2010 building logs

April 2010 More Saloon furniture

The saloon furniture is starting to take shape, or at least the lounge suite is. So the plan this month is to finish the lounge suite and start on the kitchen cabinets or maybe the electronics cupboard, it would make more sense to finish that next so that the starboard side of the saloon is completed before moving to the port side. Either way, it is high visual impact stuff and very satisfying so interspersed between these satisfying jobs I am getting some of the more difficult, or less enjoyable jobs done.

April 5 Port Side deck glued on

I have mentioned that I will start to get outside work done to help me finish the boat. The people I have approached are people I saw work on Dennis's Nine Lives and was impressed by the quality of their work. One guy (Fergo) has worked on the Ellen Macarthur world record setting trimaran as well as other high profile work. He is going to help me fit my wrap around windows. He wants to fit the windows and have the boat faired to his work rather than fit his windows to the way the boat is faired, he believes this will result in a much better finish and fit (seal) to the windows especially given they are so big and such a large potential for leaking if not done properly, so I am going with his advise. Then after the windows are fitted (and removed again) the roof and deck will be faired to the window frames. And the other guy is the person who finally faired (Dennis had 3 different teams work on it) and then painted Nine Lives. He has worked with Fergo and agrees with him so he will come in (with others under him at times) and fair the boat ready for painting and will now doubt paint it as well. Then another of Fergo's specialties is making and fitting internal linings, and we will make them to finish the inside. The combination of these 2 will result, I am very confident, of the boat being finished to a high standard externally and internally and have it on the water before the end of next year.

So in preparation for Fergo starting on the windows soon, I have to have the side decks glued and glassed on. He could work without them being fitted but having to work on just a 300mm side deck is difficult and probably dangerous. So I have started on getting them on, starting with the Port side deck. I had started fairing the inside of the area above the bathroom in case it is too difficult to line the inside of the shower (or just easier to fair and paint), and one thing I do know is that it is much easier fairing the inside section upside down on the ground so working at table height rather than doing it upside down on the boat once the deck goes on. I applied the first layer of bog by towelling it on, but having sanded it I realised that it was particularly low at the bottom but ok at the sides and that the best way to get it fair would be to use a batten as a screed in exactly the same way I did the forebeam except pushing it instead of pulling it because the curve is concave instead of convex. It worked.

Once the new bog layer had set (overnight) I was surprised as how little sanding it needed to get it fair. Dean, who I will hire to fair my boat told me that the key to getting any fairing done well and fast (and with minimum hard work) was to get the bog on fair to start with, and having an almost fair surface to start with was half the job done which is one of the features of a flat panel design. But his advise proved correct because having used the batten to screed, the bog layer was almost already fair. The bulk of the sanding was to smooth out the rough top layer of bog caused by the screed itself. While my shoulders were sore at the end, I had it fair in less than half an hour. I used the pool noodle as the torture board, criss cross sanding.

With the bathroom section faired I got some help and lifted the port side deck back onto the boat. It had already been fitted, and the dagger case cut out so it was easy to fit it back on (the starboard side has not been refitted since cutting the dagger case out so I dont know for sure yet it fits). The entire look of the boat changes once the side decks go on. It is a very satisfying moment. After a few minutes admiring it I pulled it away from the boat again and placed a block under it to hold it away from the bulkheads so that I could reach the forward ones to get glue onto them. The ones aft of bulkhead 2 are accessible from inside the boat and I can push the deck panel away from the bulkheads to get glue onto them, including the bulkhead 3 which is exposed by cutting the door out to reveal the storage area in front of the wardrobe.

After spreading glue onto each bulkhead I pulled the deck down onto the boat using rachet straps in 4 places along the hull. Once each bulkhead was glued to the deck panel I coved each one in preparation for glassing using the excess that squeezed out and adding more compound where needed. I usually prefer to glass onto wet coving to save the extra layer of work involved in sanding dry coves to accept the glass. But because of time constraints I was only able to get a few of the tapes onto wet coving. I am not concerned as many of the hull coves were glasses dry and I actually got a much more attractive finish. The strength is no less either way as the cove itself is a secondary bond as is the tape to the bulkhead and deck panel, the only chemical bond in a wet on wet is of the tape to the cove compound which has a secondary bond anyway.

With the side deck taped on I moved away from it for a while and helped Jake with his dingy and got back to the bridgedeck furniture. But with the port side deck on the amount of light in the boat was greatly diminished, so I remedied this by removing the port side rear window, finally. It has sat in place on its 4 tabs for the entire build, waiting to be released. It took less than a minute to run the jigsaw over it to remove it so the work was highly symbolic, but another small job ticked off. Let there be light!

The bridgedeck furniture is progressing slowly not least because of the side deck work so boat work is progressing. I have glassed a panel into the bridgedeck that forms the end of the lounge on the starboard side and the other side of this panel is to be fitted with insulation panels for an inbuilt fridge. The return section of the lounge past the fridge end panel is to be a chaise, that is it will not have a back just the seat cushion. The reason for this is that it gives the area a more open feel which contributes to the feeling of space and size. Anyone sitting there would most likely only ever sit there to eat at the table among company so the seat back wont be missed much. Like everything else, it is a compromise.

The curved kickboard finally gives the shape and proportion to the lounge. In the end creating the curves of the kickboard and front panel on the inside section of the lounge were easy to create with kerfing. Usually kerfing results in a series of short flats creating a curve which then need to be faired out. I have been looking at ways to glass a panel to avoid the fairing but in the case of these first 2 curves, the kerfs are on the outside of the curve on the inside of the storage space so not as visible. With the kerfs on the outside of a bend you pull the cuts apart in the curve not push them together and then fill the larger gaps with coving compound and glassing it. This results in a more fluid circle and not have the flat sections as it is only the front glass curving to the shape required.

The kickboard is anchored to the bridgedeck by the fact it is glassed to it so it is much easier to build the shape as I go because getting it cajoled into shape is possible and holding it there whilst the glassing sets. But the facia front panel above it is not so easy to hold in place as it only gets glassed to furniture framing and braces I glue and glass in, so I have decided it will be easier to build off the boat into one large piece then glass it into the boat as a completed shape rather than shaping it as I go. I have screwed the front panel section along the long part of the lounge to the frames in order to use the kickboard to guide the shaping of the facia curves. I will then take it back off the boat to finish its shape at least up to the starboard stair well before glassing it into the boat. Note also that there is a gap between the kickboard and the facia, this gap is deliberate and wont be filled in with a horizontal joining piece because I am using this gap as a method of venting for the under seat cupboards, so that things cannot get mouldy in there and also if I store things like batteries they can vent and have any outgases carried away or dispersed by the venting. The vent is invisible so it works out well.

Back on the side deck and I sanded the coves I did not glass and glassed them. A tip on glassing a curve upside down. Always concentrate on the outside of the curve first. It is longer. If you do not you will find it wants to lift off because it is stretched compared to the inside of the curve. You will get bunching or overlap on the inside more so the tighter the curve but double bias is extremely forgiving, it allows you to spread the overlaps out so that eventually it all seats well, but no matter what you try, if the outside is stretched too tightly it will lift off somewhere, and if gravity is aiding it, such as upside down in a side deck to bulkhead situation, all the more so. Take my word for it, the job will progress much easier if you get the long part of the curve bedded to the substrate first then worry about the overlap on the shorter inside. I have been peelply covering all of my taping but did not bother with these upside down curved tapes. Peelply is near impossible to deal with in curves so I didn't bother. All of my taping will be under linings anyway but I will just hit them with a sander to finish them anyway, before giving the under lining areas a coat of white epoxy to finish/seal.

The taping of structural joins anywhere on the boat is always 2 layers of tape, 150mm then 100mm and I did these joins the same way. Before coving these joins I had pulled this curved panel down tightly against the bulkheads by using ratchet straps slung over the hull then attached with a clamp to some strong point on the boat and tied off to the strongback which is still under the boat. At the bows I was able to attach the ratchet straps to themselves by encircling the hull. Once the panel was pulled in tightly, I used cello tape coated (same ones I used when making the hulls all those years ago!) with the screw through the gap between the panels, in some places barely 1mm in others 3 or 4mm) to pull the hull side out or push it in to meet the side deck panel. I then pushed glue into the joins. I had Jake on the inside cleaning up the pushed through glue and pushing glue into sections I did not fill from the outside so that both sides got a smooth and full join of glue. The only sections not getting glue were behind the blocks and of course the forward 2 sections that I cannot access until I have cut through the (faired) deck for the forward sail locker, and through a temporary access hole I will have to cut into bulkhead 0. This must be done so the rest of the joins can be filled, coved and taped.

The top deck join was a little more difficult for 2 reasons. Firstly we had gravity working directly against us, the glue had to be thick enough to resist falling/dripping through the gap to the sole below. But also because when the strip planking was done, the hull side panel was there to strip plank against, but the deck panel was not. I striped to a centreline mark and stringline. Than at some later point when the side deck was off the boat again I glued and glassed the side decks on, again to that centre line. Somehow I managed to get a 10mm gap in places. This size gap is too large to fill with glue, it just wont hold before falling through the gap. One solution is to tape the underside of the join to catch and hold the glue. It worked for me on the hulls, but another which I also employed an even bigger gaps on the keel panels was to cut strips of duflex off to fit into the gaps. This is what I did, it took about an extra half an hour to shape them to exactly fit the gaps and with Jake below in the boat, I applied glue to the strips and wedged them in, then pushed glue in from above and Jake pushed glue in from underneath and screwed blocks in as we went pulling it all flush to each other.

Now that the bulkheads are all taped (well the ones I can get to for now) and the joins glued, the next step is to sand the joins smooth and tape the joins both sides, a series of 2 meter or so tapes inside and 12meter long tapes outside. I will use the wombat for the long tapes, which I hope to do next weekend. This work, is obviously high visual impact, and a serious milestone in any Schionning cat build, but also very very satisfying to look at. I have missed not seeing the full beautiful Schionning shape by having the side decks off the boat. Hopefully with 3 more weekends left this month, I will have the starboard side deck on this month also.

Jake and Jo have been down from Queensland for the Easter school holidays and it has been fun having Jake help me on the building. I have not counted his hours as we have spent about half the time we have been at the shed working on his dingy, so it evened out. But this has been a very productive 4 days and lots of fun. And of course I get to see my wonderful wife again. 1 month of this years separation due to Jakes last school year is already down, only 7 or 8 to go. With cooler weather finally upon us (surely that's got to be it for high 20's or 30's temps until next summer?) I hope to continue in this fashion and really get some work done. The sooner I do, the sooner Jo and I can spend all of our time together on the boat.

April 8 Starboard end lounge kickboard on

The Port side deck is glued on, all voids filled and ready to sand smooth in order to glass (tape). The long outside tapes need some time to do so will need to be done on the weekend if the weather is not too hot (because of the time it takes to get the entire length on I need time so the resin does not go off as I dont plan to wet out on the job, I plan to use the wombat wet out machine. I have not used it since glassing the bridgedeck on.

The inside joins are between bulkheads so are only 2 meters or so each, but they are upside down. The best way to ensure an upside down tape stays up is to pre wet the join with resin, let it tack off then apply the tape.

During the weeknights I have got an hour here and there, I have backfilled the bottom edge of the lounge facia panel (Tuesday), sanded it the smooth and glassed it onto the lounge frame (Wednesday) and glassed the starboard stair end of the lounge kickboard on. I did this by shaping an unglassed length of polycore and glassing it in place with the curve formed in place rather than kerfing a flat glassed panel. It was just a 1 meter section and I think it worked out ok. Once it has set I can use to to guide the facia shape above it.

I am not sure if I can glass the facia panel in place from an unglassed piece of polycore. With the kickboard I have the bridgedeck to anchor the curve to and it holds its shape well enough as a result, but the facia does not have this, so I may have to either glass one side at a time to create he curve or kerf a flat panel and fair it.

April 11 Port Side deck glassed on

There are a couple of very good reasons why cats sell for upwards of half a million dollars. One is the materials of course, and another is that there are a lot of man hours in any boat, whether owner built or production built. The other glaring reason is there are jobs that need to be done that are simply horrible. Lets not sugar coat it, sanding above your head with a grinder that throws more dust than water in a shower, is about as bad as boatbuilding gets, with the possible exception of torture boarding, but at least with a torture board you are only getting the pain but not the dust shower. As I have noticed before, it is amazing how heavy a 1 kilo grinder feels after only a few minutes overhead.

Having said all of that, it is also amazing how satisfying it is plonking on the couch after a shower and having put that job behind me. Sore and tired but extremely satisfied at having completed a decent days work. To recap what this messy job involved, the 2 panels were glued together by squeezing glue from above and below and letting it set. Therein lies the work. Letting it set. It really isn't possible to glass on wet glue in this instance because blocks are needed to pull the 2 panels into fairness, which would be too difficult to do through wet glass, not only in terms of pulling the glass off the substrate but in the time needed to pull it all fair before the glass goes off. It might be possible but in the end I chose the let it set method. The conclusion to this is that you must grind the excess glue off upside down.

Once the grinding was done, a wipe down to remove dust and a measure up of the distances between each bulkhead (you would think I would know them off by heart by now) and cut the glass tapes needed to do the work. As with all major join taping, it is 2 layers, 150mm and 100mm of 450g double bias and there are 2 joins, the hull to side deck and the overhead side deck to deck join. Because these are a series of short tapes they can be wet out as I go. The first thing I did was brush some resin onto the joins so that it could tack off and make the adhesion of the upside down tapes better from the start, if you dont do this you could find gravity making life difficult getting the tapes started. Once up and all air removed from behind the tapes they wont fall down but getting the first meter or so to stay up is difficult if you don't pre wet the substrate. So I started at the most forward sections because they are a bit shorter. I wet the first 2 sections out, one of which is inside the locker which required me to climb up into it. I had a halogen light sending light down the hull and could see what I was doing unless I looked directly down into the light which temporarily blinds you. I underestimated by a tad just how warm it gets inside the hull with the halogen light on because despite working pretty fast the tapes were getting quite warm by the time I rolled the last couple out. I got them down in time but it was a timely warning not to wet too many tapes out at a time as I simply cant get them all on before they go off while the weather is still warm. Whilst it was not the 38 degrees it was a couple of weeks ago it was 30 degrees.

I was a bit worried about a couple of things, the longer tapes (the main cabin is 2.9 meters between bulkheads and also I have to reach behind the daggercase and cove and tape the bulkhead. In the end neither was a concern. I could reach behind the case and with some resin over the coving it both smoothed out the roughness that I achieved reaching in and provided a sticky surface for the tape to stay stuck, but  word of warning, don't let the resin tack off too much or you will have the opposite problem, you wont be able to move the tape once it touches meaning you will have to get it right first time, which is not always the case. I managed to get the first tape pretty close, I like to have them centred on the join but I was a bit off centre on the first tape, it still very adequately covered the join though. The second tape was centred on the join and just overlapped on side of the not centred tape below it.

Then to finish for the day I cut a piece of polycore to exact length needed to curve around to the stair well on the starboard side mirroring the curve set by the kickboard. Using clamps, cellophane covered timber blocks and some slabs of timber to push against it to hold in exactly where I want it to set, I attached the now glassed polycore in its curved position and let it set overnight. Tomorrow I will glass the inside inside of the panel and the day after that decore the bottom of it and the day after that finally glass it into the boat. Its only half an hours work each day but each layer of work must set before the next can be done.

April 12 Port Side deck external tapes on

Another satisfying but exhausting days work today on another beautiful day, 30 degrees again and I am missing them. Oh well by the time the boat is done we ought to be getting 33 degree days in April. I got a little more done today than I had originally set out to do. I had set out to get the long tapes onto the port hull and to glass the inside of the curved fascia the the starboard steps so that its shape is set. I wont yet glass it in place, I need to take it off one more time to decore and backfill the bottom of it before it can finally be glassed on. I cant decore it until there is glass on both sides, and each task requires a day to set. So fill it tomorrow and glass it onto the lounge suite on Tuesday. Then I can make the top panels which include removable tops so that access can be made to the underneath storage areas. Some of this space will house the battery chamber. I have not yet shaped the port side return chaise. I have plans for the under section of this part of the lounge and cannot yet make it, more on that later.

Being warm I was a bit concerned I would not get the long tapes onto the port hull in time before the resin went off again today, but instead of that resin stress, I created a different reason for the same problem. I started with the shorter side to deck tapes (shorter because the decks over the aft cabins is not yet made so there was nothing to glass the side deck to yet). I mixed way too much resin for 1 tape, in fact I mixed enough for both tapes so I really had to work fast getting the first 150mm tape on so that I could load the 100mm tape through the wombat and onto the spool before the resin went off. I just made it, the last half (about 5 meters) of the second tape felt quite warm as I pressed it down onto the wider tape that went down first. I felt that the tapes were a little dry, meaning I ran it through the wombat a little fast I think, so I brushed some resin down as I went laying down each tape. This resin was part of the same batch and was getting very warm as I laid the last couple of meters of the second tape down. I ran the consolidation roller over the peel ply as I applied it and this ensured there were no bubbles or raised tapes. So whilst I worked faster than I was intending and felt rushed by the resin, in the end it all worked out well.

The wombat looks a bit worse for wear but its only dust and hardened resin drips, it still works fine, and after today I only have 4 more tapes to run through it, for the starboard side deck tapes. With the side deck to deck tapes on I had a better idea how much resin to mix (I could very easily work out roughly how much I would have needed by some math's working out how much the cloth would weight and mixing the same amount of resin, I didn't and got it wrong but no harm done). I just did the math and if I had earlier I would have mixed exactly the right amount of resin. I mixed a kilo of resin thinking it would be enough for just one tape, but the tape was 9 meters long and 150mm wide and 457 gram per sq meter cloth so doing the math this comes to 616 grams and the 100mm tape comes to 411 grams so obviously a kilo was enough for both tapes. Oh well lesson learned. So knowing how much resin to mix, the second set of tapes was less rushed and less stressful. I mixed enough resin to one tape at a time and worked at a more reasonable pace and got both layers onto the hull side and peel ply applied and rolled.

Before I applied the hull side to side deck tapes I prepared the port hull side deck to be placed onto the boat. It needed the inside glass to be keyed where the bulkheads would be so that the glue and glass could grip it and it needed the over ensuite bog faired. I had partially finished that so it only required about a quarter of an hour sanding to finish, it was still not as finished as I would like but getting the side onto the boat is a 3 man job. Last time I had Jake and a visitor to the shed, today I had 2 able bodied visitors and no idea when I would next have 2 people around to help so it was going to be best for me to get it on today.

So with the inside of the side deck prepared we lifted it up. I had marked out the daggercase hole and cut it out months ago but unlike the port side, this side deck has never been dry fitted back onto the boat, so I was not sure it would all fit back properly. We lifted it up and slid the deck over the dagger case and it stuck about 30mm short of where it needed to be. So with a jigsaw I trimmed the daggercase opening about 10mm which allowed the side deck to fall the last 30mm beautifully into place, a better fit in fact than the port hull so it is going to be a bit easier to glue down.

So 2 very satisfying days work, 7 hours each day. I am a bit sore and tired but feeling like I have achieved more than the sum of the hours worked for some reason. I guess with the port side deck glassed on (everywhere I can currently reach, there is still come inside taping to do once I cut my way back into the forward sections) and with the starboard side deck on the boat awaiting the same work I have done to the port side this past week, the boat is finally closed up. I can have Dean get started on fairing the hulls (leaving the cabin until after Fergo has fitted the windows). 

For the next few weeknights I will work again on the furniture, I would like to get the saloon looking like its finished as soon as I can.

April 15 Saloon seat top

I have managed an hour each night this week, and in that time I have managed to finish glass the curved fascia end at the starboard stairwell which completes the shape of the saloon seating at that end leaving just the island chaise at the port end of the lounge to go. After that is done, it is on to the kitchen cupboard. Actually next should be the fridge but I don't yet have the insulation material, I have not settled on what I will use yet and even if I had, I have just spent my kitty on a chart plotter bargain that was just too good to pass up, more on that when it arrives next week.

I have decided on ply as the seat top and lid material because it is much easier to work with in this instance than polycore or any cored material. There is meters and meters of edges that would need to be de-cored and backfilled with a cored panel, and for a slight panel saving in weight some of it is lost by having to fill the edges. And whilst it may sound lazy, that is a hell of a lot of edging work when ply does the job just as well for only slightly more weight. Ply also has better compression and resistance to sharp point loads, not that I think this would ever be an issue with upholstery and padding, but I just felt on balance that ply was the best way to go.

I have cut all of the various pieces of ply in strips, rather than cut the full panels to size then cutting the lids out of the panel. I am making the edges of the top out of strips from a sheet and then I will make the lids later. I am using up off-cuts this way. Next step now that the cut-outs are done is to make matching shaped strips that I will glue and glass to the underside, this forms the lip that holds the lids from falling through. Then once all of the strips are in place I will glue and glass the top to the sides and the lounge is pretty much done, just a coat of white epoxy to seal and finish it.

I have also trimmed the daggercase to the port deck, I still need to glass and seal the deck around the daggercase inside and out. I used analogue technology on that. It reminded me that I had forgotten to report that whilst I had legitimate reasons to not attach the side decks (air and light) I was also putting off a difficult job, and one of the difficult parts was trimming the forebeam. 6 layers of glass and cedar planks were proving difficult to cut with a jigsaw, until I gave up on that and used an old fashioned hand saw. It worked much better and did not take long at all, so again my fears had me putting off something that took minutes to resolve.

Next weekend I will start the process of gluing and glassing the starboard side deck to the hull. Sometime in May I hope to have work start on fairing the hulls so I need to have both side decks completely closed up by the end of April. So far so good. And more furniture work is also fun and rewarding so I am enjoying the work on the boat very much this month.

April 17 Port side deck glued on

Another big day today, I have glued the side deck on and glassed the bulkheads to it. I also took a bit of a risk but it paid off. I decided I had time to glue the hull side to side deck join and the bulkheads in one go, alone. I had the side deck lifted away from the hull side and bulkheads by a series of blocks holding it elevated. I quickly buttered the edges and removed the blocks to lower the side deck onto the glued hull panel edge and bulkheads and attaching the ratchet straps to pull it down tight. I then removed the glue that oozed out of the joins and filled voids where I found them.

This is where the fun started. As the hull and side deck are long panels there is a need to pull the 2 edges up or down to each other. I do this with timber blocks each side and long screws. Last time Jake helped me by holding the block on the inside as I screwed a block down from the outside, but this time I had to do it alone. There has to be a block each side or else the screws just spin and don't pull in tight. My solution was to push the screw through and then go around and manually screw a block to the screw by rotating the block, then going back inside to hit the screw with the driver again to pull it home. Often the block on the outside would just spin without pulling in tight, so I would go back out and put another screw into the block to stop it spinning then back inside to finish by pulling the blocks tight with the driver. It worked. A bit nerve wracking because again the clock ticks as you work, and you have to get the panel joins fair before the glue sets. It is heart in the mouth stuff as every little set back makes you think you are gonna be in trouble with panels gluing to each other way out of fairness but in the end it all pulled down into place and started to set.

I then coved all of the bulkhead joins and glassed them wet on wet. This saves a bit of work with sanding the coves. And to top the day off I was able to cove and glass the daggercase to the side deck. The joins were much tighter on this side. The port side is still not done yet. I will do them in the next few days.

April 18 Saloon seat top finished

The saloon seat top is finished but not yet glassed onto the lounge. There is still some work to do inside each space that is better done before the lid goes on. Such things as pvc pipes need to be glassed into places to house wiring that will cross the boat from the battery chamber that takes the middle compartment to where the main panel and inverter will be in the port hull and across to the main points where a lot of the power will go, the nav cupboard behind (or in front of depending on your aspect) the helm on the other side of the bulkhead, and of course the kitchen.

The top took me pretty much all day to create. Cutting ply plates including corners and gluing them on to each ply cutout out and at the same time joining all of the parts that make up the top took that long. Once the glue sets (it is held in place until then with screws) I will glass the bottom of the top. Then once the top is glued on I will glass the top. And then give it a coat of white epoxy to finish it. I also still have to cut the lids, I have cut one of them and you can see how neatly it looks with the base on holding it in place, all that is visible is the thin line that is the 2 edges, the seat top and the lid.

After the lid is glassed on (or perhaps before it doesn't matter) will be to build the island end on the port side to complete the lounge. And on to the rest of the cupboards in the main cabin. Now that the side decks are on 2 of the cupboards form bulkheads with doors for the aft cabin on the starboard side and the bathroom on the port side so these too can be made and fitted, only this time I will do the doorway decore and uni rope fill off the boat. In order to bring light and air back into the boat now that both the side decks are on, I have also cut out the starboard side main window at the helm. Another reason to remove this window is that the helm protrusion up into the window space is a good point to anchor a ratchet strap to pull down the side deck to glue and glass it on. I did this on the port side before cutting that protrusion off, as there will be no helm wheel on that side of the boat. I am considering an emergency helm point on the port side, as I will have hydraulic steering it is just a matter of putting another servo on the port side with a method of steering, in my case I am going to put a female of the winch handle so that a winch handle can be used as an emergency wheel should I ever need to steer into a pen or marina needing to be on the port side.

So with a couple of hours till in the day I decided to get a start on the tough work involved in glassing the side decks on, sanding down the glued join inside and out. I have not yet glued the top join yet and it is the inside of this join that is the hardest work sanding smooth but the grinder still feels like 20kgs after just a few minutes on the lower join parallel to the body but the overhead work is truly brutal, not looking forward to it.. So with the outside ground smooth and the series of shorter inside runs also smooth I can glass them. I wont glass the outside until I have the top join ready for glass also as there is no point setting up the wombat twice. The process of taping with the wombat is so efficient I can get both tapes on in less than an hour, alone once the joins are ready to be taped, so glued, ground smooth and cleaned.

During the week I will start work on the next piece of furniture and tape the shorter inside tapes between each bulkhead on the hull to side deck join. And with any luck I will get the top join glued. It is a bit more difficult as the gap is a bit bigger (not as big as the one on the port side but big enough for gravity to cause the glue to sag) and gravity is not your friend. I think the gap is narrow enough that thick glue will stay in place long enough to set but first I have to get the 2 edges pulled into each other flush. I will do that tomorrow evening.

April 21 Saloon seat top underside glassed

The saloon seating has hatches in the top to get to the storage space below, and the lids are just ply panels cut to the shape of the opening and they sit in place on a frame glued and glassed to the seat top underside. Fairly simple technology, nothing fancy, they will be concealed under the lounge seat upholstery and only need to be neat and smooth so that you cant injure yourself in any way getting anything in or out. I glued the ply ring frames to each aperture with a very strong wood glue called Purbond. I screwed the joins as the glue expands into the pores of the wood so you need to ensure a good clamped or screwed together surface and you will get a stronger than wood bond. However, to be absolutely sure and because the underside of the ply ought to be sealed anyway, I have coved and glassed the underside of the top. I peel plied it so that I would not have to sand it to key it as over the top of this will go a coat of the white epoxy. If I was applying the epoxy seal coat on wet on wet I would not peel ply but I wont be applying the finish coat for a week or 2.

Today was the 5th day in a row of near 30 degree days, at the end of April. I don't ever remember it this warm this late in the year. Once finished building this boat I am sure I will be very happy with the beautiful weather, but right now I wish it would cool down.

April 24 Starboard side deck glued

I waited and waited for a visitor for 5-10 minutes work. On the port side deck I had Jake helping, and on the starboard side to hull join the panels were almost fair to each other and I only screwed them to ensure they did not move from the good alignment they pretty much already had, here and there one or the other needed moving with the block. A bit hard to do on your own as you need to be on both sides of the hull at the same time! One the top side to deck join the panels needed pulling in some way (about 10mm) so I waited until I had a visitor. Well Terry (Easy 37 builder, and helper for some milestones such as roof on lifts) came around yesterday afternoon so I had his help for the 10 minutes it took me to run blocks and pull the 2 panels into alignment. Having Terry line blocks up as I pushed screws through from above took just 10 minutes but saved me about an hour of messing around climbing up and down trying to be in 2 places at once.

Once the blocks were in place I filled the join with glue, pushing it in from above with a spatula then running along inside and smoothing out the overflow and filling the underside voids between the blocks and let it set overnight (no danger of it not going off overnight as it was 20 overnight).

Later this afternoon I am flying to Brisbane (I am typing this on the train on the way to the airport) to visit Jo for a couple of days so I got up early so I could get the side deck joins glassed. First I remove the blocks and had to sand down the glue and trim the bog back wide enough to take the tape on the top join, the side deck was glued and sanded last week. Then I cleaned the 2 joins of dust and filled the voids that were under the blocks with filler. I cut the tapes to length and then fired up the wombat for the last time (it is only useful for long tapes shorter tapes are easier to wet out on a table with a squeegee) and wet out the 4 long tapes. The wombat is a totally manual machine, so when I say fired up, I mean set up a bag to hold the resin, loaded a tape on the top roller, fed it through the bag and onto the bottom roller, mixed the resin and poured it into the wombat bag and slowly wound the tape through the resin. In order to ensure that the tape has a good holding on the vertical surface of the side to hull join I brushed some resin along the join.

Then I applied the first tape (the top deck to side deck join) onto the boat. Repeat the above for the second tape, the side deck to hull join (resin now tacky that I brushed on earlier) then third and fourth tapes, the 100mm second tape layers. Then the peel ply. The peel ply is handy for 2 reasons, first it will mean that I can bog the boat later and not have to key the surface of these glass tapes, and also because it provides a good surface to push hard on the consolidating roller with no risk of catching a loose thread and pulling up the tape. It means that the tape has no air bubbles between each other or the bottom one and the substrate.

All done by 11am (I started at 7am). I just have 4 internal tapes (I have done the most forward one inside the toilet area) on the top join to do to be finished attaching the side decks (for now, once the outside is fair I will cut sections out for lids of storage lockers that will give me access to the joins in the sections of the bows I cant get to yet). Although I will miss some good working hours tomorrow and Monday (Anzac day) probably another 14 hours, I have managed some good progress this month, and will achieve the goal of getting the side decks completed this month, I should get these last few tapes on during the weeknights next week. All in all a very productive month.

In the end I ran out of time to get the tapes on this month, but with just an hour or two of work needed I count that as close enough to reaching the goal I set myself for the month.