Replacing the stern post

After digging out the rotted stern post on the Black Sheep and giving the exposed wood several days to dry out, I used an epoxy-based wood rot product to seal the plywood and the new post. I gave that a day and a half to cure then attached the post.

I used a lot of epoxy and screwed the sides to the post. It is solid. I used more epoxy to cover the screw heads and fill in some cracks.

Where there was a gap in the fiberglass I could see that the new piece wasn't as tight a fit as I had hoped. There was some gap between the post and the plywood at some parts. I squirted more epoxy into the gap to try to seal it off.

All of this went very quickly. The hard part turned out to be the mounts for the rudder.

I had bought a new set of screws for this. I figured that a 4" timber is actually closer to 3 1/2" so a 4" carriage bolt should be the right size. It turned out that the post is closer to a true 4" than I expected. Also, I pulled all of my screws out of the same bin but I did not measure them. It turned out that some other sizes had gotten mixed in. There were two 5" ones and a couple of shorter ones.

Because of the angle, I had a hard time getting a consistent angle for the holes. I had to widen some of them.

I had gotten galvanized screws but when I got replacements I went with stainless.

The tubes for holding the rudder looked symmetric but it turned out that one end is imperceptibly wider than the other. Naturally I had mounted both of them upside down and had to reverse them. Once I did that, the rudder hung properly.

I used another tube of epoxy to seal the screws and the fiberglass around the mounting plates.

I still had some of the Olympic Stain that I used on the interior. Most paint is unusable after two years but this just needed a good stirring. I replaced a broken floorboard and gave the floor a new coat of stain.

I also used some spar varnish on the tiller and the oarlocks.

I would like to give the exterior a fresh coat of paint but otherwise the boat repairs are complete.