Dovekie today

Dovekie is not quite the original H28 design but pretty close apart from the raised coach roof and a few areas the have been glassed.

The issues I have with it are not with the riveted kauri hull and frames which (apart from a couple of broken frames) appear to be in good nick and pretty much water tight. What are problems is where the cockpit floor and seat were built from ply and some epoxy and glass, and where the compass was fitted through the plywood cockpit bulkhead.

I have rot in three of the four corners where a steel nail was driven down through the seat frames into plywood (2x2 nailed into 1/2 in ply - who would do that???) Water has got in around the nails, run down into the ply and spread sideways. In each case the rot is in only one horizontal ply. The vertical ones appear to be wet near the nail but solid still. The wood appears to be different in each ply but the glue seems to have prevented the rot going across between plies in most areas apart from close to the nail. One nail went through into an original deck beam which is the only structural part that I have found with rot.

The cockpit floor has been glassed but it hasn't been taken up the sides at all - just a filler coving which has now cracked away from the vertical sides and getting a little wet. I am in the process of fixing the rot and am cutting out the filler (thanks to my Bosch multitool) and will redo with a glass layer a few inches up each side.

The compass was fitted to the cockpit bulkhead and not sealed properly. The ply was quite wet and had been repaired before but the rot I found was due to the cockpit seat problem above.

Interestingly the side decks are planked and caulked and also appear sound in the areas I have stripped of paint so far. There is a lot to be said for the old methods.

Jeezzz - a bit of a rant - I needed to get that off my chest - its been frustrating dealing with a number of individual small problems that all could have been avoided, are all individually not difficult to repair but which add up to quite a bit of work.