Hidden Damage Under Our Mast Step | Siren 17 Restoration Ep8

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:01]You're just planning to break it?

[00:00:03]No, but it'll happen.

[00:00:06]This week we thought we'd switch [music] gears a little and start working on the deck half of our Siren 17 restoration project. We figured this would be the easy part. But, we broke a window and found more rotten wood under the mast tab. Not good.

[00:00:23]So, a little superstition never hurts.

[00:00:26]We decided to pay the ferryman [music] and hope for fair seas and no more rotten wood in this project, please.

[00:00:32][music] Anyways, let's get to work.

[00:00:37]Removing these windows turned into quite a job. The gasket that holds them in was rock hard after 50 years of weather and exposure. The first step to removing them was to peel back the locking strip that tensions the H-channel gasket.

[00:00:51][music] Then, Kyle warmed the gasket section by section and tried to carefully pry the window out. But, unfortunately, we weren't successful with this one. We weren't too upset about it though because we had already planned to replace these windows anyways.

[00:01:05]I think I want to put windows with a pretty heavy tint in [music] because I think they look really sharp. But, I'm not sure if maybe we should just do dark curtains and then we'll still have the option of the natural light when we want it. Let us know in the comments what you think.

[00:01:41]Oh, success!

[00:01:43]We didn't break it. Nice.

[00:01:45]I didn't expect that at all.

[00:01:48]Yeah, feel how rock hard that whole thing is. Oh, yeah.

[00:01:55]Yeah, if you heat these windows, be softening it to pull it out.

[00:02:00]Look, here it is. How do you want to knock that off?

[00:02:03]Yep.

[00:02:13]Woo!

[00:02:14]Wait, did you get it?

[00:02:16]Yep.

[00:02:18]There you go.

[00:02:21]Look at that thing turn it on.

[00:02:28]Good job. What?

[00:02:30]I said good job.

[00:02:34]Man, that's a flimsy little piece of metal. Yeah.

[00:02:44]Yeah, so thin. Yeah.

[00:02:48]With all the hardware removed, we carried the [music] deck outside for a good scrub.

[00:03:05]I ain't afraid of the dark.

[00:03:09]Once you let the light in, you won't see the beautiful stars shining [music] down from afar.

[00:03:18]No, I ain't afraid of the dark.

[00:03:23]I don't mind the rain.

[00:03:27]Bringing life back.

[00:03:29]We can breathe [music] again.

[00:03:31]The deck of the Siren has this awesome grippy texture that we really want to do our best to not to damage. So, we have decided to flip it over, do the fiberglass repairs from [music] the underside, and hopefully leave the texture undamaged. My dad Okay, we've got the deck in back in here now and flipped over. And the purpose of that was there is a whole bunch of well, more encapsulated wood on the underside of the deck and we're concerned that it's going to be rotten like the other wood.

[00:04:01]So, we're going to drill some exploration holes and see how it looks and what needs to come out.

[00:04:10]Yeah, the floor was definitely suspicious. flimsy What is that? What's that?

[00:04:15]No, let's just go right here.

[00:04:17]There's a crack in the deck here.

[00:04:18]>> to drill any more in the deck?

[00:04:26]Looks like it's fine in the bow.

[00:04:30]Oh, it's foam. It's not wood.

[00:04:32]>> foam in there?

[00:04:33]It looks like foam. Let's try on the side of the bunk and let's just poke into all of these and see what we got for material everywhere.

[00:04:41]I did not expect for that to be foam.

[00:04:43]Looks like Looks like someone drilled into this in the past to check it out.

[00:04:47]That looks like wood just from the what it is.

[00:04:50]>> inside the hole there. You can kind of see.

[00:04:58]>> Mhm, looks pretty solid.

[00:05:01]Open another one? Yeah.

[00:05:05]It seems pretty solid. Yeah, that looks like nice color in there.

[00:05:10]It's foam in there, too. Yeah. I don't know. Poke at which one This will be a block of wood, yeah, I would imagine. in the center >> holes are.

[00:05:34]Yeah, and that looked wet. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:05:42]So, this is going to be wood in here.

[00:05:44]This is right at the mast base, which we know we're fixing that anyways.

[00:05:50]But for sure, this is all wood.

[00:05:54]So, I don't know. This has a funny shape here, though.

[00:05:56]Someone's done something in the past there.

[00:06:01]I'm going to drill a random hole.

[00:06:09]That's foam, too.

[00:06:13]So, where's the block of wood in this here?

[00:06:19]Foam, too. Yeah, that's foam.

[00:06:24]And definitely rotten there, hey?

[00:06:26]Yeah.

[00:06:27]I don't know. Like, there's got to be this You can see how this deck's compressed here, and there's rotten wood you can see from the other side. So, there's a block of wood in there somewhere. We just have to It'll be easy enough, though, just to start cutting that fiberglass out until you hit foam.

[00:06:41]>> 4 in or whatever, a big square around Yeah. holes and cut it out, and plan to put wood in there, at least.

[00:06:48]And see what it looks like and where the wood is.

[00:07:00]>> [music] >> Oh, it's surgical.

[00:07:19]Oh, there's the block of wood.

[00:07:24]Yeah, that's gross.

[00:07:26]Good call on that.

[00:07:31]I don't know where far enough is. I think this is the end of the patch of wood right here.

[00:07:49]>> [music] [music] [music] >> Kyle extended the mast up cutout a little more until we were confident we got all the wet foam out. He also cut out the wood blocks that the grab rails mount to. Then got everything sanded down and ready for fiberglass.

[00:09:13]Well, it looks great. Yeah, it looks really good.

[00:09:16]Managed to find all the wood in the roof here, so got that chopped out and it was pretty rotten, so it'll be good.

[00:09:22]We'll build it up with glass mat and epoxy.

[00:09:26]All of the screw holes need to be filled. So, we [music] used hot glue to build up a barrier in the hopes that none of the epoxy will leak through to this side of the deck, which would damage the texture.

[00:09:44]6 and 1/4 [music] by 3 and 1/2.

[00:09:52]>> [music] >> We decided to build up these patches with fiberglass and epoxy rather than replacing with more wood. For the structural repairs on the hull, we followed the 12:1 rule, grinding out enough thickness for a nice smooth [music] transition. On these patches though, the 12:1 rule was pretty difficult to follow due to the foam layer in there. So, for this area, we sanded back the paint so that the epoxy would bond properly. We used thickened epoxy first to seal the edges and build a barrier for the foam, [music] then built up the mat. We measured and cut 10 patches for each spot to fill the void and then one bigger patch to extend out onto [music] the roof and tie it together.

[00:10:32]Another day of fiberglassing. Yep.

[00:10:36]Last one before a week off.

[00:10:39]Back at work.

[00:10:41]I'm going to miss the boat. Yeah. All I've done all week home [music] is work on the work on the boat. Is that thick enough?

[00:10:48]No, I don't think so still. Little more?

[00:10:51]You want it to stay in [music] those cracks.

[00:10:58]Too windy to play with that stuff.

[00:11:00]You call that peanut butter consistency?

[00:11:02]Yeah, that looks perfect. It's pretty thick.

[00:11:05]>> [music] >> I've been dreaming so much lately about [music] your face when you're smiling. [singing] It's the only thing that saves me.

[00:11:26]Hey, I don't know if I told [music] you that I think you're beautiful and oh [music] I can't wait to hold [singing] you.

[00:11:36]Yeah, you pull me [music] up when I'm falling [singing] down, and I don't know what I would do without [music] you.

[00:11:42]Yeah, you pull me up when I'm falling down. [singing] Hey now, look into my eyes.

[00:11:51]You can use them as a mirror, baby.

[00:11:54]You're my ticket to paradise.

[00:12:00]Hey now, [music] everything's all right.

[00:12:02]We've been longing for each other, and it feels like I'm on cloud nine.

[00:12:22]I don't want to be without [music] you.

[00:12:25]This is something that I know for sure.

[00:12:28]It's just something about you.

[00:12:31]I just want more. [singing and music] Tell me what you want to do right now.

[00:12:36]Tell me [music] what you want to do tonight.

[00:12:39]I really don't care as long as I'm with you.

[00:12:45]Hey now, look into my eyes.

[00:12:48]You can use them as a mirror, Okay, well, that's the first half of the lamp for the fiberglass here. We'll let that kind of drain. I put a little bit in there, and we'll do the next batch in I don't know, in an hour or something.

[00:12:58]These are almost These are probably ready to go now. Okay, yeah, let's have some lunch, then we'll get back to it.

[00:13:04]Okay, sounds good.

[00:13:29]Oh.

[00:13:30]>> Hey now, look into my eyes. You can use them as a mirror.

[00:13:35]You're my ticket to paradise. You want a nice row two over there and two over there?

[00:13:41]>> Yeah, that looks great.

[00:13:43]We're going to add two on each side of it.

[00:13:45]>> Yeah.

[00:13:47]Nice.

[00:13:51]Good.

[00:13:52]Good job.

[00:13:54]Okay, come on out.

[00:13:55]Paying your toll to the ferryman?

[00:13:59]There's an old boat building tradition that goes back thousands of years to the ancient Greeks, where sailors [music] would place a coin beneath the mast step. If the boat and crew were lost at sea, the coin was said to be payment for the ferryman who carried souls across the river sticks and into the next [music] world.

[00:14:17]This is just one story though. Some sailors say the coin is for good luck, prosperity for the crew, or fair winds instead. I'm not sure what the truth is, but with all our [music] dreams of the future adventures this little boat might take us on, a few coins under the mast felt like cheap insurance.

[00:14:34]Inflation's been [music] pretty rough lately though. Hopefully the ferryman still accepts loonies.

[00:14:41]Thanks for watching and don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss the rest of the restoration of our Siren [music] 17.