It has been a busy week in the boat shop. Nina and I put in 5 days and Marsden did 4. On Friday we started glassing the hull to deck joint. This will make the whole boat one solid piece rather than the deck just being bolted to the hull. When the waves are big this means a much stronger boat.
On Saturday Bill finished grinding the bottom paint off of the keel. The bottom is paint free! Now we get to repair the blisters, which means more grinding. Gypsy’s keel is very flat and so to make her sail better we are going to add a foil (wing) shape to the keel to make Gypsy sail better.
While I was doing this, Nina continued to remove the galley counter and prep the engine bed logs. This means grinding old resin and paint off.
Sunday Marsden got taken off blister repair and put on the polishing metal task. He spent most of Sunday and Monday getting the companion way hatch rails polished to a mirror finish. Polishing is a slow process.
Bill and Nina did more sanding and demolition in the cabin. If you are wondering about boat work, much of it is repetitive. On Monday the final demolition work prepping the space for the new diesel fuel tank was done. Nina cleaned more butyl rubber off the ports. This stuff is sticky and messy, but it dissolves nicely in lacquer thinner. The weather has been great so this can happen outside. Then we helped to finish the glassing of the hull to deck joint.
While we were doing this Tom was making our new rudder. He laminated new fiberglass skins in the two mold halves. Then he had to fit the rudder post to the mold and glue the two halves together. After glassing the hull to deck joint we watched as Tom filled the open space in the rudder mold with foam. The foam is made by mixing the two component parts together. Then you have a minute or so before the chemical reaction starts and the foam expands. To control the reaction we did three smaller pours instead of one big pour.
Tuesday found Bill re-sanding the bottom blister epoxy fills. Nina getting rid of more old carpet glue and cleaning parts of old caulk and Marsden got to get the rust off of the engine bed plates. Luckily these are going to be painted so a mirror finish is not needed. While we did this Tom worked on grinding the newly glassed hull to deck joint into shape.
We also have decided to replace our wood toe rails with aluminum ones. The four 20′ rails came this week and they are going to be lovely.
GypsyKramer 
Where did you buy your toe rails and how much were they?
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The toe rails came from Crest Aluminum in Ohio, http://www.crestaluminum.com. Each section was about 900 plus shipping.
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