There was one remaining area of the cabintop just forward of the hatch over the galley that was delaminated when we bought the boat, and never got around to fixing it. My sense was that the delam was not due to water penetration, but rather just a spot where the deck came unglued from the core, and that’s why it wasn’t a top priority on my list.
Since we are currently refinishing the deck, it is time to take care of it now. I learned about Merritt Supply and bought all necessary reparation equipment. I took the hammer around and tapped in a few other spots and found more delamination (big surprise–go looking for a problem on a boat and you are bound to find it). I took a pencil and the hammer and circled the area that was sounding hollow. Then I selected a drill bit sized to the syringe that I have for injecting the epoxy, and I drilled a number of holes all over the place in the area. Then Karen and I mixed up bowl after bowl of epoxy and injected it into the area. Karen jumped down below to make sure it wasn’t finding a way into the boat, and saw nothing.
The next day I showed up at the boat to discover a cured puddle of resin covering the galley sole, and stalagtites of resin around the hatch above the puddle. I spent an hour and a half grinding the resin off the floor with the belt sander (36 grit) and another hour and a half chiseling apart the ceiling trim and panels. Now the floor of our galley has a large spot of ugly bare wood that I need to polyurethane, and I still haven’t successfully fixed the delamination on the deck. That sucked.
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