Thank you so much for all the additional helpful messages on this thread. Neil, I don't see a way to private message from this thread. My email is just my first and last name with a period between at Gmail. I'll be at the boat, Fidelis, at evers Marina all the time till she can launch and is ready to sail.
Only thing, I need to finish the outside of the boat, since there's potentially only a couple days to get the boat in the water before the marina owner, who's the only crane operator at this marina, says he leaves for the season and the crane gets taken away for good. They're only taking powerboats here now on, as no crane is required. So, if one can really be sure the keel won't potentially drop at all in front if the front keel bolt comes off while in, water, potentially also letting water in that would be great. Then I could, do this in the water. Thank you for the extra info, Neil and Dennis. I'm still looking around to see if I can find some reasonably priced high strength (epoxy?) fiberglass board to make things simpler. But, seems like fiberglassing from scratch would be a much better deal. What thickness/ weight glass did you each use? How much glass and resin did you end up using? It sounds like you put the cardboard forms, a box without sides or a top in the case of the mast support, in the bilge and then started fiberglassing inside that. Did you tape them to make sure they didn't move. Did you wrap them in plastic film, so you could peel them away after? You just edge joined each strip to the bilge sides to keep everything flat, instead of trying bending/ tabbing to the sides at all, right? Also, is there any issue with cutting away that transverse strip of floor with an access hole over the forward keel bolt and re-attaching it later, perhaps with screws? In fact, it would be really nice to drop the sole 2 to 3 inches in the walkway or whatever is possible for better headroom and cut the floor into pieces that pop in and out for better access if ever needed - though I don't know if there's a structural function provided by the floor/ liner that would be compromised. If feasible, perhaps doing this at the same time could be a possibility and provide better access? There's also a vertical wooden floor board starboard of the mast that looks like it's gotten soft. Would be nice to replace all such wood. Also, I didn't realize that the mast support is actually all wood covered in a thin layer of fiberglass until reading the discussion here. The covering made it look like a big block of resin with a board underneath it. I'm guessing I could deal with this later. I can only feel a very slight bit of bowing underneath the support and there's just some dog eared corrosion on the end of the mast step that can be seen in pictures. Thank You! Hope it never comes to a c&c trawler, Joe. Hope the sail patches up all right. Charles. My boat was in Maryland before I had her.
