1574Hrs- First On Deck

I been really busy away from the boat again but I managed to sneak in a couple of hours today because I was itching to see how the first of my sandwich decks had turned out. I lifted off all the concrete blocks, removed the temporary screws and then carefully levered the whole assembly away from the mould (in effect it’s nailed down because you drive the nails holding the strengtheners through to the mould itself). It came away fairly easily once I’d got it started and I soon had it flipped over so I could use a cut off disc to chop off the protruding nail points (Important to do this before I a) trod on one or b) gashed my hand on one!). Next job was to use my Fein Multitool and cut away the excess ply down the sides flush with the strengtheners and then give them a quick zip with a plane. No point spending too much time though as these edges will need some serious work later on.

The Boy Stood On The .......

Once this was all done I flipped it over the right way and tentatively put some weight on it with my foot, pleasingly it seemed rock solid so I ventured further and stood right in the middle and bounced slightly…. no flex, no creaks, nothing, so I was well chuffed. Before I left I decided to pull it up on top of the port hull to get a first impression of how it sits. It’s not bad but I can see that there will need to be a fair bit of adjustment to get it to sit right, an obvious problem I noticed straight away was that the upper bulkhead above the bunk is a bit too high. All in all though I reasonably pleased with it and confident I can crack on with making the second one whilst making the necessary adjustments and fitting the first.

Trimmed & Ready

Dropped Roughly In Position