Beaming

Despite the newly fibreglassed roof, we were still getting a couple of drips inside the wheelhouse when it rained on the way down from our old mooring. I worked out that the water was coming in through a badly patched hole (just a chunk of wood shoved in the gap) next to one of the beams that supports the roof, and possibly through the open front of the beam itself. You can see how it used to look in this old picture:

I decided to properly fill the hole, and fibreglass the fronts of the beams for good measure, both to stop water getting in, and to protect the beams themselves.

I mixed up some resin and fibreglassed a patch over the front of each beam, sealing them up

and at the same time, though I forgot to take any good pictures, filling the hole next to the beam with wood filler before popping in a bit of wood the right size as a front. You can just see it in progress here

and here it is tidied up and varnished over

Then, to tidy it all up, I painted a nice thick layer of bitumen over the front of the beams, further sealing, protecting and waterproofing them, and also making them look neater.

While I was working on the front of the wheelhouse I couldn’t resist giving the horn a good coat of bright red paint too: