A flow as subtle as a summer breeze. / Like the whispering winds and
The talking trees. / To big to be boxed in, it bobs and weaves.
It evolves, it solves, it gives and receives.
And everything I say is / calculated appropriated
Written and arranged in Feng Shui!
– gnarls barkly

The weekend came and went as weekends often do, beginning at the end of a week and ending at the beginning of another. This weekend I set about doing the final repair on that bulkhead. One had to wonder what caused me to have such a collection of items stacked on a bit of cardboard. There was a plastic knife, a caulking gun, a rubber glove and a mirror, a pencil and a jack knife and a cup of coffee just to keep the nerves up.

It’s probably not too important to detail out every second of such a fix. In truth we learn by doing. When we follow instructions too closely we find ourselves failing by the letter for missing the intent. (Or something like that!) Suffice to say, you clean the surface, put some sticky stuff around the edges of the hatch, put it in place, then go around both sides with a bead of the 3M 5200 adhesive/sealant, then walk away. Unlike working with gel coat or epoxy you have all the time in the world to get it right. In fact the stuff takes 24-48 hours to get tack-free and 7 full days to cure! Not being in a hurry to do an important repair is really quite a gift. You may just relax and take your time to do it right.

5200 is very sticky. I’d read online that it was messy and nasty to work with. I found it to have neither quality. The stickiness allows the adhesive to stay put. Certainly you have to be careful. It is VERY sticky and could be a mess if you got sloppy. But with a bit of care it won’t get all over the place. You don’t want it to  get all over either because cleaning it up would be a nightmare! 5200 is fairly thick so it works quite well for filling in those odd little spaces where the hatch does not quite conform to the hull, yet at the same time it comes out of the caulking gun in a very clean bead so your work can (if you have that talent) look quite professional when you are done. It also is thick enough not to be effected by gravity so it won’t slip or drip when you flip the boat to work on the other side.

The hardest bit about putting the bulkhead back in was sealing the inside of the day hatch. On the cockpit side you have all the room in the world to work, not so in the day hatch. In the end I found the simplest solution for me was to use a lamp, a mirror and a surgery glove. I simply spread, filled and smoothed out the adhesive with my fingers. It looks good too, even in the up and under bits!

After spending a good couple hours checking and rechecking the seams, after finally convincing myself it was not going to run or shift I’ve left the boat right here in my office to dry. In the end you can’t be 100% sure of your repair until you fill it with water. So we will see what we will see. It will either be the end of the repair or the beginning of a new repair or possibly the inspiration for a suicide note.

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