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I cleaned mine up enough to be passable, Norman. Thank you.
Spark now has decks. I used 6mm Okoume Ply. At the moment they are only roughed in, but hopefully tomorrow they will be attached and have at least one layer of varnish on them. Rather than copying the old deck exactly, I managed to trim the decks down to two piece per side, looks a little cleaner with two less seams in the deck.
Once the decks are secured, I can finally paint the hull.
Chine down she is repainted, I did not bother doing from the chine up until the deck is on. I am running out to the mill later to get a few pieces of wood I need and then tomorrow I start tracing and cutting the deck.
Most ply in FRP boats is encapsulated. You will not find it by simply looking under the deck, but look for raised square or rectangular areas of reinforcement.
A further issue with the cracking above, it looks to me like too thick a gelcoat on a flexible FRP hull. Gelcoats are quite stiff, if the glass beneath it flexes, it will eventually crack the more brittle surface above it.
As for Oliver’s advice on wooden GPs.. ask him how many of the original 100 boats are still around and in use. My own was built in 1964 and what little rot I found was dry rot on the decks where the varnish had perished and exposed the ply to the weather while the boat was in storage for almost three decades
Definitely Oliver. If I were to install one into a glassfibre boat, I would also consider backing it with a piece of hardwood to spread the stress over a larger area.
taking a quick peek around the internet, this is as close to the bow eye on Spark that I can find. I am not endorsing this business, but they are good people to deal with if you should feel the need to purchase one.
Maybe this is an American thing, but Spark #5942 had a bow eye screwed directly mid bow. So far it has proven strong enough to both keep her on the trailer and pull her up if I did not want to completely submerge it into water.
Please forgive how she looks, this was the best picture of it I had, taken back when I first picked her up after sitting in a barn for 25+ years
I used a “fish” the type used to run wires through conduit or a hollow wall. It’s a semi-flexible coil of plastic. I taped the halyard to the end and ran it through the mast while it was sitting in my basement. Worked a treat
The number was not moulded into the glassfibre? I would have thought it would have been like the wooden boats, cut into the hog or the equivilant
I decided to have them made up in Cypress. It’s the wood the local mill recommends for floor boards. It’s not too bad in price, $50 and all I need to do is drill the screw holes, varnish, and install. I could have routed the edges, but I lack a planer to get them to the proper thickness
while thru deck sheeting looks very neat, it is not something I intend to do to Spark. I would like to consider the thu deck shrouds though. It appears it is just a bushing on deck and the chainplates are mounted lower?
I was more trying to envision the modern system. Spark is exactly like the picture you show, as we in the states only ever had the Series 1 GPs. I doubt I will ever convert my boat, but I do like the cleaner look of the chainplates below deck
Oliver, what is the difference between above deck Shroud attachment and below? I have looked for pictures on it, but have been unsuccessful.
even if the wood does not split cleanly, epoxy and a few clamps should still rejoin it nice enough to cover in varnish again.
My series 1 GP had a similar crack at the handle, but mine was a solid board, not one that was put together with tongue and groove. I epoxied mine, used a bit of glass cloth to reinforce it, put a few dowels into the leading edge to stabilize it, and then painted the entire board as I also had many nicks and deep gouges to fill. Similar to your boat, Spark is an ex-club race boat and time and previous owners had not been kind.
