Removing the Starboard Aft Plywood

It took a couple of days fighting stripped screws and old caulk, but the soft plywood section on the starboard aft is now removed. There are a few small areas where the plywood of the next sheet were a little soft, but for the most part I have a good straight line to butt the new sheet onto. The remainder has been treated with bleach and water to stop rot, and I should be able to rebuild it with epoxy and sawdust or maybe mircofibre which a friend at the marina has offered to provide for free. I may go with a little more antifungal before I go to build her in. I have some black copper oxide powder which is supposed to be absolute death to any fungus, but I haven't figured out yet how to apply it where it will stay put, but not be encased and nullified by the epoxy without being in contact with the wood. Maybe if it does its job just before the epoxy goes on maybe it won't have to stay put, and the epoxy will go over wood that is clean of rot dangers.

The disassembly went like this.

1. Grab obviously bad plywood with hand and pull, probably 50% of what needed to come off was this easy.

2. Look for screws holding what was left, remove screws and pull off.

3. Remove molding (solid mahogahny still good at bottom but needing replacement at top) This was the longest step because you have to dig a lot of caulk to get to the screw heads, and then about half of them were already in bad shape from a previous repair. It took about a half of day but I got everything apart without destroying anything that could have been saved, and have the parts ready to go back together.

Here is a picture of her at this stage. I apologize for the soda bottle in the middle, but hey, this is thirsty work, and I had to work the next morning. This picture is actually just before removing the bottom "molding" and you can still see a little of the olf plywood in place at the bottom right. I'll try to remember to take my camera and replace this shot with one after it was finished. The center of this butt joint is actually an added piece of plywood from a previous repair, but it is servicable and I will rebuild on it.