Work has slowed down considerably again due to the cold weather. I have been able to carry out some small jobs, but the cold is making it difficult.

Rounding off the front edge of the deck was something that was needed as the lines can rub here and having a right angle edge increases chafe.

The port side was similarly modified.

Before the dowels could be fitted into the transom they had to be grooved so that there was room for the epoxy to sit. Where the dowel touched the hole there was the possibility that the epoxy would be pushed out of the hole resulting in a joint starved of glue. I used a pull saw to cut the grooves as seen here.

Epoxying in the dowels took some doing but was carried out without too much mess. The interior of the holes was coated with unthickened epoxy and allowed to soak in a bit.

The thickened epoxy was slathered on the dowel which was then inserted into the hole. Each hole was widened slightly using a flat bit.

Due to the cold temperature in the workshop I had to use a small electric heater on the transom in order to ensure that the epoxy was warm enough to cure thoroughly.

I also flooded the wood around the leak with penetrating epoxy. You can see that the leak has opened up a bit presumably due to the wood drying out.

Looking back at photos of Shoal Waters I noticed that the transom had been reinforced around the area of the gudgeon and pintle fittings and I decided to do the same on Naiad. It was something that I had not noticed before but will make the repair easier to achieve. The first thing to make is a template since the holes in the real pad need to be properly located in the reinforcing pad.

Once the holes were drilled into the first piece of the template, the lower section was added using hot glue and an epoxy stirring stick cut in half. The lower edge was the marked and cut to the correct shape.

I didn't have a large enough piece of marine plywood to make the reinforcing pad, so I used epoxy to glue two pieces together to get the correct sized piece. This was done in the workroom in the house due to the cold. Once the epoxy had cured the template was used to mark the holes and the lower edge. Short work with a suitably sized drill bit and the bandsaw resulted in a backing pad for the lower fitting. The upper fitting was done the same way but not so large and it didn't need a shaped edge.

The lower pad will have the upper corners rounded off and all the edges seem here will be rounded over with a router bit. After that the paint will be stripped off the transom where the pad will be fixed and after filling the leak with thickened epoxy a lot of thickened epoxy will be used to glue the pad into position. It will also have some screws in appropriate places to hold the pad to the transom.

At this point the pads have been rounded over where required, the corners rounded and both sides given a light sanding.

All of the coatings on the transom where the pads are to be located have been scraped off so that bare wood is exposed.

One side of the pads is coated in epoxy and heated up a little with a heat gun as the workshop is cold and that makes the epoxy quite viscous and unlikely to soak into the wood. Heating it up thins it out a bit and allows it to soak into the wood fibres.

The exposed wood on the transom is also coated in epoxy.

Thickened epoxy was forced into the crack of the leak with a putty knife and more spread onto the coated pads which were then screwed onto the transom. The epoxy was spread on quite thick so that there was no possibility of there being any gaps, especially on the lower pad. As a result there was a fair bit of squeeze out but better that than too little.

The small heater was then positioned so that warm air was blown onto the lower pad and since warm air rises this should also heat up the top pad a bit. The intention being that the epoxy is not left to cure in a too cold environment. I'll probably leave the heater going for several hours. Hopefully this will fix the leak !

Time for a cup of tea.