OK, so this is what is left after I removed the whole core from the cockpit deck. I didn't want to do this now, but the best time to do it was now when it was all apart. There was not one piece of good wood on this part, although the sides where the seats are is in good shape, so that's a small blessing. This isn't an expensive job if you do it yourself, but it is a lot of labor.

So I cut out all of the rotten wood and cleaned up the fiberglass. You can see at the top of the picture where I epoxied some aluminum corner channel which will sit at the centerboard trunk and deck junction. It will also give me a good spot to bolt the plates that will hold the centerboard.

Here you can see where I am epoxying some more aluminum around the hole where the cable to lift the keel comes through. I figured it would be stronger and corrode slower than wood at least. The rest of the deck I will core with 1/4 plywood and cover all of this with fiberglass, so we'll see. Hopefully with a good layer of 5200 adhesive caulk joining the centerboard trunk with the deck I won't get these leaks anymore and won't have to worry about it.

So I am making progress, I hope to have the majority of this epoxy work done by this weekend. You can also see I have hull 689, or if you read it upside down, it's hull 689.

I made some chain plates today. I wanted to do something besides fiberglass and epoxy for a bit, so I figured I would make the sidestay chain plates. These hold the lines that stabilize the mast on the sides for the non-nautical. I had bought a 4 foot piece of 1/8 aluminum corner stock, and just cut them out. A little grinding, a little drilling and some filing to clean it up and there you go. They should be made of stainless steel for the most strength but these should hold up for a while, and working with aluminum is a lot easier than stainless steel.

I wasn't going to spend any time on things like this until after the hull was back together, because if that doesn't go like I plan, what's the point. But I figured these would be very useful to hold the topside when I go to lower it back down on the boat and I already had the metal so why not.

I bought a Newport 16 this weekend. That might be an exageration in that I bought a hull, a mast, an old jib sail, and a trailer really. But what else do you need really? . And the two Icehouse beers in the bilge were just a bonus! OK, no, I did not drink them.

I guess I would say I am new to sailing but used to go out a lot on my grandfather's sunfish up in Michigan every summer, and I have a gaff rigged sail on my kayak I have been playing with lately. But nothing bigger than that. Hoping if this works out it will be a good boat to start with. Big enough for me and a couple others.

The whole seam between the hull and topside (except the transom) was broken and had been siliconed back together. Lots of fun cleaning that out. I built a lift and pulled the top off and am in the process of fixing some bad repairs and damage on the edges.

I have a few more pics here, on photobucket, http://s17.photobucket.com/albums/b75/tschmidty69/Newport%2016/

You can see where I started to prop up the front after separating it. It actually was held together by the silicon caulk but with a ton of gaps of course. I was originally going to just clean it out and try to epoxy it back together, but I decided after poking at it that it needed to just come apart to do the job right. Right now I have the bottom almost ready and need to start on the top. I've put in about 6 hours (including trips to the store) so far.

Suggestions for how to put it back together would be appreciated if anyone has any. My plan is to make sure both mating surfaces are flat. then epoxy and rivets, with washers on the bottom of the rivets. I don't see a huge need to through bolt it, it would be a bit stronger but more money.

Also wouldn't mind some details on rigging. I know boats will vary but curious how others have the blocks laid out, etc.

It really shouldn't be too long until I get it going, but we'll see. If not I have a trailer for my next boat!

Vincent

This is Vincent getting ready to head to school for picture day in the spring. He is clearly the cutest kid ever, a point that is not open for debate. Comments disputing this fact will be deleted with prejudice :-).

Vincent turned 4 a few months ago. When he was born we found out he had Downs Syndrome, which was a bit of a shocker to say the least. But he did really well, was turning himself over when he was 5 days old, walking by 14 months, and generally doing better than we could have hoped. He has always been healthy as a horse and avoided any of the health complications common to DS (heart and gastrointestinal mostly).

Vincent had his two year evaluation for early intervention services and was a little star, labeling all his animals and generally showing off for everyone. Between his second and third birthday though, he stopped using words entirely and started doing a lot of self stimulation activities (humming loudly, throwing himself on the couch or chair over and over) and stopped making eye contact. A lot of people probably know what I am going to say next, which is that when we could no longer ignore these things, we had Vincent evaluated and he was diagnosed with Autism.

That was actually harder long term to look at then Down Syndrome honestly, because it basically was Vincent withdrawing from the world. We couldn't play with him and he wouldn't look at us. So this started a whole new area to research beyond the voluminous reading I did when I found out he had DS. We ended up getting some great advice from the wife of a doctor my mom works with as well as doing some reasearch on our own, and we started on our own home ABA program, initially just us working with him with what we could piece together. Later , we got in touch with an ABA supervisor and set up a formal program and went through trying to hire therapists.

That's a story I will get to later, but I just wanted to say that Susie Jordan with Carolina Family Frontiers has been great to work with as our ABA supervisor getting Vincent's program set up and he has been doing great since we started it. Her website is http://familyfrontiers.com but it looks like it is down, she used to have content there. She can be reached at 704-625-1291 in the meantime. He is back to using words and asking us for things. Be carfeul what you wish for considering the number of times a day he asks for "Elmo Show". Just kidding of course, I love hearing that little voice and can't imagine ever getting tired of it.