Author: William Van Alstine
July 24, 2024
As Commander, I decided it was important for me to join the other Scuttlebutters here as this is obviously the new nucleus of the club.
And this week I finally had something to talk about – repairing the hull of a vintage Sunfish sailboat. I think this 14 foot dinghy holds the record for sales of any kind of boat. That is certainly the case for me because I bought 3 of them.
This year has been one of the most eventful for me, setting up a trailer lakeside in Fukushima and bringing a shipping container full of Sunfish and windsurfers, wakeboards etc., from Michigan to Fukushima. It was a nail biter with money on the line and no plan B if the dray could not get the container onto the property. Well, that was all a success and I basked in it for the last couple of months but as I began to unpack my goodies it became apparent that a couple of the Sunfish were in pretty awful condition.
And I had no clue how to fix them up. I never worked in my life with rivets, fiberglass, FRP, putty. But I sure did yesterday. And how did that come about? Why, Jeff Canaday, of course. Many of you know him as a long time instructor at TSPS. He agreed to join me this week and we lifted a 2 ton version of a Sunfish out of the container and onto the operating table for some important, mostly cosmetic surgery.
Under the canopy of a 250 year old Keyaki tree we got to work sanding off 250 years worth of lichen – OK, maybe 4 or 5 years. This Sunfish hull was from a defunct boys camp and had one poorly repaired hole in the side, lots of dents in the bow and stern and spider cracks through the gelcoat in several spots. And the aluminum trim was coming off in spots because of missing rivets.
Jeff has experience working with fiberglass and FRP and he has the power tools for grinding and sanding and a bunch of secret weapons that he uses when working with FRP and putty. Those weapons are most importantly the paper cup and the popsicle stick.
Here I was back from the home center with a can of FRP large enough to start a Lego factory plus the putty, plus the catalyst. What did I learn about the catalyst? Dip the popsicle stick into it and let a few drops land on the putty. What would I have done? I would have poured about a cup full of catalyst into a bucket where the entire amount of putty would have been placed.
But I get ahead of myself. First thing was sanding off the lichen. It was like a pumice stone and we started with the grinder. In the back of my mind was the thought that with all this powder being produced, lichen powder and gelcoat powder, maybe I should put on a mask. But since this is no longer a COVID emergency I decided instead to inhale the powder and what I didn’t inhale I wiped on my Brooks Brothers navy blue polo shirt (was navy). Jeff was better dressed of course but also decided to inhale particulate for…OK, we are lazy. Lazy and coughing.
I listened to Jeff explain how temperature influenced the number of catalyst drops to add to the putty. It was a comfortable 28 degrees. This boat was getting sanded from about 11am and we broke for lunch at 13:00. After lunch, while Jeff stayed focused and sanded, I kind of let him do all the work until he gave me the grinder and had me going after the cracks in the gelcoat. I did not have a lot of confidence in grinding up the hull because I did not know how to fix the gashes I was creating.
But finally by about 3pm it was putty time and I learned how to mix the putty with the catalyst and then apply it to the gashes with the popsicle sticks. And not soon after I was pouring FRP into a paper cup, putting one centimeter worth.
And Jeff explained how we would cut the patch of fiberglass to fit the contour of the hole in the side and how the first patch would be small, followed by slightly larger and then the last one rounded to stay within the depth of the repair.
We first worked some of the FRP into the hole and then placed the fiberglass patches into FRP and we then used the special metal FRP squeegee to remove air bubbles and make the amount of FRP even. We did the 3 sizes and by now I was having so much fun I was wishing the boat had more holes. And since it was time to wait for everything to dry, we decided to call it a day.
For some fun I took out our Michicraft canoe and Jeff and I hopped in for an evening shoreline tour. The water is very clear and the sandy lake bottom was in sight always. There was no wind but the sun was out and a sunset was definitely going to happen. By the time we returned there was half an inch of water in the canoe (not an FRP repair unfortunately). After that I went for a swim. And because there was no wind the water on the surface of the lake for about 10 centimeters deep was warm but the water underneath was NOT WARM. Jeff stayed out of the water and built a fire for us to roast corn and hot dogs. My goodness that was a simple but satisfying dinner. The beers were cold and camp chairs comfy. Mosquitoes came by to share the sunset with us, which was a wonderful sunset. But then the mosquitoes all went to bed and we were there alone until 10pm listening to — a lot of storks mostly.
Next day: So for breakfast, what flavor granola did we eat? Jeff had the Rocky Mountain, I ate Tropicalish muesli. And then after checking our putty we decided to work on the rivets first. Jeff has a rivet gun and I provided the 1/8 inch rivets which I had earlier bought at the home center.
The Sunfish trim is aluminum and the trim holds the fiberglass deck to the hull. Importantly, the bottom of the trim does not have a hole for the rivet to pass through. The rivet stops inside the aluminum trim at the bottom but after passing through the hole in the deck and the hull. We were not sure whether Jeff’s rivet tool would need to pass through the aluminum as well but long story short (YOU WISH), the rivet worked just great without passing through the bottom of the trim.
And they looked great. And again, the riveting was so fun and satisfying, we went and looked for missing rivets on the other two Sunfish.
After the rivets, Jeff could not wait for the spots to harden further and just started shaping the repaired spots with this sander. And I kind of cleaned up and got ready for lunch. Which was leftover hot dogs.
And then we put away our project – next step will be a little more putty and then gelcoat. And there are some inspection ports on the way from Michigan. Once installed its my hope that the hull is just water logged and that I can dry it out and lighten it up—or that it has a stash of gold bars in it.
Author: A fluent Japanese speaker, Bill has worked in Japan since 1985. He is experienced in operating small watercraft and has done so since the age of 12. He is mostly power boat involved and is known to arrange wakeboarding trips with TSPS members. He completed USPS education courses in Seamanship, Piloting and Advanced Piloting as well as TSPS beginner sailing. Bill is the current TSPS Commander, as he was in 2017 and 2018, and Treasurer from 2019-2023.