Galena's bowsprit is now in my garage and she's lying in her slip with her nose cut off. She has lines and rigging scattered about her foredeck.

Her bowsprit looked like this before the operation:


Her anchors and chain rode are piled on the dock and will stay there until I repaint the chain locker. While in the locker unbolting the bowsprit I was embarrassed to see the condition of the inside of the hull in there. After stripping the inside of the hull I'll paint it with half a dozen coats of Bilgekote.

Her bow now dances about three inches high on her lines. With two 35-lb anchors and over 200-ft of 3/8-in chain off her, she's more than 500-lbs lighter than normal.

With the platform removed she looked like this:


Now she looks like this:


At first inspection the bowsprit seems solid. I'll finish stripping off the hardware (through-bolts, anchor rollers, etc) and do a thorough inspection for rot. If it turns out to be as solid as it seems I'll simply sand it all down, give it a few coats of epoxy sealer, and finish it off with a few coats of some UV-inhibitant.

The platform that sets atop the bowsprit just needs to be sanded and inspected.

Then there's the teak caprail. Taking that off will be a major pain. But that's the real reason for all this. I have to get at the hull-deck joint to reseal it. Exactly how I'll do that is still up in the air. Two thoughts on that: One is to simply seal it with a flexible sealant and slap the caprail back on. That's how the boat was originally made. Should work for at least a while. The other is to glass in four or five layers of fiberglass over the joint to make the hull and the deck one solid piece. That sounds good but if there's any flexing the new glass might crack and I'd be right back where I am now. But it should not crack. It should be as strong as the glass around it, right? I don't know.