December 16, 2019
The next few weeks will be FULL of boat work, in a race to get her completed by February. Today, I started with the varnish coats on the hatches. I decided to use a TotalBoat product that eliminates the need for sanding between coats, within 12 hours. I decided to start this morning, and following a schedule that has me applying a coat every 10 to 11 hours. With the first coat on, I packed things up and headed for the boat.
My first order of business was to removed the peel ply fabric from the surface G-10 plate and biaxial I applied previously. I then water-washed the edges of the vertical panels I epoxied in place.
Next, I cut two lengths of teak stock for cleats to support the shelf panels in the lazarette. I drilled and countersunk three screw holes per cleat, pre-drilled for #10 1.25" screws. I cleaned the surface of the cleats as well as the aft-facing portion of the cockpit bulkhead. With the cleats prepped, and the surfaces, I glued and screwed the cleats in place.
At this point I went ahead and sanded the interior hull of the lazarette, including the edges of the vertical panels - accomplishing this with both human power and machine assisted power.
I cleaned up the lazarette by both vacuuming and solvent-washing all surfaces. With the area prepped for further work, I broke out some cardboard and began templating the shelf panels. Using a compass after cutting a rough shape of the outboard edge of the hull, I transferred the contour onto the cardboard and cut the excess off.
I transferred the cardboard templates to a sheet of 3/4" meranti, and then with a jigsaw removed the shelf panels.
There was a bit of refining of the shape on the port side, including trimming the angle of the outboard edge of the shelf panel to accept the curve of the hull.
I repeated the work with the starboard shelf panel. With the shelf panels fitted, I removed them and headed for the shop to begin work on tabbing the vertical panels to the hull.
I cut lengths of 4" biaxial tabbing for the panels - enough to apply two layers to each of the intersecting surfaces of the vertical panel and hull.
The photo above contained the tabbing materials for the port side, and below for the starboard side.
I wet out the tabbing material, and then mixed a pot of thickened epoxy in to form fillets. These fillets, or thickened epoxy formed into a radius, would allow the tabbing material to wrap smoothly from vertical panel to the hull without trapping air. I completed one side at a time, and then covered the work with peel ply to reduce the need for sanding.
Taking things as far as I could in the lazarette, I began to fabricate fiddles for the shelf panels. These fiddles would serve to keep items stored on the shelf...on the shelf - though a tie-down system would be encouraged for any item that could damage the wiring for the electric motor. These fiddles were fabricated with teak stock.
I finished the day by applying another coat of varnish to the hatches - coat #2.
Total Time Today: 5 hrs
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