The aft deck boxes on DREAM AWAY were installed many years ago, and have served me and the boat very well. When we originally got DREAM AWAY, there was no on deck storage, except for a teak box that just sat on the after deck, and would not hold much. The teak box did seem to attract a lot of bugs and spiders. Because of this situation, I removed the teak box and had built on the back of the coach roof and aft deck, a deck box that has forward and aft facing lids. The forward facing deck box has spare lines, the spare Bruce anchor, 50' of BBB chain for the Bruce anchor and some miscellaneous items stored in it. The aft facing box has two 30 pound propane tanks, the chain and rode for the stern anchor, grilling utensils, and the dinghy motor fuel tank, and some miscellaneous dinghy items stored in it.

When we were in Guatemala, I noticed some water leaking out of some screw holes in the forward facing lid. Not a good sign! The aft facing deck box lid had a bad bow in it when you stepped on it. It was obvious the deck box lids had to be repaired. I put that repair near the top of the list of projects when we returned to Texas.

I took both of the lids off of the boat and took them over to my shop. When I investigated the extent of the rot in the tops, I was not going to be able to repair the lids, I would have to replace them. I decided to use the best lid as a form to build a mold, from the mold I would be able to lay up the two deck box lids that I needed out of fiberglass.

To use an old lid to build the mold from, I had to fill all of the holes in the lid, reinforce the bad lid and attempt to get all imperfections out of the lid so the mold would be in beautiful shape.

This first group of pictures shows the lids on the boat and the after deck box, both the fore and aft lids. The forward lid was used as the mold. You will see where I drilled holes in the lid to attempt the fix. You will also see where I glassed a piece of PVC tubing, cut in half, to the lid to reinforce the lid. I also try and show some of the rot in the lids. There are pictures of the mold being built or formed over the old lid using fiberglass, and then pictures of the mold right after it was popped off of the old lid. Even after the mold was popped off of the lid, I still had a bit of work to do to get the mold as perfect as possible.

On my next week off I am hoping to use the mold and build the two lids and get them on the boat. I will be taking pictures, so I will have them here, in the next update.