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.