ACE Work Progresses

While the club was launching boats, Michael and I worked on ACE.

Last year we had a power boat hit our stanchion at the dock, and bent and ripped it out of the deck.

The hull and deck of ACE is cored with foam, so we were surprised to find that in this area, it was cored with balsa wood.  Obviously, the area was repaired, with balsa, and it was rotten.

We used a 5" diameter hole saw from below to expose the rotten core:

We filled it with foam coring material, and polyester resin thickened with colloidal silica:

We last finished it off with several layers of fiberglass cloth.  In the next couple of days, we will sand it out and install the stanchion so that we can get the lifelines on.

In the meantime we:

• hooked up the new VHF
• put in the MMSI number
• replace the toilet with a new unit

The new Vulcan 7 chart plotters hooked up to the same power cables from the old Zeus Touch 8 units.  They talked NO PROBLEM with all the other instruments over the  NMEA 2000 bus.    The new Vulcan 7 units look smaller, but actually have a larger screen.

These units are all screen!

Lastly, I took the rigid boom vang apart and replace the gas lift shock.

The boom is now fully supported without a topping lift!