This is very big news indeed in the world of Beta III. Long long time readers will remember that the deck was originally painstakingly repaired and patched and caulked and sikaflex but it failed. It leaked a little at first, ignorably so. Then it leaked some more and more and more until it was often raining more inside the boat than out. Not ideal at all.

A leaky deck meant a lot of the hard work on the interior was trashed. Heartbreaking. But not really rectifiable as a lot of the problem was the condition of the teak – it was just a bit old and dry and past it to realistically be resealable. And the problem with leaks is it is often hard to trace where the water was coming in and what needed patching. While the quality of the wood meant it held a lot of moisture, particularly at lower points where it should have run off. Making it all worse.

Trying to salvage the deck again was clearly the route to madness and more of an exercise in futility than normally presented by this project. It came to the point that even i had to draw the line. So it had to come off, all of it. Gone.

And the good news was that this presented an opportunity to do things differently. With the 3 inch thick planks gone, we could do a proper ply subdeck (there was none previously) which would make it properly watertight and give a proper foundation. There would be teak but this would be more of a veneer, stuck and sikaflexed to the ply subdeck. In addition, the overall layout would be simpler… not bolting the planks down would mean no caps over the bolts that kept popping off. The unused repatched hatches could be removed, the divide in the main deck where it had been lowered and raised could go. A simpler layout and fewer seams and joins and superflous bits of deck furniture would also make for fewer chances for leaks.

And what a job. Matt and Jesse have knocked it out the park with the refit. The front deck was done two years ago and then last year and this year the rest was completed. Bar a a bit of snagging to some of the seams (hence the blue tape), it’s all done.

And it seems to have worked. Re-doing work is always gutting but i think this is the real opportunity for the boat the push forwards. The deck is now FINALLY (yes, 12 years later…) watertight. Should i have gone down this approach all along? Probably. Is hindsight a wonderful thjng? Absolutely. Lets not torture ourselves with this but just think of it as a great opportunity and a foundation for a restart. Onwards!