1562Hrs – Properly Back

Its been ten months to the day since I clocked up my last work on the boat, I find it hard to comprehend. If anyone had told me at the start of this project that I’d make no progress on the boat for ten months I’d have ridiculed them, but it’s happened and now it’s history. It’s been a tough ten months but I’ve pushed through and now I’m back stronger than before and raring to get things moving, I’ve got a lot of catching up to do!

Today I finished building the mould for the decks, check measured everything, spent a while reading the plans and instructions to get everything clear in my head again and then cracked on with construction of the first deck section. This is the one that covers the forward single berth cabin in the port hull. On the face of it, once the mould is constructed it should be a fairly simple process but care needs to be taken none the less. Firstly the mould is covered in polythene to stop anything sticking to it, then the first layer of 4mm ply is carefully positioned making sure that the centrelines are lined up. This first layer is made up of two pieces of ply so a joint has to be made. I’m using my Douglas Fir batten stock to form the transverse strengtheners as it’s just the right thickness to take the polystyrene and it’s flexible enough to take the radius bend. That said I did snap one piece as there’s a fair bit of stress involved. Anyway I’ve got the three strengtheners glued up so we’ll see what it looks like tomorrow.

You can see in the three photos the stages I completed today. Tomorrow I’ll get the longitudinal stringers in place and get the polystyrene glued in as well.

The epoxy should have gone off well by tomorrow as its been 20’C during the day today, the warmest it’s been for a while.

I also promised to show you the portlights I’d grabbed at the Boat Jumble. They’re pretty dirty with lots of old protective tape stuck everywhere but I cleaned one up a bit an it came up beautifully. As I said I’m thinking of putting them in the hullsides as shown in the photo. Two to each sleeping cabin and two in the heads/shower compartment.