More cockpit

On Tuesday we removed the roughed in cockpit and I took the disc sander to the inside of the hull. There were lots of epoxy drools from the repeated coring, filling, glassing, and smoothing of the deck and house and these were ground smooth. Areas where the cockpit bulkheads and frames would be glassed to the hull were sanded to get to the original fiberglass hull, hoping for a strong bond.

We put the cockpit framing back in the hull and I mixed batches of epoxy thickened with West 410 and Marjorie made fillets where the plywood met the hull.

I planed and sanded the curved, laminated, mahogany coaming. It looks pretty good. There were two places where the thin planks had not been entirely squeezed together. I cleaned these "cavities", filled them with epoxy, and clamped them.

On Wednesday Marjorie applied 3 inch fiberglass tape where plywood met the hull. I worked on designing and building storage under the cuddy cabin.
It is exciting to see our ideas take shape

Cockpit

I started on the cockpit seats Friday December 8. There have been a number of informal sketches of the cockpit on scrap paper and restaurant napkins but I basically make it up as I go.

The first step was to figure out where to start and what was level, etc. I used a carpenter's level and also the cheap laser level from Home Depot that I bought to scribe the waterline on the outside of the hull. I set up a 2X4 frame with C-clamps and sheetrock screws and tweaked this frame and measured, measured, measured.....for about a day. I discovered several departures from "symmetry" of up to half an inch both in my work and in the original factory built parts of the boat. I eventually had reference 2x4's that established the location of the proposed seats that was "mostly level, mostly centered, pretty symmetrical", etc.

I measured and cut the bulkheads and held them temporarily in place with a few gobs of Bondo. Then I measured the kick panels, shelves, and seats and cut them out of 1/2 inch, certified plywood from Home Depot. I used 1x2 framing that was glued to the plywood and by this evening, after about three days work, the seats are roughed in as the last picture shows. The next step is to remove the seat "modules" and clean up the inside of the hull with sanders and brushes. Then the seat modules will be set back into the hull and taped to the hull with fiberglass tape and epoxy.

Deck work

The first week of December was spent mostly on the deck. The sides of the cockpit were trimmed and filled to accept the coamings. We had put two coats of Interlux epoxy primer on the deck a couple of weeks earlier when we first moved into the heated space. I did some sanding and filling and put on the first coat of deck paint. It is an off-white with a touch of yellow or buff color.

I decided to make an aggressive non-skid and bought a 100 pound sack of number 30 sand for $7; I only needed a couple of pounds. I spent over a day masking off areas that would not receive non-skid. Then we put on a coat of deck paint and used a coffee can with holes punched in the bottom to spread sand on the wet paint. We put on a generous coat of sand that about covered the deck. My assumption was that the excess would easily sweep off and I would be left with a continuous, thin coating.

Well, the next day I found that most of the sand had stuck to the paint and the deck resembled a Zen sand garden. Fortunately, about half a day spent with a wire brush and vacuum cleaner reduced the sand to a density we liked and I applied another coat of paint. The next day I removed the masking tape and applied the last coat of deck paint to the whole deck. The masking tape separating the deck paint from the blue hull was removed and the results are striking. The non-skid nicely masks some of the rough places in my deck finishing work.

The non-skid is rough and aggressive so should you want to lounge on the deck in your bikini, it had better be made of leather. Hmm.. interesting....but we don't do that. My thinking is that this boat is sailed from the cockpit where there will be comfortable seats. Since there are no lifelines, when you do venture on deck you will have good footing.

I stuck some cleats and handrails to the deck with tape to see how this was looking and was happy with the results.

Mahogany Tales

On November 7 we bought 4, 8 foot long mahogany planks an inch thick and about 9 inches wide at Belgrade. We spent about an hour in a below freezing warehouse sorting through about 50 boards to find the ones we bought, for about $100.

Two planks were planed to 3/4 inch thick for coamings along the sides of the cockpit. The rear of the cockpit needs a board an inch thick, about 5 feet long and bent about 3 inches in the middle. I yielded to "professional help" of a hardwood store that does millwork who was going to re-saw one of my mahogany boards into some 1/4 inch planks that I would then bend with epoxy and laminate into the curved plank I need. The thin planks would be ready the next day.

The hardwood guy said he would give the plank to a "trust fund hippy" who had a big band saw. Three days later I picked up the pieces. Our one inch plank got converted into three pitiful, rough pieces averaging 1/8 inch thick. They were split, cupped, and gouged and looked like scrap (notice the "s"?). I will use some of it for something, but had to start over getting material to make the curved, rear, cockpit coaming.... Enough Professional Help, back to "do it yourself".

The next day Marjorie and I cut a 5 foot board 5 1/2 inches wide out of the remaining plank. (It was supposed to be 6 1/2 inches wide but I measured wrong! Since there were no more big pieces of mahogany I changed my design slightly; it may be better!) We turned this plank on edge and ran it through table saw twice and now had two planks a little under half an inch thick.

These two planks plus an 1/4 inch piece from the mill were slathered with epoxy, wrapped around a curved form, and clamped. I ran out of pipe clamps and made some extra clamps using miscellaneous threaded stock that I had in the garage.

I knew the beam would spring back some when the clamps were removed but I was at a loss to know how much so I guessed at 3/4 inches extra bend which was 20-25% extra curvature. Two days later when I removed the clamps there was good news; the thing did not blow up, and the springback was close to what I had guessed. My luck had turned.