The original plan was to pull out the floor in the salon and replace the strings that we suspected were bad. And boy, were they. The aft-most stringer was just gone so the one next to it was taking a beating and eventually broke. But in the course of that process a plague of termites were discovered that required a bit more tear-out. The fear is to not get all of them and the plague returns.

I should say here, we’re using a combination of physical removal, because the damage is so extensive we need to determine what needs to be replaced, and chemical annihilation; specifically, Talstar from our local Pestop. And I’ve been mixing it 1 oz to 1 gallon, which is the strongest mixture. When I’m done tearing out the inside and move to work topside, we’ll likely set off some termite bombs in there in the hopes that the gas will find anyone we missed. Haven’t decided on a brand for that yet, but I’ll let you know.

So the plan is to get the strings back in place, then paint the bilge with a nice white epoxy, glass in the stringers, and move topside. Simple right?

First up, the bathroom floor

Boom. Nothing to it.

Wait a minute… the original floor was a second layer built on top of the stringers, but I just want the floor level since I’m going to run the shower drain to something like this instead. Problem being, I didn’t allow room for the thru-hull so unless I want to close that off permanently, which I don’t, then I’ll have to do this over again, but I’ll come back to that.

Moving on to the salon, I tried a few things, but they all failed. I was getting pretty discouraged, but then I thought of a plan that might work. See, the boat is on stands but isn’t level. Level doesn’t really matter on a boat anyway – square is where it’s at. So I figured if I could find the first stringer measurements and get that right:

by measuring from the top of the board on the right to the bottom of the board on the left I get the overall length as long as it’s relatively level. Then find the angles…

and we’re on our way. Then I figured I could find the stringer furthest forward (on the other end of the space) and make it relatively level with the first one

Then it became clear that the mast riser is going to be in the way:

So I just tore it out. Turns out the actual mast riser was pretty modest compared to the overall structure:

And with that out of the way the plan fell together ย just fine:

There was nothing really interesting about duplicating the plan in the head so just use your imagination.