Killing Mold with Vinegar

Mold is a terrible scourge on a yacht. It lives in the wood of the interior and is always lurking just below the surface, waiting for the perfect conditions to bloom and rise up! 

Mold is not just fuzzy and annoying, it can also pose great respiratory concerns! Mold spores can trigger symptoms as mild as allergic reactions all the way up to much more serious conditions like aspergilliousis. 

Killing mold (or at least driving it back into the wood where you won’t be exposed to it) is actually simple to accomplish. 

Maddie sprayed straight white vinegar onto the afflicted areas and let it sit for a full hour. Then she scrubbed the surface with a stiff brush (we used a new toilet bowl brush) to get into all the nooks and crannies of the interior joinery. After that she wiped the surfaces down with a dry towel.  

You might be wondering about the vinegar smell. Let me assure you that the smell is strong but it does air out quickly with the hatches open. So, be sure to do this on a dry day when you can open up the hatches instead of on a rainy day when you will be trapped without ventilation inside what would smell like a pickle jar! 

Terciera, a Magical Wonderland

Just like siblings have nicknames for each other, the islands have nicknames as well. Flores is the garden island with its lush forests and mystical waterfalls; Sao Jorge has great cheese; Sao Miguel has mind blowing lakes, and Terceira is the “party island”.  

While they do have many parties (pretty much all the time!), Terceira does have its own beauty. 

The botanical gardens in the heart of the town are breathtaking. Now that spring has arrived, the flowers are beginning to bloom and the whole area is changing in wonderful ways. 

The constant showers (even on cloudless days) produce rainbows all the time. It seems that every time you look off into the distance, there will be a rainbow in the sky! 

This tiny island out in the middle of the Atlantic is a world unto itself. Created in the raging fires of a volcano, it has blossomed into an oasis of tranquility and beauty on your transatlantic passage. 

Repairing Dry Core

Cored fiberglass is great when it works well because it makes the the structure significantly stronger without adding much weight. The only problem with cores is if there is going to be any problem with the structure, it will be in the core!

Cores are like a sponge, soaking in the resin that is covering them. If the core is over-saturated with resin, it will result in a brittle structure. If the core is under-saturated with resin, it will be dry and not as strong as expected.

This one piece of cored sole in our head during the head refit suffered from a dry core. It was just a little soft no matter how many layers of fiberglass I applied over it (I applied 9 layers of fiberglass!) so the decision was made to put more epoxy into the core.

I had two choices, I could either strip off the fiberglass and expose the dry core, or I could make my own access to it. I chose the easier way!

I drilled a pattern of holes in the top of the core, but not all the way through. This would allow resin to soak into the core and saturate it further. The holes were evenly spaced about 1/2 inch apart to allow the resin to soak through and through, saturating everything.

The wonderful part was after the resin had cured, I could test it by stepping on it and if the core was still soft, I could always simply pour more in through the holes. Luckily, this one attempt fixed the whole issue and it became stiff as a board!

Head Refit: Shower Sole Part 3

Epoxy is expensive and impractical to have been using for a project of this size! I switched to polyester resin.

One gallon of epoxy cost $112. One gallon of Polyester cost €18!

That is a major difference! I was using epoxy because it is what I have learned with and what I was comfortable with. I have always done relatively small projects so the plan was simply to scale the project up to this much larger size.

This polyester resin has fairing compound already mixed in with it, so all I need to do is mix in the catalyst and smear it on everything. It also sands more easily than the 407 thickener that I had been using in the past.

Everything got a layer of fairing putty so that the next time I sand, everything will simply sand down to a uniform surface. Oh, and the best part about this resin is the curing time. 20 minutes instead of 4 hours! This means that additional layers can occur in the same day!

Mold

The Azores have a nice cool wet winter climate, perfect for growing mold.

We left the boat for about a month of the Christmas holiday and when we returned, the inside of our home was covered in a milky green hue.

This fuzzy surface was most disturbing, as it is just the equivalent of a plants flower. The real organism was living deep inside all of the wood on our boat. Our home is but a varnished and painted fungus.