2897Hrs – Unfocused But Productive

A bit of a strange day today. It was cloudy with rain most of the day but it was warm and humid, my hay fever was bad despite the rain, I struggled to keep focused for some reason and nothing seemed to flow all day.

Despite this strangeness I plugged on, spent nine hours at the barn, and actually managed to get quite a lot done.

I started off re-visiting my idea of making up some sort of pulpit to sit above the bow roller off the forward cross beam. A good few months ago I found a couple of stainless steel bike rack fixings that had been removed from a site somewhere and that had been buried by undergrowth behind the barn. They looked like they might come in useful someday so I’d tucked them away safe. It struck me that they might make a half decent pulpit so I dug them out and with the aid of some zip ties and a pice of wood I put them together in a ‘V’ shape and what do you know’ they looked something like.

I had a word with Charlie and he’s going to TIG weld them together for me next week and put on some base plates. Once that’s done I’ll make up an 18mm ply deck to put it on and have another play.

After that I went back to the deckpod and took out all yesterdays temporary screws and cleaned up a few rough edges with the belt sander. Then I made up a lid for the helmsmans seat and routed the edges.

The additional 9mm ply I’d ordered was scheduled for delivery but as it hadn’t arrived I decide to have a look at one of the engine boxes. Once again the plans were needed to refresh my memory about which bit  went where. These boxes are potentially a little tricky because the outboard side is lower than the inboard side and there are a number of different shaped partitions and floor sections used to make up the box. Once again I took things slowly and I’m dry assembling everything first to make sure I’ve got things right before any epoxy goes near them.

A little later the plywood arrived so I went back to the deckpod again. First job was to cut and epoxy the roof over the watch berth and then I marked, cut and temporarily screwed the aft bulkhead. I’ve set it just a little lower than the highest point of the watch cabin bulkhead and I think it looks fine. I’ll see what it looks like tomorrow before epoxying it in place.

The photo below shows the engine box I started.

Here’s the deckpod with the watch cabin roof and aft bulkhead in position.

And lastly the helmsmans seat lid and aft bulkhead again.