Week 13: Sanding and really big holes

It has been a week filled with dust and shavings.  Friday we re-drilled all of the toe rail holes after they had been cast with epoxy. That’s one more job off the list. The cabin, cockpit locker and dodger have been sanded some more. We want to be able to paint the insides of the cabin where the ports will go and where the engine, fuel and water tanks will be.

We made our dorade boxes. The molds were ready to go with a coat of wax and gel coat. We added two layers of fiberglass mat followed by three layers of biax cloth on the sides and 5 layers of biax on the tops. These are going to be stout boxes. (Dorades are water trap vents, they have a cowl vent on top, drains on the bottom and a air tube that lets air into, but keeps water out of the cabin.)

Sunday we popped the dorades out of the molds and trimmed off the excess cloth. Monday they got fit to the cabin top. The location of the dorades was dependent on the location of the oar rack. The oar rack had to avoid lines for the main sheet and vang. The dodger got installed to help decide on how the lines would run. In the end we found a place where everything will work, but it took a little fiddling with where thing would go.Tuesday the holes for the cowl vent and inspection plate were cut out on the dorades and a baffle was glued in to keep spray coming down the cowls from going into the air tubes.

The cockpit is ready for us to layout where the hardware goes.

This was followed by drilling holes and casting them with epoxy. Next week we will re-drill them.

The bulkhead to support the cockpit was fiberglassed, but it had not been sanded properly first. The fiberglass popped off, it was a sad day. Here is try two.  This one did actually stick.