Moving Right Along

The forward compartment is also filled with floatation foam.  Shown here, a tunnel has been created in the middle of the compartment.

This is to allow access to the bow-eye, which cannot be installed until the boat is nearly finished.  Access is provided through the inspection plate seen in the storage compartment.  From this angle it does not appear to be aligned with the tunnel, although it of course is.  I cut the first two foam pieces to fit very snugly, but it required quite a bit of twisting and maneuvering to get them in place in the bow, especially with the wooden breasthook in the way.  You can see the breasthook in the upper left.  Because of that and the bow's shape, the remainder of the foam is made up of variously-sized rectangles and odd scraps, which allowed me to fill it completely, leaving very few empty spaces.  After the bow-eye is installed, long rectangular pieces that will fit through the inspection hole will be added in order to fill the bow compartment with foam as thoroughly as possible.

Here is a shot of the tunnel from straight overhead.

Bulkhead 2 Doublers

Checking through the builders' forum I found that a few people had problems with the mast pulling bulkhead 2 away from the cabin roof slightly under high wind load.  This could only happen if the shrouds were loose, but I suppose things like that can happen.  The recommended fix is to install doublers to shore up the bulkhead and provide more gluing area to the roof (and to keep the shrouds tight).  I found some scrap pieces of plywood that I think will do the job very well.  They have just been glued here and are being held in place with temporary screws.

Next on the list is to install the forward deck over the bow compartment.  The underside of the deck received three coats of epoxy to strengthen it and prevent water infiltration.

Forward Deck Underside

Here the deck has been installed over the bow compartment and is held in place with countersunk brads during gluing.  The brads will not be removed.

Forward Deck Installed

Next come the seat-back braces back in the cockpit.

Interestingly enough, the braces are held in place with hot-melt glue (temporarily stitched with wire.  The braces will also be filleted, but I found the hot-melt glue provides a very strong bond--I used acrylic glue.  I tested the glue on some scraps and when I pulled them apart, wood came off with the glue.

The next step is to stitch in the rear cabin wall, shown here.

I have a temporary prop holding the wall at the approximate correct angle, but it will be easy to set it to the exact angle when the topsides panels are installed.

  Here is a shot of the topsides panels stitched nearly in place.  Later I will gradually tighten the stitches as I work to get the panels as perfectly placed as possible. 

And here you can see the view from the bow, which begins to show more of what the finished boat will look like.  There is still a roof and companionway to install over the cabin, seatbacks, and quite a few more odds and ends to accomplish before I am ready to flip the boat over and work on the hull.  But, it is really starting to come along.

Centerboard Pendant Sheave, Cockpit, & Bow-eye

Sheave Installation

 

The manual shows installing this sheave (like a pulley) later on, but I felt it would be easier to do it now.  The sheave is nylon, and I have added wood shims to each side so the centerboard pendant can't slip off the side of the sheave.  

A bit of line has been threaded through the hole at the back of the trunk and over the sheave, down to the outside of the boat.  This line will be used to pull the centerboard pendant into place later on.

 

Here's the threading line through the hole and a grommet.  The grommet will be pounded into the hole later after some epoxy work is done.  When the grommet is installed and the pendant threaded into place, the pendant will be used to raise and lower the centerboard.

 

Here's a shot of the sheave bolt.  The notch for the bolt (and nut on the other side) was my idea.  Otherwise I would not have been able to tighten the nut.  I also used a lock nut instead of the acorn nut called for.  Not as pretty, but it will never loosen on its own.

 Cockpit Footwell and Seat Installation

Here is a shot of the just-installed cockpit footwell with fillets,

and another shot of the outside of the footwell.

This shows the cockpit seats glued in place.  The black spots are the heads of drywall screws which are only there to hold the seats down during gluing.  They will be removed and the holes filled after the glue cures.

Under the footwell I have added several layers of sheet foam for floatation if the boat is swamped--one of many areas of floatation foam to be added.  Although the foam is "closed cell," if it is in water for a very long time it can begin soaking it up, so I have put sheet plastic around the foam.  There was no point in trying to put the plastic all around the foam and seal it up because then I would not have been able to stuff it in there.  Instead the plastic goes up to about the level of the bottom of the footwell.  The corners are secured with storage tape.  As long as I don't get more than a few inches of water in there it should be fine.  If the compartment is ever completely flooded then I'll have to reach in and pull the plastic out.  From then on if it gets wet I will have to pull the plug and let it slowly dry out. 

Bow-eye Backer

  

Although the manual calls for installation of the bow-eye much later (after the boat is mostly complete), I felt that would be almost impossible to do--at least for me.  The bow eye is installed in the stem end at the front of the bow compartment, which is sealed up except for a small inspection port, and you have to crawl partway into the storage compartment to get to the inspection port.  Also the eye's bolts are attached to a small metal plate that is pulled against the stem end.  Since this eye is used to pull the boat onto the trailer and help hold it there during travel, I felt that it needed more backup.  To that end, I drilled two oversize holes for the eye's bolts and filled them with thickened epoxy.  Then I embedded a shaped stick of wood in more thickened epoxy over the holes.  As you can see the wood is only held in place with tape during the cure.  I did this so there will be a layer of thickened epoxy between the wood and the hull.  The wood is about five inches long and 1 1/2" wide, which should spread the load quite a bit.  After the epoxy cures, I'll drill the proper size holes through the oversized holes in the hull and on through the wood backer.  Then I'll oversize the holes in the wood, fill them with epoxy, and drill properly sized holes when the epoxy cures.  Whew!  I can't permanently install the bow-eye until the outside of the hull is finished, but at least the holes and backer will already be there.  I'll just have to cut away the fiberglass on the outside.  After the hull is painted I can install the bow-eye.  Double-whew!

More Work on Cockpit Seats and Footwell

The cockpit seats are a very close fit, but not all hulls curve exactly the same so some trimming had to be done.  I didn't get pictures of marking the areas to be trimmed on the sides, etc., but here is a shot of the seats sitting in place for marking:

Over the centerboard trunk, the seats overlap slightly, so I also trimmed those to fit exactly (more or less) in the middle of the trunk:

You can also see an "oops" that had to be filled in.  Somehow two pieces of plywood got stuck together with epoxy and this is what happened when I pulled them apart.  I filled the hole with epoxy-based fairing compound.

BUILDERS TAKE NOTE: The manual calls for sanding and painting the underside of the cockpit seat and footwell after they are glued in place.  That looks like an extremely hard and messy job since the seat is less than two feet above the cuddy floor and the bottom of the footwell only about 8 inches above the floor.  I was about to decide not to paint that area at all, but then it occurred to me to do the work before installation, as follows:

First the underside of the cockpit seats and footwell are sanded, being sure to sand very well the areas that will be glued (this was not mentioned in the manual).

Here are the seats and footwell sides sanded--I forgot the footwell floor until after this shot was taken.  All the areas that will be glued to cleats, bulkheads, and the centerboard trunk are masked.  I am not going to paint the area of the seats in the transom compartment, so no masking back there.  (You can see a few spots where I sanded through to bare wood, but that is inside the cuddy and fairly high up, so I'm going to leave as-is.  The oil-based primer should protect those areas in the off-chance that water ever gets up there.)

Here the undersides of the cockpit seats and footwell have got their primer coat.  I'll be adding the first finish coat later this evening.  After the cockpit parts are installed, all I'll have to do inside the cuddy is the cutting in.  A bit of a pain, but the sanding is already done, and much easier than painting the whole thing.

I plan to follow the same method on the front deck.  In the meantime I am crossing my fingers in hopes that John Harris did not have some darn good reason for waiting to sand and paint these areas after installation.  I've racked my brains and cannot think of any reason not to do it this way.