Decisions, Decisions

After bracing up the main cabin last week I was able to remove the rest of the top without worrying about falling through or distorting the curve of the cabintop. The big surprise was that the entire port side was in great shape... perfect, so I really didn't need to remove it. Yet the starboard side was a wet rotten mess and I dug it all out (and under the remaining deck skin).  It was really difficult to remove the top skin and now that I have I can see that somebody had taken the time to fill all the through deck screw holes with epoxy and then retapped for the screws and bolts (See second picture below). The same can't be said for the starboard side and is exactly why that area is rotten.

Because the port section of core is perfectly good and pulling it up would be a real pain, I think I am going to leave it in place but enlarge the areas of the through deck screws to make room for a plug of solid glass layup (See first picture below).   Armed with the new Dremel Multimax I was able to easily cut out the squares I needed around some of the existing through deck holes.  I'll finish up the rest of them this week.  I had heard mixed reviews about the Multimax but given that the Fein was completely out of the question (way to costly), I decided to go for it.  So far it works great and I haven't had any of the issues that I had read about in some of the reviews online.

I hope this won't be a mistake leaving this part of the core in place (I have several opinions for doing either), but I guess I'll find out.  I don't think that I will find alot of good core on other areas of the boat, so I don't believe this is a decision I'll have to make very often.   Next week I'll be putting more bracing in for the forward cabintop and start beveling the edges of the cuts for tabbing in the new skin when the time comes.