great video, great work, very enjoyable to watch without skipping! thank you very much for releasing it. You are a great professionnal and I am not however I was so scared for your fingers when (42min) you were cutting with the electric scissors some round materials to patch outside the hull! I might be wrong but I reckon this is kind of dangerous. Safety is important! take care Georges respectfully
George it is great to see the full sequence from a professional, most RU-vid repairs are by self taught individuals, really feel I’ve learned something of value from you, Timo of sailing NV and Matt of the Duracell project.
Thanks, don’t know Timo but I like the Duracell project, mostly because I’d love to do a project like that but there are not many old IMOCA 60’s going cheap around here at the moment. I think Matt and I wold have a lot in common if we ever met.
This video (and all the others) are simply pure genius! Everybody who owns a Contessa 32 or is considering buying one should watch these videos over and over again, as much trial and error can surely be avoided that way. George, a question for you that I have been struggling with for a long time: When mounting the new water tank, the instructions from JRL suggest to glass in spacers on the top of the keel to lift up the water tank so that it is not sitting directly on the keel. In the Contessa 32 forum on FB, some fellow owners have explained how they have glued spacers onto the bottom of the water tank. Now, around 25:26 in your video you show temporary spacers which I understand serves the purpose of getting the tank in the right position so that when you drill the mounting holes in the new bulkheads, they will align with the flanges on the stainless steel water tank. But later in the video the water tank goes in, and the issue concerning spacers is not mentioned in that connection. My question is: Do you put something underneath the watertank to support it? If so, what? Or is it just carried by the bolts going through the two new bulkheads? My view would be that such spacers will take up "valuable" bilge space and mean less room for bilge water, so are they really necessary? Hope the question makes sense and I am sure your reply will be watched closely by the many fellow Contessa owners, who like me have been pondering over this question, day and night. Best wishes
Thanks for the kind comment, I only used temporary spacers as you will have seen and didn’t think it necessary to put permanent spacers in there, I’m not sure it’s necessary as it’s not a particularly big tank and felt it better to have the ability for water and any dirt/debris to be easily washed though the bilge to the lowest point and be removed. The tank is very well secured and I can’t see it moving anywhere in use. Having some permanent supports under the rim sure won’t hurt though.
binge watching the whole job... yep reading all. great work. some prices would be nice.. i know that won't be easy but you don't do easy... p s. in Bournemouth, if you need a hand.
I read what you type in the videos just as I listen to you explaining the proper way of doing things.. I can tell you're a true craftsman and someone who has knowledge to share. I'm wanting to buy a classic sailboat which will need work since I have never been afraid of hard work and am willing to do that rather than spend more money.. I really hope that other owners will see these videos and hire you to do work on their boats so that you can make a living and we can learn..
Again a brilliant episode - sequences not too long nor “boring” as one gets a good appreciation of all steps and work involved. Pleasure to watch you doing your again very thorough and really skillful work. Thank you for sharing George!
read it. I have been enjoying the Lottie project, as I am currently doing a refit on our little 30 footer myself and to coin another sailing channel im learning by doing.
I watched the lay-up and read the .. notes? about it. glass work fascinates me, I never get tired of watching laying up and fairing in, especially fairing.. which looks like drywall work to me, I've done some of that sort of work..
I have to say you go on all details. I really like that. I would definetely hire you to refit a sailboat. Congratulation and keep posting your videos. I love it
Thanks for the video, really like the format and how you are presenting it! I hope you are filming your side projects would like to see how you installed the diesel heater!
Really enjoyed this episode! Sound was good, and the music and your voice were very close to the same volume (in some of your earlier videos, the music was significantly louder than your voiceover so I would have to adjust my volume several times).
Thanks, trying to get better but without investing too much time. It’s all edited on an iPad app so there is only so much tweaking to volume I can do. I think the more expensive editing solutions have automated volume balancing tools
@@RefitandSail You seem to have gotten it correct, so well done! I meant to include a question about the GRP sheet that you installed above the water tank: did you bevel the sides of the GRP sheet to fit the curve of the hull, or just fill any gaps with thickened epoxy and called it good?
@@kbbarton1 no need to bevel the sides on that, its there to provide lateral strength/structure between the hull sides to limit flex so as long as its well bonded in each side then its all good. the floor, which you seen in the next episode, is bevelled to fit the curvature of the hull.
Brilliant episode, thanks George. This has inspired me to fit a SS tank in Gauntlet next winter. Not robbing you of work as Gauntlet is in North Wales😀 I look forward to the episode where you refit the sole as this looks to be the tricky bit for amateurs. Quick question: when filling the old transducer holes do you start with the largest or smallest circle of mat? Andy Miller of Boatworkstoday says smallest first but this sounds illogical to me….
Hi Andrew, pleased its been helpful. Prob worth noting that I have not put every single step of the process into the vids. Also different aged Co32's had their internal furniture built in slightly different ways so what worked for Lottie may not work in exactly the same way as a later JR boat and I thinks yours is a Slack so different again. Re filling the holes, as I'm sure you are aware there are two schools of thought, small first or big first. In reality I doubt it makes very much difference at all. The theory is that if you put the big one in first then it has max surface area against the hull but if it were to fail due to a bad bond (very very unlikely) then the whole patch could fall off. Filling with the smallest first overcomes this but as its the resin and the prep-work that would cause a failure then you don't really solve the problem IMO. I often do a hybrid of a couple of smaller ones, then a middle size, then maybe a coupe of larger small-ones then a larger middle size and built it from there. But I also always do the extra dishing out and laminating on the outside to ensure a perfect and super strong repair. The most important thing is to have a good taper so lots of surface area, thoroughly clean and then use correctly mixed resin in the appropriate environmental conditions Hope this answers your question.
Thanks for another great video, George. How would you clean this new tank? Do you think it would be possible to put your arm through that inspection port and scrub the whole of the inside of the tank?
You can get an arm in the access hatch, I have done it on another identical tank but in reality the stainless tanks stay very clean (much cleaner than plastic tanks), not sure why. A couple of years ago I opened up the stainless water tank that needed repair having been sealed for 37 years and it was spotless inside.
Thanks, I believe it’s about 75L so not huge but it’s what will fit and sufficient for most owners needs (you can fit a secondary tank elsewhere if needed.
Haha, you are one of three that read it, there are lots of options for making (or just buying) flat grp sheet but wet layup is the easiest and cheapest option, I could have vac-bagged it but weight not critical and I was pretty happy with the resin to glass ratio. Lots of people using “advanced” layup methods on YT are doing it for the channel and for the views, they are not working to commercial time and costs constraints as I am.
Good. video. Check out Atomvoyager and how he builds in "Interagul " water tanks over the keel with fiberglass and epoxy with a line fiberglassed through the bottom length of the tank for bilge water. That might both simplify, reduce cost and maximize the amount of water stored.
Thanks, having had both I would take a stainless steel tank over fibreglass every time, it is naturally antibacterial so needs very little cleaning, my old grp tank needed cleaning regularly to keep it clean and stop stuff growing.
I know most people seem to use acetone to wipe down but I believe there are some codes that require styrene when bonding to polyester. What's your experience?
I have only ever used acetone (and that’s all I have seen other laminators use for cleaning down), styrene is a good solvent but it won’t “do” anything to fairly old cured polyester beyond surface cleaning.
@@RefitandSail I'm ready to be corrected but my understanding is that Styrene is specified in some codes because any residual is incorporated into the resin reaction in the same way as the Styrene in the actual resin is. Ross over on Life on the Hulls mentioned that it was a requirement in Australia to use Styrene rather than Acetone
@@matthewsellers82 on boats that are relatively new then there will be some unreacted/uncured resin components in the laminate and the argument is that new poly resin will, to some extent, bond with these unreacted components to form a partial chemical bond between the old and new material. In that situation the use of styrene may help the old and new to bond. With 50 year old boats like Lottie there may (will) be the same uncured/unreacted components but after all that time they are extremely unlikely to react/cure when overcoated with new poly. I was using epoxy so there was never going to be a chemical bond but epoxy adheres to old poly better than new poly does but either would be fine. For other parts of the refit I'll be using Poly but chose to use epoxy for this as I thought it worth the additional expense. Hope this answers the question, maybe 🙂
@@RefitandSail It does, thank you for your time. A couple of years ago I did some very unscientific tests with Bondo (a 3M brand) resin by pouring fresh resin on top of cured resin, letting the new resin cure then bend testing the resulting combined block to see if the two would separate. If the first resin was less than 4 days old there was a chemical bond beyond the 4 days the two batches would separate. The tests were pretty basic and made no allowance for % of catalyst, temperature, humidity, Etc.
Tank is 316 stainless and should not regularly be in bilge water unless there is a serious problem with the tank but can cope with regular wetting with no issues.
Floor removal would be necessary but since the first tank was in there for nearly 50 years I don’t this the owner will have to worry about it’s replacement any time soon.
As a Hapless amateur, and I'm sure someone, somewhere will be referring to me as "the previous owner" I'm wondering what the advantage is to having a seperate water tank as opposed to an integral watertank such as Atom Voyager does on his yachts ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-mtj7tVZ3uUo.html (I know,...RU-vid watching hapless amateur, please forgive me.. ) Also, what happens if that tank ever leaks?
I have not watches the channel you mention but I would have a stainless steel tank over what I presume is a build in GRP tank whenever possible, they say soo much cleaner as I think stainless steel is naturally antibacterial. On my own boat I started to get a leak on one of the original 1984 tanks, it had never been cleaned as there is now access hatch bit when opened up it was spotless inside. The GRP tank I had in a previous boat would not stay clean without adding lots of chemicals and still needed a physical scrub clean at least once a year.
@@RefitandSail Thanks for your reply, that makes sense. He is a bit like an American version of you, fastidious, innovative, passionate about boats and does a great job... Thanks again
