Salon Sole Hatches and other items

 

I started the day with two lovely flights over fields greening and forests just bud breaking. Delightful. Landed on my feet both times, so yay me.  My PPgPS app hasn't been working correctly, so I didn't get a record of my tracks.  Oh well. 

The big work today was for the salon sole hatches.  I cut them out, built frames for them to rest on, and installed the frames.  

I'm a little concerned about the second from the foreground - the jigsaw blade got a bit askew during the cut, so I had to sand the hole and the hatch piece significantly to get the edges back to perpendicular - it may be that the hatch is now too small for the hole.  

I rounded over everything with a 1/8" radius router bit.  It's a tiny roundover, yes, but I don't want a big gap around these to collect more dirt.  It is a sole, after all. 

I also cut the cockpit drain tube flush both inside the cockpit and out on the transom.  

 I slapped a little leftover fairing compound around some gaps in the cockpit side.  Next comes rounding over these edges somehow, and running some glass from inside the tube out over the cockpit and transome.  I'm thinking just two layers of 10 oz glass cloth cut on bias, maybe 3-4 inches into the tube and onto the transom and cockpit liner.  This isn't for strength so much as smoothing the entry and exit nicely.  Make it all pretty kinda.

I also cut the outside  of the head / nav station 45 degree bulkhead angle flush, rounded it some, and glassed it in with a strip of 1708 on each corner.  It's really starting to come together. 

Bilge Paint, Cockpit Drain Install, Sole Work - Part II

 A cold and rainy day, but progress.

The tabbing on the galley floors was cured enough to sand the entire area.  It was cramped work and I used four types of sanders to get at all the spots.  But it's ready for primer.

I also laid out the hatches on the bottom of the cabin sole.  I'm doing things a little out of order - I should probably have done this before I painted - now I have to sand the paint off the edges of the hatches for the hatch supports.  It turns out all four hatches can be 18 inches long by 9 inches wide.  And each on has an end that lands on a floor, which saves a tiny bit of support infrastructure work.  I'm deciding how I'm going to secure them down - gravity's good, but mechanical fastening is better. 

 I sanded and ground into shape the remaining bits for the cockpit drain tube.  It was as uncomfortable as I imagined, but I had a full face shield / particulate mask and ear muffs on so it had a spacewalk feel to it.  It turns out I can fit my entire body into the lazarette.  I think I've lost weight. 

Back in the cabin - the galley bilge is primed.

And back in the lazarette, the cockpit drain tube is glassed in. Whoot!  I'm taking the next three days off for fun and games.  My back and knees say I've earned it. 

Bilge Paint, Cockpit Drain Install, Sole Work

A few very productive days if I do say so myself.  And this is with me going for a 20 minute paramotor flight on Tuesday afternoon. I'd have stayed in the sky longer, but my hands got cold, my left should started to complain at keeping my hands on the break toggles, and I'm not yet comfortable enough to just stow the toggles and fly with the throttle and weight shift only.  Soon.  Landed on my arse, too. 

So I'm using this stuff in the bilge.  I used it already in the chain locker and it cured well enough given time and over primer.  

However, I noticed this.  I'm not sure why it's so "For Metal Substrates Only."  It's not something chemical, as far as I can think of.  So it's probably that the paint doesn't flex very well and so isn't great for surfaces that contract/expand much, or dent easily.  Anyway, I'm using it.

I like the bright yellow color; I'm not sure why most people paint their bilges that sad grey.  It'll be like a burst of sunshine whenever I open an access hole.

The cockpit is getting a heavy weather oh shit we've been pooped drain.  That's the cutout just above the sole. 

First I had to plug up some ugliness at the bottom of the lazarette.  Filled with fairing mix, I'll put a piece of glass over it later. 

This is the only bulkhead remaining from the original construction.  I didn't see a reason to replace it, though the work is pretty messy.  That gap in the plywood here just doesn't even make sense. 

This is the other side of the gap - looking forward from inside the lazarette.  In order to glass the tube in solidly, I need to tidy this up a bit to make a better landing area for the 1708 tape.

I made the tube 9" x 3" ID cross section to really get the water out of the cockpit fast.  I made the tube out of fiberglass wrapped around a plastic downspout cut in half and separated by two pieces of luan doorskin.

You can just barely see on the right the cleanup work on the bulkhead.  This is a day later when things are ready for installation.

This was pretty straightforward except that in order to glass the bottom aft portion, I was working upside down with most of my body stuffed into the lazarette opening. The little area between the tube and the existing centerline stiffener is touchy - I'll let what I've done so far cure, then come back to grind it clean and finish up.

This is that pesky underside.  I'll have to grind a little of the side tabbing off here, too, before painting.   You can bet that will be fun, with my face two inches away, upside down.

And here's it sticking out the transom.

You can see right into the companion way.  

I got a second coat on the bilge and a first coat on the bottom of the sole. 

Epoxy coating the aft sections on of the sole

The aft three floors glassed in.

And finally, the funky corner piece in the head that will provide the surface for the grab rail near the nav station.  Cut, tacked, and glassed.

Glassing in the floors

 

Turning back to the interior, the weather was finally warm enough to start epoxy work again.  I glassed in the fiberglass I-beam floors I cut a few months ago.  There's no way they are going to cause any rot issues down there in the bilge.  Not that my boat will have any leaks, of course.  But just in case.

 I scratched my head quite a bit on how strong the floor/hull attachment needed to be.  I'm not actually sure that floor is the correct term for these - they don't provide any structural support for the hull or keel, they are just there for the cabin sole to rest on.  So - strong, but not really strong.  One layer of 1608 tape on each side is what I went with, except on the third floor from the bottom of the image.  There wasn't room on its forward side what with the real floor from the original Pearson construction in the way.  So I went with two layers on the aft side. 

 

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I was actually pretty shocked at how much of a transformation putting a coat of grey primer did for the boat.  After years of seeing that mottled and greenish bilge, the sudden cleanness of the unbroken expanse of flat grey was delightful.  It'll nearly be a shame to cover it all up with the sole.   But I'll get over it. 

And speaking of years - it had been several since I really cleaned up the deck or cockpit.  The layers of grime were disheartening.  

So I spent an hour or two just scrubbing the cockpit with that brush thingy on the vacuum attachment.  Another delightful improvement. I can move around in there without getting all skeeved out.   

Building the Sail

 A long hiatus - years actually, but I'm back at work.

I've been building the split rig sail over the last two months - about 25-30 hours a week.

 I made templates for both the mains (simple rounding off a parallelogram base) and the jibs (45 degree shelf foot) for the bottom four panels.  This picture shows the jib patterns. 

Here's just lots of fabric at some point in the process.   I used Top Gun 9 cloth.  Junk rigs, and especially cambered junk rigs, don't put much strain on the fabric, so you can get away with awning-type materials.  But you need to put a lot a strength in the bolt ropes that run around the perimeter.  I used seat belt webbing. 

Here are the jibs and mains laid next to each other.  It all seemed to fit correctly.  

This is panel 4 attached to the battens.  The camber looks just like I'd hoped. 

Same thing, other side. 

This is the top two panels.  They are full length, with lower camber. They're best considered storm panels.  I've got new energy to get the boat done, because I really want to see these things hanging from the mast.

Ladder secured. Duh.

Minor work done on the boat this weekend - I mostly helped Lisa put the final prep sanding and first coats of varnish on the teardrop camper.  (That's a CLC canoe hanging in the background.)

I kept my promise and rigged a simple method to safe the ladder.  It's just an angled piece of white ash I had laying around, screwed to the ladder with another screw sticking down as a pin.  That pin sits in a drilled out hole in the 2x4 screwed to the companionway counter bulkhead.  The ladder is now easily removed and replaced and secure to use.  It took all of 15 minutes. Because that's usually how much effort it takes to avoid most of the stupid, dangerous, careless things I've done in life.

I tabbed some of the galley lockers.  Molly came over to help for a few hours and it was the height of luxury to have someone else mix up the fillet material and wet out the glass tape.  There were moments where I was even kinda doing nothin'.  Such an easy pace made me feel a little lost.  But I could get used to it.

I also tried out Total Boat's two-part fairing compound, Total Fair.  It mixed easily enough with its yellow and blue components turning into a dull, even green when combined.  The thixotropic viscosity is greater than drywall mud, but spreads easily, if slower, with no pinholes.  I think I like it.  I haven't sanded it yet, but reviews are generally good.  The smell, however, is unpleasant.  It reminds me of cheep rubber, um, adult-novelty toys from the 1990s.  I don't mind the memories, but the odor is too chemical. Both then and now.

Finally, I noticed this vine climbing up the keel;  the boat's been on the hard way too long.

Tabbing in more interior bulkheads

In the spirit of getting the sole down, I've tabbed the inboard edges of all these bulkheads to the hull.  I'll work on the outboard sides... some other time.  The bulkhead defining the forward end of the chart table and aft end of the port settee got the standard double layer of 1708 6 inch wide biaxial glass tape overlapped on the fillet by two inches.  All the others received one layer.  I figure that since I could have opted to run them over the sole, they are not structural components.  I just need them to not jump around overmuch.

I also sanded the radiused corners all fair and flush and wrapped them with 10 oz cloth.

I made the mistake of tabbing several sections in the morning after a cool evening coming into a hot day.  The warming plywood outgassed under the glass, creating a multitude of air bubbles along the edges - some pretty sizable.  You can see them in the picture below as light spots along the top of the tape. The fillet is a solid connection - that's just glare in the curve you see there. Now, if I were a perfectionist, I'd grind that off and do it all over.  But perfect is the enemy of both good and done.  I've read that bubbles under the glass weaken the structure and trap water vapor via osmosis and thereby promote rot. I buy the lowered strength point; but again, these don't need to be that strong.  The rot and osmosis thing... I think it's mostly the former.

Outgassing bubbles along top of tape.  Disappointing, but not disastrous.

I've had the temporary companionway stepladder slip out from under me twice as I came up it.    Once while carrying a shopvac half-filled with water from scrubbing the bilge.  The resultant bone chip in my left elbow matches the one I created last year in my right while removing the steering quadrant.  I can only plead congenital stupidity.  I knew that the hot-glued blocks I had under the ladder feet had come un-hot-glued.  There's no way I should have that ladder unsecured. I've just been too "busy" to rig up a secure but easily moved thingamabob.  I'm stating here that my first order of business is to do that.  Maybe I'll hold myself accountable rather than holding myself in pain.