Doghouse removal

Last night, Cass was preping a small piece of trim on the companionway doghouse for refastening and varnish. This little bit of trim has been loose and on my to-do list since I bought the boat. Cass was looking for a little woodworking project, and I thought that stripping and re-bedding this would be great. But as she takes it all apart, we find a decent amount of fiberglass delaminaition around the doghouse. I grab a little flap of the d-lam and pull... and *rrrriip*, I tear off a large swath.

Here is the resulting carnage. Atop the house you can see the trim bits Cass was working on.


After consulting the local fiberglass expert on the dock, I find that re-glassing this house will suck. It wouldn't be too hard, but I really didn't want to spend that much time and effort on a piece that is obviously not original and looks bad. But something needed to be done, because the water getting between the glass on the house could easily reach the deck, and that would be a big problem.

After some thought, I finally thought, 'what's even better than fixing a problem? Removing a problem!' So that's what we did. We took off the house. The slider is designed to work without one, and the only reason I think it was there was to fill in the space over the hatch when there was a hard dodger on the boat (which also looked bad).

So, off goes the doghouse!


And its gone!
And looks better!






So, now I have the more traditional look of the naked sliders across the deck. Much better... now i just need to fill the fastener holes in the deck, fair in the edge created by the glass at the deck and paint.

Problem solved and the boat looks better for it.