topics always brings back several tons of various posts that you have spend an inordinate amount of time sorting through to get that golden nugget of info that you need.

I'm directing this your way since you have done an excellent job of developing much this information over the years and the info that you and many others have provided over the years could get lost if there isn't a more common repository for it.

Coastie,

I might put some thought into the less invasive method of dealing with the wet core. I've replaced several chunks in hull #54 and one thing I've learned is that "wet" does not mean "rotted". A lot of the core that's wet still is well adhered and not in danger of delamination. I was thinking about the prospect of drilling holes in the interior of the small dog, letting a few heaters and de-humidifiers run all winter and see what I can get out of her. Then fill the holes with epoxy in the spring before we launch. As a veteran of several coring areas, it's a process and I was told to never open up more than a 24x24 area so that would be a lot of projects to get to all that red area.

What I am thinking about is the final solution. It seems to me that just drying the core, even "if" successful does not solve the underlying problem. There is a source of moisture most likely coming from the bottom center of the boat, but possibly several other places. If you don't stop and seal that the invasion of moisture from wherever it is coming, the problem will simply continue.

I think that getting the balsa out of the equation would go a long way to stopping this wet core issue. IN my opinion it is wet core issues that devalue these boats, so if you can prove you have eliminated the balsa core, you are not only fixing your boat you are improving its economic value. I agree about the amount of area to be open at any given time in a particular area of the hull, but I think you could be working a couple of different sections that are well separated. I plan on using foam core and epoxy resin and I expect that should completely stop the migration of moisture from a particular source or even from some vague direction.

I can be working on this nearly full time as I'm recently retired and expect that while not the most fun project I have ever undertaken this is manageable. We have one advantage here in our area and that is while it is wet in the winter it is usually plenty warm enough to do epoxy resin work.

I really want to get these hull issues off the work list, sooner rather than later. Hopefully by next spring I can pull the tarp off and get after the topside issues. There is also a nice work list for the interior including the new sole that I get to build, so lots of places to spread the work around.

Here is a look at my first round of minor surgery. I wanted to get an idea of what tools worked and the effort involved. The section(s) I removed were a total of 8" by 20" done in two strips. The outer skin was the easiest to remove by carefully and slowly applying a prying pressure advancing maybe an inch at a time. The core itself is a pain when it is well adhered to the inner skin and what I finally decided was the best approach was to use the multitool and essentially cut it away. Only half of the area I opened up was marked as wet and the other I opened up to confirm the reading. Here is the video that includes some still shots.

Minor Surgery

its a start, remember to take the time to fair back the edges before you start the new glass work. i.e.

or



It can look rough and ugly but eventually you'll get to spray on that last coat... do yourself a favor and rely on a little help from your friends when you can find it.

Friends and information are what make this project possible. With some big hints on the how part I have started the build on a vacuum pump large enough to hopefully handle working a couple of areas at a time. A friend that deals in instruments at a local paper mill is helping with the pump build. Started some reinforcement inside the hull at the rear of the keel today. If the weather allows I plan to take a die grinder to the outside and work that area at the back of the keel where it meets the hull. So far I don't see any actual cracks, just unfilled glass fibers. I think this area was badly glassed up either originally or in a subsequent repair. Once I clean this area up a little better I think I will force some thickened epoxy into the void spaces and then add some glass layers both to seal this up and to provide some strength for the next time the keel finds something hard to kiss.

Coastie - I suspect you'll find the area directly behind the keel once you grind it out similar to what other J/30 owners have found. The laminate on Rhapsody was water saturated, cracked (probably from previous groundings) and had a rotten smelling black goo infiltrated in the glass. When you grind out that area, feather it back and lay up multiple layers of biaxial cloth to build up the strength. Don't just fill it with epoxy because it is an area of the boat subjected to a lot of stress from the keel.

Remember that the boat was constructed with two halves that were glassed together at the keel joint. Make that joint structurally sound if you find it has been compromised anywhere.

Bill, I suspect you know my boat way better than I do. This morning I ground on the keel to hull joint on the rear and still don't see anything too concerning, but I will be reinforcing it.

But what I then did was start grinding the bottom again and worked to the center line and the assembly joint. That joint was very wet. To say that a river runs through it would be an accurate statement. I cleaned off about 8' of the seam and it was all very wet.

I assume these boats were hand laid up and if so with the heavy woven roving used there is a high probability that there are more than a few capillaries from this seam to the core area. Add some hydraulic pressure and you have a tiny and continuous source of water even through 6" of what theoretically solid glass.

I will be filling and then taping with 6 oz. glass this entire seam using epoxy resin. But I plan to leave it open until I don't detect any more moisture. I find it interesting though that the surveyor's meter didn't pick this water up. I don't recall seeing her use the sensor directly on the joint though and this is a very heavy section of glass in this area, not to mention 35 years of bottom paint and gel coat.

As I was grinding through the blisters I was also thinking about the fact that this exterior skin is only about 1/8" thick total. Some of the blisters must go half way through that section thickness so that doesn't leave much glass left to separate the water from the core and polyester resin is porous anyway, so it seems like there are more than a few ways that water finds it way to the core.

Coastie - somehow I missed this post. I will defer to Dave Erwin who now keeps up the class website. Dave may have a way of doing this with the existing site, or an alternative such as creating a J/30 Google account and using Google photos and Google drive for storage. That way multiple people can be provided access rights to post information.

The forum is a good place to collect information but does not do a good job of index/categorizing it. It also has limitations on the size and number of photos that can be posted. When I helped Dave build the Class website in Wordpress which was upgraded from the old hard coded HTML site, we created the menu section under "Info" that did some of the categorizing you describe (e.g. engine maintenance, rigging, etc.). What could be done on the forum is to create a "sticky" post displayed at the top of this forum that would have links to various projects and posts. This would need to be manually built and added to.

Dave Erwin - over to you for archiving project ideas that Coastie asked about.

I think many of these boats are going to have a very long shelf life, so sorting out the peanut trail for all those that follow will be a worthwhile effort.

Here is the latest update video on my progress or lack there of.

J30 MaJic Carpet Rebuild Video Update 3

I am getting ready to test the use of a vaccuum pump to aid in the drying of wet core. Also doing hull reinforcement and bilge glass work.

When you said 350° I had to laugh because in my head I had the voice of Julia Child saying, "Now, preheat the oven to 350°..."

So the idea is to evaporate the water by combo of moderate heat with low pressure. Where will the moisture go?

I just made a collector that is simply a length of 1-1/4 pvc with a T on the top. The T has caps that were drilled and tapped for the 1/4 NPT hose barbs and the long bottom collector leg is capped and has a 1/4" NPT drain cock. I'm thinking the moisture will want to condense as it cools in the line exiting from the hull. As soon as I put this all to work I will add some images and report results. I really do not know if this will work, it just seems like it is worth a serious effort, because if it does then the drying process becomes massively easier, followed by much easier glass repair work.

350° is the no go zone for fiberglass. I really don't want to get anywhere near that value and I even kind of doubt with the heaters I'm using if that would even be possible, but we will see. My ideal core temp needs to get into the 120 to 140 range, I suspect I will need a rectal thermometer rather than the infrared one I have.

It just might work! We have been having a real cold snap in our area the last few days. Probably nothing compared to what most of you are used to, but certainly in the temperature area that can cause a wet balsa core to try and unglue itself. Nighttime temps down to 15°. So I broke down and dug out my big Mr. Heater and tented the hull off and stuck the thing inside running on low. The tank has lasted much longer than I thought it would and the key thing is that directly above the heater the surface of the glass is showing 115°. That is the high temp reading, but it covers about a 2' x 2' area and then drops off quickly.

The reason this is important is that if I can get an area of hull to reach that temp or preferably something over 120° then the process of boiling/evaporating moisture from the core under vacuum becomes much more likely. So with ambient temperature at something more friendly like 45° then reaching the higher target temps is realistic and manageable. I would also expect that the area that was suitably warmed up would be larger too.



We are in for it this weekend too, with snow coming that will be topped off with freezing rain. So the work will have to continue inside the warm shop. I won't be doing anything to this hull until we get reliably above the 45° mark. As soon as I have any kind of results with this vacuum drying technique I will report it, either good or bad.

Hi Coastie,
I have a very similar project I've been procrastinating on for #207. I'm in St. Helens, right behind the fairgrounds. If it'd be possible (once the snow melts) I'd love to come see your project. I'm at madmarshalls@gmail.com or 503 396-5290. Love to see your progress. Mine may be a bit worse as when I drilled some exploratory holes in the starboard quarter I got some wet balsa and some black sludge.

No great process at this point in time, but there have been questions about what I was doing. So I did a short update video:

MaJic Carpet Video #4

At least it is warm in the shop and things are getting done. I also now have a local expert to help guide some of the specific steps for putting this toy back together.

dg

Why are you trying to sell your vacuum pump? Was it the wrong style/CFM?

The Gast R1 that I bought on Craig's list has great specs if you are looking for inches of H20, not so great if you need inches of Hg. Big difference I wasn't paying attention to when I bought the pump. I got the whole setup together with the R1 and couldn't figure out why I could barely get the gauge to read anything.

I now have a pump that I got from Joe Woodworker . I also built the rest of the pump setup from parts from this site.

Ok I have been posting on the cabin sole and the heat and vacuum drying but there has been work on some other areas too. First I want to thank Bill for all the work he has done outlining the electrical systems on these boats. I got all my new parts together, studied his outline (weirdly I prefer using his hand sketched schematic over the fancy one) and the images that he and Alex have posted and then got all tied up in a knot and thought maybe I should find a professional for this part of the project. Then my local J30 buddy Doug kind of walked me through it again and the next thing I knew I started tearing stuff up. When I first started I was kind of thinking of doing each little bit separately, then as I looked at the rats nest that was behind my panel I just started cutting it away.







What also made this part of the project make sense to me was looking at what I would call the modular way that Alex organized his setup. Mine is not going to be anywhere near as sophisticated as that, but the very process of laying the blocks out in an organized fashion started making this all make more sense to me. So with Bill's sketch in hand I chopped out a much larger opening for the panel. I decided that this panel would be attached with 6 screws and have leads long enough that the panel can be laid on the chart table while you access the terminal blocks and the bus. I put in more terminal blocks than what I actually need right now and I put a surface mounted fuse block on the front of the panel. I didn't want to have to look for any critical fuses buried behind the panel, but likely some fuses will still be there. I also left more room on this panel for any future work. This panel is made from some resawn bubinga and is about 1/4" thick, so it matches the cabin sole.

These blocks and busses are on their own plywood block and could be removed if that was ever needed. I have also built another block for the battery area and it will have the shunt, terminal blocks and a bus bar as well. I also used some left over polycarbonate to make a cover for the long bus bar behind the panel. So the electrical work is well underway.

Another project that popped up was removing the mast step cleaning and repainting it and then dealing with the broken bolt. With some adult supervision from Chris Tate I drilled and tapped a new hole and positioned the base back into place. An interesting effect of the new bolt hole position is that it is unlikely that the base will move backward ever again unless it shears this new bolt.

Then it was mentioned that I should lead the electric bilge to the sink drain and that made great sense to me, so another detour was made. I added a vent up under the sink and then had some serious fun trying to match a hose line that would fit the vent and the special sink drain. I found that a rubber water hose did the trick for me because it could be stretched to fit the sink drain. Making this change dramatically shortens that bilge line, so at least in theory it should be easier for the bilge pump to work closer to its max efficiency.



I have also managed to remove the old hatches and get them sent to a new home. The same is going to happen to the folding prop. So lots going on, much. much more needs to be done. We are looking forward to better weather so we can take a look at the topsides and sort out all of the projects there too.

Again thanks for all the help and information that this site and group of people have provided. The Adventure Continues.

It has been a while since I did a general update on my project on MaJic Carpet. Things are progressing well now and I am very near to starting to glass up the mid-section of the hull. The new core has been installed and the existing balsa has been fully dried. Now I am doing some basic fairing and filling of the divots I created when I got too aggressive with the pneumatic chisel. This tool makes it very easy to shear the old skin off or to remove core. The trick is to learn to not pry with it and only use it to shear. That is easier said then done because the wet balsa has little or no structural rigidity. Amazingly though when dried out it becomes quite stiff again. The 2nd part to improve success is to cut or score smaller sections, I found 4" x 4" to work very well. When I had larger sections there was a tendency to bury the chisel too far and in the process of pulling the bit out I would damage the balsa. I got the impact chisel online and then also tracked down a wider bit at 1-1/2" wide (about $65 together). I actually rounded the bit over on the grinder to get rid of the sharp cutting edge. While I have a large compressor right next to my work area I think I could run this tool easily on either of my small portable compressors. It doesn't need much in the way of CFM or air pressure to do this kind of work. Very short bursts move the chisel quickly and easily, at least in my case.

The other little breakthrough I had was learning that the first vacuum pump I bought works great for bedding the core in. I think a shop vac might also work ok for this, but I didn't test it. This little Gast R1 can run all day under vacuum load and not heat up. The advantage to using a high volume pump is that you can seal your film off with blue painters tape or similar (which is very inexpensive compared to the high tack vacuum tape). The small vacuum leaks between the balsa blocks are not a problem with this higher volume air flow and you still get more than adequate compression of the balsa into the bedding. In one area I actually did some glass work both on the inside and the outside of the inner skin before installing the new core. This inner skin was never very thick or strong in the first place and the removal of the core thinned it out too much. The chopped strand mat just sort of fuzzed away with the removal of the core.

The hardest part of this work by far is removing the rest of the old polyester resin from the end grain balsa. This is some quality time with the 4" grinder and 36 grit working overhead. A full face mask is required for this bit of insanity. Once that old resin is gone the balsa for the most part dries really quickly. There have been a couple of stubborn spots that needed a little heat to get fully dried right next to the solid part near the centerline. I also rechecked that solid glass section just a bit ago and see that it still shows being wet even after being exposed to a fair amount of heat from all the drying I have been doing. I think when I get the glass back on I will get the other high vacuum pump out and apply heat and a high vacuum to these areas to suck whatever juice is remaining in the solid section out. No way do I want moisture invading my newly dried balsa.

I really have to believe that having epoxy on the inside of the inner skin in the bilge from my previous work on the sole and having a very thick new outer skin of epoxy resin, this boat should be as sealed up as good as is possible. There will be no drilling of new holes on the inner side of this hull. I will bond blocks and then screw into them. Hopefully no one will ever do this project on this boat again.

Electrical work has been on hold while the weather is good. I did get out on my racing cat recently and then promptly cracked a lug out on the hull that hold the main beam, so am doing some glass work to fix that too. The fantasy is to get this J30 hull fully dried out and glassed back in so we can do something way more fun like spray paint the hull before it gets too cool this fall. I think that could actually happen at the current pace of work.

Here is a short video that is already dated. The work has moved well beyond, but I haven't shot any new video.

So while most of you have been enjoying your boats this summer I have continued to have fun working mostly on the bottom of the hull. There is still allot to do, but I think by the end of this week I will have most of the hull below the waterline fully dried out and sealed back up. That will leave getting the boat fully supported by the trailer again and then the drying and skin replacement where the wooden cradle has been supporting the boat. Then it is onto fairing, keel work and a bunch of other projects.

Here is the latest video update:

So things are actually starting to go back together, rather than apart and that is very satisfying.