Vlog 346: Cutting Corners

As described in the prior videos about the refurbishment of Twiggy, my 48-year-old fibreglass cabin cruiser, I needed to cut the back off the boat in order to replace the rotten wood in the transom. Unfortunately, things didn’t go entirely to plan.

The day started off straightforwardly enough when I cut off the cable ties holding two fenders on the rear corners of the boat. Then, with a little assistance from my DeWalt multitool, I cut through the very rusty screws holding what seems to be some kind of ladder assembly on the rear. The idea of all this was to clear the transom so that it would be easier to cut it.

In theory, the transom is arranged as a double skin of fibreglass with plywood in between. To replace the soggy wood then, I needed to cut off the outer skin of fibreglass, chip away the old rotten wood, put new wood in and finally pop new fibreglass over the whole thing to recreate the back.

Unfortunately – and I only discovered this once I’d made the cuts – part of the boat’s rear are single skinned and my cuts went straight through to the back cabin! It turns out the double-skinned section with wood core is inset by a few inches from the sides of the boat. Therefore I need now to make further incisions so as to remove the correct portion of the back.

This will make re-fibreglassing the back a bit more complex because I’ll not only have to cover over the cuts where the double-skin section is but also cover over the accidental single-skin holes, and both of these are in close proximity to each other, with part of the inner skin making contact with the outer at the join. It’s a bit tricky to describe in words but the upshot is the job has become more complex.

However, my theory is this: the entire boat is, effectively, made of glue. That’s all a fibreglass item is, glue made stronger with matting (fibreglass. Or carbon fibre etc). So there’s nothing on the hull that can’t be remade with suitable quantities of new mat and resin. At least, that’s my hope. I just need the weather to hold out for a few more weeks before we get into the proper chill of autumn and winter when the resin would be too cold to set properly. And I’d be too cold to work.