Absolutely floored

The Lonseal was very carefully cut by Mrs. Alchemy based on paper templates and You Tube tutorials.

As mentioned last post, the good ship Alchemy came with many desirable features, but nice flooring was not one of them. So we decided if time allowed, we would "refloor" in Halifax over the winter. Well, time allowed and, thanks to the pandemic, it very much has, we determined to do the job this spring, prior to leaving.

The Lonseal product is not cheap, but it looks very nice and has a reasonable quality of non-skid (non-skiddiness?) desirable on a sailboat. In other words, given a decent shoe, you can stand without slipping on a fairly vigorous angle of heel. It is applied to wood or metal decking with a two-part epoxy. Once on, it's unlikely to come off.

Which brings us to the prep. The saloon was done first, which involved a prepatory sanding and cleanup of the existing subfloor, which is 3/4" thick marine plywood screwed to framing, which in turn is through-bolted to the frames and stringers, and in some places, such as the area above the forward diesel keel tank housing the 350 kilos of batteries, has been reinforced by me, because 55 kilo batteries stoving in the top of a keel tank at sea is considered undesirable.

The previous floor covering was green indoor/outdoor carpet in the saloon and the floor was held down with coarse drywall screws. The latter would surely rust in the sea air and were replaced with slightly longer (1 1/2 inch), slightly larger (#10) silicon bronze screws, which are far less likely to corrode in place and are often used in wooden boat building. So all that took time to prep.

The template cutting, which involved both cutting out multiple hatch covers and matching the "holly" lines neatly, also took a lot of work, all credit to the missus, who did a fine job and now we can have people over without cringing, mostly. Where I came in was in the pilothouse.

You've seen these two photos before, but they bear repeating. To the left is prepped metal, to the right is flap-disked and Ospho'd metal.

The former flooring was, in sum, metal decking over which odd, wide-headed self-tapping screws held down a quarter-inch of cedar ply, over which was glued a further one-eighth inch of cedar ply, over which was a sort of vinyl parquet pattern substance, also glued.

Friends, to use sailor talk, it was a fucking mess. Parts of the floor were rotten, other parts were heavily worn, and there was evidence of mold in the wood. I took it up with a combination of prybars and a Multimaster knock-off that is about the best $99 I may have ever spent...it's so reliable and useful in the more nasty jobs like this that I buy it actual Fein blades at great cost. But they work and they fit. Were I using this tool everyday, I would pay four times as much for the real thing, which appear indestructable.

The self-tapping weird metal screws were, of course, rusted in place, so I had to grind off about 60 of them. Makeshift curtains and rounds of vacuuming were made to keep the grit thereby made airborne out of the rest of the boat. The helm seat, which, as one might imagine, I installed particularly strongly, was unbolted, cleaned up and reinstalled. Acetone wipes, metal prep and protective paints were applied and there was much dryfitting upon the face of the waters.

Looks nice, doesn't it? There a massive hatch in this picture.

But the results were worth all the odd smells, tiptoing around while things "set up" and labour and dollars expended. The boat is cleaner, safer and looks markedly better. We'll do the aft cabin floor, which is tiny, after we get to Nova Scotia, which looks like it's going to happen, fingers crossed, as the Seaway locks open to pleasure craft June 22. We will pause to see if a pandemic "second wave" happens that could affect marinas or our passage materially, so early July is our new "go date".

Held together and to the countertop with countersunk #12 SS screws, it's not likely to move.

But back to further improvements: My wife has remarked on the disagreeable habit of the galley sinks not completely draining even at zero heel. While nothing short of a grey water tank with separate pump out could solve all of that, the simple addition of a two-inch HDPE sink surround has now raised the two galley sinks enough to permit full drainage, even if I can't take a decent picture of it.

Rubber strips glued to the underside of the wind generator pole should provide a bit of cushioning and, we hope, sound deadening.

I designed a simple base for a wind generator pole that fabricator pal Andrew Barlow knocked off in stainless steel with his customary skill. Before the wind generator is mounted, however, I have to make it more stable with struts at the rearmost solar arch and at the stern rail. I'm thinking Kee Klamps, but my friend Dean Muto is an actual rigger and I will see if he thinks that's a good idea.

Pipe goes over this well-bolted stub and is cross-pinned. Wind generator is collared to the top of the pole and clears the adjacent panel by about 15 cm.

 So we've got a few more projects to go, but arguably five weeks to get them done in, which will include "family docking in cross-winds" lessons, anchoring setting and retrieval practice, and the relocation of both the liftraft from rail to foredeck and the mounting of the nesting dinghy ... somewhere...Enjoy last night's brush with a squall!

This one had little rain, but over 30 knots of wind, always fun on the nose tied to a wall.

But we got a rainbow in the boatyard, which was nice.