Refurbishing Shirley Rose: Part 2

Thankfully, the deck and cockpit of my decades-old Santana 27, Shirley Rose, were in pretty good shape. The balsa core, in particular, was for the most part nice and solid. Nonetheless, there was still a fair bit of work to do.

First, all the mooring cleats needed to be replaced. I was amazed the boat was ever secured to a dock, given the fact the two stern cleats were so corroded with salt. The forward cleats fared better, but because I wanted to change things around a bit, they had to go as well. Fortunately, there’s a cool marine consignment shop in the Bay Area called Blue Pelican Marine (bluepelicanmarine.com) that had plenty of replacements.

Removing and installing the cleats was a two-person job.