Sarah and I took the boat out of winter storage (i.e., Sarah's possibly-should-be-condemned garage) a few weeks ago. Things looked as we'd left them -- a bit of dried mud we were too tired to clean off at the end of last year's boating season (which was November, if I remember correctly... what were we thinking?).
After wiping it down, we assessed the situation and realized a few things:
- we've got to do some repainting and re-gluing
- we've got to deal with the fact that the wood is bubbling in some spots
- and we still really like our boat and can't wait to get back on the water.
The second matter of upkeep is necessary, we think, because we didn't use marine-grade plywood. In an effort to save money on a project we weren't sure would work, we went with the cheap stuff, which we don't regret*, but means the boat requires a little more attention now. (*Don't get me wrong: if we were building another boat now, we would probably go marine-grade -- just for the first attempt, it was fine not to make a big investment.)After doing some research, what we understand is that marine-grade plywood has a lot more glue in it, and therefore has less space to absorb water. Regular plywood (we used 1/4") does have this space, and so we have this problem of the outside layer of wood bubbling in spots, both on the outside and inside of the bottom of the boat (the sides are fine). It's possible that things are rotting inside and the whole thing will fall apart, but that's bound to happen one day anyway, so we're not too worried about it.
So... we've got a plan for dealing with this (and it's not just knowing how to swim). More soon...
