Plank Repairs (I)

 When Wing was surveyed the surveyor noted problems with a couple of planks below the waterline.  The aft end of the port garboard plank was lifting out of the rabbet and its upper aft tip was soft and cracked.  At the starboard bow a couple of planks were starting to lift out of the stem rabbet.  These issues need to be rectified and this needs to be done post-haste for insurance purposes: I have engaged Tern Boatworks to investigate both problems.  Tern is a yard that has a lot of experience building and maintaining wooden boats and one of their yards is located in the Gold River Marina where Wing is also lying.  They have done a bit of work on Wing for her previous owner so she is not unknown to them.  They started work this week and have already made a lot of progress.

Port Garboard Plank

Tern found that the aft 2-3 feet of the port garboard plank had decayed badly and needed to be removed.

The mahogany had completely decayed along the aft rabbet edge and the fasteners rotated freely with no grip in the wood at all.  At first they were concerned that there were issues with the white oak structure underneath but that is actually sound.  Rather, the fasteners themselves had decayed:

There was no thread left at all to grip in the wood which is why the plank had lifted! Just forward of the section they removed the condition of both the garboard plank and fasteners is a lot better:

And the conditions of the frames, keel, and sternpost, and plank directly above the garboard are all excellent:

The wood is solid, the rabbet is clean and crisp, no issues at all! The folks at Tern suspect that either there was a localized electrolysis issue at some point or, perhaps, the tannic acid in the white oak has caused some of the fasteners to decay.  In any case they will be able to scarf a new end onto the garboard, re-fasten, and re-caulk it and it should be good to go.

Planks at the Bow

Two of the planks on the starboard side of the bow just below the waterline had begun to lift out of the stem rabbet.  Tern removed the fasteners from the rabbet and those had also decayed.  The planks, however, are still in good shape:

Tern is simply going to re-fasten and re-caulk these planks.

Additional Thoughts

These are not major problems right now and are easy to fix in the short term.  I will, however, definitely need to monitor the garboard plank replacement area to make sure the problem does not reappear.  I will also pull some more fasteners this winter; it is possible that all of the fasteners along the rabbet need to be replaced.

There are some horizontal cracks in the two floors that have been made visible by the removal of the garboard plank section.  This is not necessarily a problem: the floors have probably been this way for over half of Wing's life, the structure seems to be completely sound, and all the bolts are solid and tight.  Futhermore replacing them would be a fairly major job and would involve pulling keelbolts.  At the same time the engine is currently out of Wing (more on that anon) so these floors are more accessible now then they will be for many years.  I may bite the bullet this winter and try to replace them: we shall see how thing go!

In the future this is the sort of work I plan to do myself but right now I have limited experience and limited time so I have called in competent experts to do the job.  Sometimes it is worth paying the experts to get a job done quickly and well!