This episode I discover some unwanted guests in my SB stern post.
Find out that a scraper is my best friend, and I visit Yuge island’s summer festival.
Woodworm, every old sailing boat novel I read as a kid mentions the dreaded woodworm.
So what appeared to be a small crack in the paint, turned into a “worst case” scenario of woodworm boring through my sternpost, a real stomach dropping moment.
But although was bad, the epoxy glue lines seemed to have stopped it from spreading further.
So was a matter of taking the plunge and cutting a large chunk out of the sternpost, took a bit of nerve to make the first cut.
After that was a relatively simple job of carving a replacement part, fortunately I had been carrying some very hard wood onboard since Malyasia some 5? years earlier.
The wood, locally known as Chengal, a traditional boat building timber is very hard, glues well is rot resistant and also easy to work.
Wikipedia link here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neobalanocarpus
The rudders are off, the port side needs a simple scrape before fairing and new anti-foul.
Without a vacuum system electric tools are no good, plus I find that a simple scraper is the most effective tool for removing old anti-foul.
Yuge Island had its annual summer festival, the weather holds up and it was a fantastic afternoon.
Next video I repair the starboard rudder, which was damaged when we dragged in a typhoon 4 years ago.