After we found the rot in the roof and that section of the bulkhead that was rotted. We then found some more rot, and I was worried about the core under the mizzen step. I really started thinking that we may need to cut the entire roof off the coach house and rebuild it from the beams up.
I met with Michael down at the yard, and we spent some time inspecting and reviewing our options. I am so glad I met with him. In short what he shared was that there was not a reason to get rid of the whole roof.
His suggestion was to drill some holes from the bottom of the roof up without penetrating the upper fiberglass skin. See how the core was and where it was bad, replace those sections (cutting from above and making the wooden joints bond together on top of any beams that went across the coach house roof.
This made sense, but I was worried about the strength of it. What Michael shared was that the boat doesn’t get its strength from the fact that there is one piece of the core or multiple The mass and the way it is all bonded together will be as strong if not stronger than the boat was when she was built 40 years ago. We have to keep in mind that these are blue water passagemakers that are built strong and what we were doing was not going to weaken that.
So the next steps are for us to drill holes in the roof and then start to cut and replace core in the roof strategically. We are going to have Mayer Yacht do the fiberglass work on the roof when we are done, and they will paint it all as part of the paint job we are doing. It does extend our time a bit longer in the yard but gives us a stronger roof and base for our new mizzen as well.