Starboard Deckbeams

The hull bottoms were finished last week up through the final fairing and sanding, and then barrier coated with a clear coat of epoxy to ready them for bottom paint. Next week I will pick up the bottom paint, a relatively new product from Petit, called "Vivid." This is a bottom paint that can be applied at any time during the construction, as it is formulated for boats that are sometimes stored out of the water and does not lose its effectiveness when dried out like most bottom paints.

In the meantime, with nothing left to do to the bottoms until I get the paint, I turned the starboard hull back upright to begin the process of fitting out components like deckbeams and other parts needed to get it to the same stage as the port hull. This is going much faster than on the first hull, as all these parts were either already cut or at least marked out on the wood they would be cut from when I made the first set for the port hull. Below you can see the five deckbeams; cut, sanded, and epoxy coated prior to installation:

The beams were epoxied in place leaving the un-trimmed bulkheads protruding above.

When the epoxy cured and the clamps were removed, the excess bulkhead plywood was trimmed with a router, using a flush cutting bit to follow the curves and notches of the deckbeams.

Another project on the starboard hull was gluing on all the sheer stringer doublers at the beam landing locations. These are made of teak and were also cut out while making the set for the port hull.

Many other tasks are also underway as the epoxy cures on these parts, mostly filling and fairing inside, cleaning up the fillets and prepping the forward storage and buoyancy compartments for primer and paint.