Glassed In Bolt

Here's a video of the Airhead toilet I installed. It's more of a review to show how I have it installed as my head compartment is not very big. I find it is a good fit for my boat.

I spent most of the day trying to remove panels in order to remove just ONE chainplate. The panels were long so I couldn't pop them out or slide them out of the way once the screws were removed. So, I took a Dremel and cut one piece enough to get a small fine toothed saw blade into the cut so I could cut down on other pieces to expose the bolts. I had an interesting surprise when I removed them. The bolt on the very bottom of the chainplate, was glassed in. I used a different bit on the Dremel and cut away the fiberglass around the bolt enough I could get a wrench around it to move it. Once the fiberglass was cut away, the bolt was easy to remove. The top bolt was harder to remove since it was up and behind another panel. The little shop-vac was necessary anyway to draw enough amps from the 1000W inverter on the truck for the Dremel to work. In a way, it almost felt like doing dentist work with the drill and suction. Sounded about the same.

Used Dremel on top panel that was cut

Used this blade to cut the rest by hand.

A couple more chainplates, and I'm done with taking them off the boat. I'll have to do the same process for the last port side chainplate. I also took the tiller off the boat to bring home and will put a couple more coats of varnish on it. Mainly to clean up a few scuffs. I was going to bring the rudder cheeks home too to refinish but decided that can wait for now.

I was looking at some info online about hulls and gelcoat and it got me to thinking about how nice of a finish others have on their boats. Looking at my boat, I would say the gelcoat is in really good condition. Looks nice and smooth. I'm thinking to use some compound and wax to get a nice shine on the hull. I may be able to just do a test spot to see how just a compound/wax would do before going through the entire boat.