1578Hrs- First Deck Dry Fitted

One of the many benefits of my new way of life is that I have the flexibility to change what I do and when I do it. That happened today, I hadn’t really anticipated being able to spend much time at the barn but by lunchtime I found myself struggling to be productive sat at my desk so opted for a change of scene and an attempt to be productive at boatbuilding instead. I’m pleased to say it worked and I crammed quite a lot in to my four hour session. First job was to cut a hole in my nice new deck! I had no choice really as without it there was no way to access the inside of the fore cabin and fit the deck properly, so after some careful measuring I marked out and cut through the required 600cm x 600cm hole. I then manoeuvered the deck section back up onto the hull top and started seeing how things sat. Initially I thought I’d gone seriously wrong somewhere as it kind of fitted where it touched and that wasn’t in many places! I soon realised however that the centre and forward bulkheads were the culprits as they were just about 25mm too high, after trimming them down the deck fitted much better and I was able to get the tumblehomepanels to more or less drop into place, again they were just a bit high but with the deck centralised and sitting in the right place it was an easy job to plane them down. I’m now more than ever convinced that not fixing the tumblehomes prior to making the decks is absolutely the right thing to do. It’s so much easier to adjust everything to fit the actual deck rather than an anticipated point in space!

Looking Forward

Looking Aft