Upright and Moving Forward

Now that the drudgery of fairing and sanding the hulls is behind me, I've been having so much fun boatbuilding that I haven't wanted to take the time to blog about it. Since my last post I've turned the hulls upright and with several days available to work lots of progress has been made on various interior parts and the decks. The port hull, which I built first, is still a bit further along than the newer starboard hull, but I've cut and fit the foredeck and I'm working on finishing out everything below this deck area so it can be installed. Below is the starboard foredeck during initial dry fitting.

After aligning and fastening the deck stringers with temporary screws, the deck was removed for gluing on the stringers and filleting them to the deck undersides. All these surfaces were then coated with two coats of epoxy.

In the hull itself I began making and fitting the removable shelves in the hold compartment, like the ones I designed for the port hull. This division of space will make this huge storage area much more usable.

Back in the port hull, I finished the fitting of the custom-made galley sink and drilled it for the drain fitting, and then cut another shelf to continue the line of the sink counter forward into the front half of the cabin.

You can see this shelf with its fiddle rail fitted, below on top of the starboard deck. The smaller shelf in the foreground fits below it, on the interior hull stringer. The other assembly in the background will become the companionway steps for the port hull.

Here are the above parts installed. The galley sink and adjoining shelf forward, and the small shelf below it (just above the cordless drill in the photo). The clamps around bulkhead 3 are holding on a narrow trim strip of teak that is being laminated to the inside cutout of the bulkhead. A second laminate on top of this one will build it up to sufficient thickness. In the foreground below the bulkhead 3 cutout, you can see that the counter assembly for the stove has also been installed.

Moving forward in the port hull, here is a view of all the sections below the foredeck. The aft section is the foot of the bunk, and is varnished because it is part of the cabin interior. All areas above the bunks in the cabins will get 2-3 coats of marine spar varnish to protect the epoxy from U.V. light. Next is the bow hold compartment, with shelves removed in this photo. It is painted the same off-white that will be used on the decks. In the bow the sealed buoyancy compartment is painted white to allow easy inspection.

I finished today by installing the port fordeck Here it has been glued down and held in place with temporary screws. No fasteners will be left in as there is plenty of gluing surface for the epoxy along the sheer clamps and deck beams, and the edges will be reinforced with fiberglass wrapping to the bottom of the sheer clamps.

The foredeck hatch has been cut-out and a watertight double-coaming style wooden hatch will be fitted on each foredeck.