2010 building logs

May 2010 Galley furniture

With the saloon furniture is taking shape, all that is left is to clean the insides up, coat it in white epoxy and glass the top on, I will turn my attention to the galley and electronics/nav station cabinet and the fridge. And with the side decks glassed on I can fit the 2 last bulkheads which form the aft bedroom wall and doorway in the starboard hull and bathroom wall and doorway in the port hull. All high visual impact work.

May 1 A blatant plug!

Every now and then an opportunity presents itself. I am grateful that I have had many of them. Many of you will already know that although I am an amateur boat builder, my build has led me to start a business in the marine industry importing boat hatches, www.boatebiz.com.au and whilst I have resisted the temptation (so far!) to have advertising sponsorship for this blog I do have a link to my own business at the bottom of each page, and I am sure you will agree I don't use this blog as a money making vehicle or even to push my webstore. However, I have to tell you all about a great opportunity that came my way and how some other of you may benefit from it.

One of the most asked questions I get is how much will the boat cost. And I answer it pretty much the same way each time, it depends. It depends very much on what you want in your boat. For example, just the choice of auxiliary power can change the budget by as much as $40000. 2 outboards will cost about $12000, 2 inboard diesels about double that ($25000) and 2 electric motors and the battery bank and genset about double again, so from $12000 to $52000 for the same boat with different propulsion.

It also very much depends on the bargains you can get along the way. I have already told of how I got $8000 of winches for $2400 ($1800 for 5 brand new Hutton winches worth $6000 and $600 to repair a $2400 windlass) or how I made my own tanks instead of bought them. And of course my hatches and portlights will be at cost! Well another bargain has fallen into my lap, well not fallen, I continually seek them out and I found one. A bargain so huge I told Terry, my friend building an Easy and he bought one too, which prompted me to ask the supplier if they had any more and if they had an Australian representative or agent and if not if I can be their local agent (much the same way I got into the hatch importing business). They did not have a local agent so I am setting up my business to help them sell stock here, make a little money myself and bring the same bargains to anyone else interested with a local contact, me, if they are not as game to send money overseas. I will be selling at the same price they do so there is no disadvantage in buying from me and I make a commission on the sale and I can make some extra money if I buy stock and resell it locally or if I organize the shipping in bulk (many peoples orders ship at the same time to me instead of each shipping separately and the customers save on freight too) so everybody wins except high margin local retailers.

First a little background. I have been a fan of Raymarine's E series plotters for some time. The reason is that I don't have a lot of money and thought I could get myself a small size plotter with a tiny screen because I could not afford a bigger one, and the E series was one of few that could send the video out to another non plotter screen, and I would direct the image to my LCD TV screen which would be very near the helm meaning I would have a big screen plotter/radar at a fraction of the price. Then I was confronted with the issue of where to put a radome down the track when I could afford radar. With rotating masts I could not mount it up the mast because they rotate and change their orientation to the boat (there are very complicated and expensive gyro solutions but why add complexity). So I am going to have mini masts on the stern of each hull, one for a wind gen and one for the radome, but was concerned that the taller the mini mast the more flexible they would become with the weight and volume of a radome at the top but the shorter the mini mast the closer to head level the radome would be, and radiation becomes a problem (short term they give nasty headaches, who knows what damage they are doing long term).

Then I heard about Navico's broadband radar (Simrad, Lowrance and Northstar are 3 of Navico's many brands, which also include Navman, Eagle and B&G). Its radomes give off 1/20000 the radiation of a standard radar, less radiation than a mobile phone and they market themselves as the worlds only huggable radar. Ok that got me wanting a Navico chart plotter/radar, but as it turned out, only their top of the range multi function units offered video out and they have big screens anyway, that negate the need for video out. The M series Northstar units don't have video out, but they do take the broadband radar and the larger screen models are a lot cheaper than the Raymarine gear so I have been searching for a good deal on Northstar for some time. And it didn't stop me searching for the top end units in case I found one cheap or just to dream about what I would buy if I could afford it, and wouldn't you know it, I found one so cheap, at first I thought it was an internet scam. So I rang them in the US and not only are they not scammers, I have struck up a business relationship with them to sell Marine electronics in Australia. So I have a challenge for readers, go and get quotes for whatever item you want for your boat, no matter the item or the brand, if it is a world brand in marine electronics we can get them, then let me know the best price and lets see if I cant save you some money. And I am not talking $20 or $50, if you cant save hundreds then it isn't worth the effort. Seriously!

Terry and I bought Northstar 8000i 15" inch touch screen multi function units, that retailed in Australia last year for nearly $10000 for $2500. 25% of the retail price!! Brand new with full manufacturers international warranty. Now I am not saying that bargains like this will be available all the time, but they have some 8000i units left so if you want one email me now (crew@mahnamahna.com.au or sales@boatebiz.com.au) and I will get you one for as long as stock lasts. And if this unit is not for you they have nearly all brands, new (nothing is second hand or factory reconditioned) all with manufacturers warranty. I don't have my webstore (www.boatebiz.com.au) set up for marine electronics yet so I have my original purchase listed on eBay and will replace it as soon as it sells but if they run out before it sells I will withdraw it from sale (it really is so good a deal that I doubt that a deal as good as this will ever come up again so I don't want to miss out by selling my one and not being able to replace it). If you are tempted to buy one from me via eBay, use buy it now and email me and I will reduce the price back to $2500 for you. http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110527943226&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT#ht_5076wt_939

OK, shameless plug over, back to my build. But please let me try to help you save some money if you need anything in marine electronics or hatches and portlights.

May 5 Side decks glassed on

I managed to get both side decks glued and glassed on last month with the exception of just 4 internal tapes, which I completed this month. With just the 4 tapes to go I spent 2 hours last week just preparing the surface for taping. Remember the upside down grinding. It used up the last of the hours I had left in April. I thought I could do that work and get the tapes on within April but I had forgotten just how difficult grinding upside down is. Anyway it is done now.

I have also marked out where the masts will be because I intend to have the boat faired soon and the masts require the deck to be de-cored and the balsa replaced with plywood and 4 layers of glass laid in concentric circles each 200mm larger than the one above to a radius of 800mm from the mast centre. And of course it would save a lot of work if this work was done before the boat was faired. Then, when the time comes to fit the mini mast posts for the masts, a section only 200mm wider than the radius of the mast need be stripped back of bog for glassing and then re-faired all around. It is much easier fairing before protrusions are glassed on, and the bog stripped back and re-applied after. It might seem like more work but the protrusions (such as the mast posts, stanchion bases, winch and block pads etc) get in the way of long board fairing and actually create much more work having to fair around them. So fair first, strip back bog for glassing of anything, then re-fair. On the weekend I will remove the top layer of glass in a ring 400mm across, remove the core and fit a 400mm ply disc then, remove the bog from around this for 800mm, then re-glass it with the 4 layers of glass.

I have also been working inside the boat. I have made a template of the bulkhead that will be fitted to make the wall for the starboard aft bedroom and doorway. It is complicated by the fast that it is set at an angle to the centreline (not square to it) and this effects the shape of it as it meets the various chines and the curved side deck. The best way to get the panel as close to the correct shape is to make a temporary template out of mdf. In fact I made cardboard templates first because they are so easy to cut with scissors, then transcribed that to mdf and cut that, this is more rigid and robust so there is less risk of it not transcribing correctly to the polycore panel. Then once I had cobbled together the various bits of mdf into place, in its correct shape snuggly against the hull sides, sole and underside of deck, (and wherever the gap was too big I marked on the template to add a little to the panel when I transcribe), I laid it out on a sheet of polycore ready to cut it. This too I will do on the weekend.

I had to decide the best way to make the bulkhead because it is larger than 1 sheet of polycore. The most cost effective way would be to have the panel run horizontally and add a piece in the hull to complete the bulkhead. This uses the least material, but has a horizontal join and the join crosses the doorway so the join is actually much smaller because a lot of the join is removed with the door cutout. BUT. There is always a but. But I think the panel would be stronger if I make the join vertical and the door would also not have any join in it at all. This join would be visible along its entire height, but either way I need to fair the join out. I am still thinking on this. That is the reason I have stopped. Sometimes it is better to think things through rather than push on.

May 8 Rear bunk wall cut

With the template made to shape fitted in place to set the size it was just a matter of deciding whether to run the panel vertically and add a join vertically or run the panel horizontally and have a horizontal join in the hull about 600mm up. I decided it made more sense to do the latter, for 2 reasons, firstly the amount of waste in running the sheet horizontally was minimal and made much better sense. If I made the join horizontal the full wall is about a panel and one third, but if joined vertically the wall would take up about a panel and a half and have more material wasted in off-cuts. The other reason was that at 600mm from the sole 300mm of the join fell inside a cupboard and 500mm would be cut out of the panel with the door, so in the end it would be much easier fairing just 500mm of visible join than about 1200mm if I ran the join vertically. The door will need fairing but that can be faired on a table off the boat, much easier.

 

So I marked the shape onto the full panel and only had 3 cuts, one the curve at the top left corner that fits the curved side deck and then the chine at the opposite corner. And then it was very easy to cut it. I dry fitted it into the hull, and trimmed it where I needed, ground the angle into the edge that ran up the hull side and around under the deck, angled because the panel runs off at an angle not square, and once I had done that it fit pretty well. I screwed a piece of timber to the bottom to act as a leg to hold the panel up in place while I fitted the bottom part to it. I then marked the smaller part of the wall from the template, onto another panel and cut it out (about a third of a panel) slightly oversize so that I could set it in the boat and trim it back down to exact size.

With the 2 parts of the wall cut to size it was just a matter of joining them into one panel. Normally a butt join and glass each side is sufficient, but I decided I would try a tongue and groove join. Pretty simple really, I just de-cored the panel edges and glued a strip of duflex into the join each side and glassed it each side. The bulkhead is being made from 25mm polycore, the furniture panels are 19mm polycore. With the core removed the 25mm panel is about 22mm internal gap and I had some 20 duflex so with a sloppy glue mix it fitted pretty well without bulging the join out, I tried some 23mm but it was just too tight and pushed the thin glass out so that when finished the join would sit proud and be much harder to fair out to invisible. I glassed one side, then had some lunch and went on to some other jobs, then before leaving for the day, the first tape was set enough to turn the panel over and tape the other side. (The other job I started on was de-coring the area around the port mast ready to glue a ply pad in but my router stopped working so I could not get much done).

Tomorrow I will mark and cut the door out of the panel and decore the edge and glue a uni rope into the edge. I will also decore the door edge and back fill that just with filling compound (it does not need the stiffening that the panel needs. Then once set I can later in the week I can glass that panel into the boat and continue on with making the nav station/electronic cabinet. Hopefully I get another router and keep going on the mast plywood plug and glass the deck so that the guys that will be fairing the boat wont have to wait for me to do that if they start soon (not likely to start for a few weeks so I have time).

May 8 Rear bunk wall door cut out

The join in the bedroom wall had set so I could continue working on it. Yesterday evening I almost bunked off early before glassing the other side of the panel. I was concerned that the first side tape had not fully set (it hadn't but was rigid enough to move) so was going to leave the other side until today but I carefully turned the panel over and taped the other side, meaning today I could continue on with the doorway. So just an extra half hours work yesterday enabled me to continue whereas bunking off early would have meant that today all I would have done on that job was glass the other side.

The first thing I did after removing the peel ply and feather sanding the tape edges away was retry the dry fit. I was confident of a good fit but you never really know when gluing parts together that the full panel will still fit well, but I had another concern, I wasn't sure there was enough clearance to get the full size panel back into place. My fears were unfounded, it fit back in ok but more importantly the fit was very good. As I often do at major changes in appearance, I sat back and admired the new look of the build. This wall completely changes the starboard hull stairwell and the perception of room. Needless to say I am pretty happy with it.

The black line in the pics is the mdf tongue used to stiffen the join. It worked well and the panel is quite stiff. I marked the boat where the wall needs to be and removed it again to start working on the door. This presented an interesting question. All of the doors in the boat are 500mm wide with rounded tops and bottom. But all the other doors on the boat are square to the centre line. This door is angled at about 30 degrees. The reason this caused some consternation is that a 500mm wide door is not 500mm wide when you angle the panel, it is less than 500mm depending on how great the angle is, and because the angle is not so great the door would only need to be about 530mm to be 500mm wide square to the centre line. If I did not increase the width your eye still sees a 500mm door albeit you can see the angle but unless you turn to go through the door square to it, it is actually less than 500mm wide. Now on a boat, because the doorways are narrow you tend to go through them sideways anyway. So I did think for a while whether to make the doorway a little wider to compensate, but in the end decided against it. I didn't want it to look out of place and as I said I don't think you would walk through it square to it anyway.

So with the decision made, I marked the door on the panel and cut it out. I did have to move the door inboard 30mm, the other doors are all 300mm from the hull side (on the upright panel) but because the aft bulkhead will be attached at an angle and because there will be a bench top meet the panel I had to move the door out slightly so it meets up at the same distance from the door edge as the bench tops against the other doors on the square bulkheads. I hope all that made sense.

Once the door was cut I routed the edge and using the die grinder I de-cored the inside edge of the doorway (I will also have to do the door but that will be later) and prepared a length of uni 400mm wide by 4 meters (yes that's right, these doors are 4000mm around), wet it out, rolled it up into a rope and put it into the de-cored edge in my usual method, using clear tape covered mdf strips secured with elastic bands held taught by putting screws through the panel about 100mm from the edge and stretching the elastic band from one side to the other. Then to finish the panel off, (I had previously de-cored the vertical edge) I back filled with filler compound the vertical edge of the panel that will form an edge that a door will butt up against once I build the cabinet that forms the extension of the bulkhead up on the bridgedeck.

Then using a borrowed router I removed the core (and top layer of glass) from the deck where the mast will be. I set the plunge router to just less than the depth of the panel and plunged it in at the middle point, the theory being that if I misjudged it and pierced the inside skin that would end up being cut out when the mast post goes in anyway. I had it set correctly, if anything not quite deep enough leaving about 1mm of balsa on the bottom skin, which I removed with a chisel. You need to get down to the skin so you are gluing the play to the glass and the bottom layer of glass on the deck will also adhere to the ply. I did pierce the skin at come joins that I had not glassed underneath, and will now need to glass those gaps on the underside. It will eventually have a number of tapes (4) taping the post to the underside and topside of the deck but I will also need to clean those holes up with another tape so that the glue does not drip from the holes into the hull. One other tip when removing the core with a plunge router, you have to start at the middle and remove the core as you move out from the middle. If you try moving the router without some kind of plan you will run out of core guiding the router to the correct depth. I had to do some of the first one freehand as I did not have any core left to rest the router on to keep it from going through the bottom skin. The second one I went from he centre around and around making a bigger and bigger hole until I had the size hole I needed.

So during the week I hope to cut the play pads to size and glue them into the de-core holes I cut today and get the glass down as soon as I can because before the glass goes back on this is a weak point and I am just dumb enough or clumsy enough to step in the hole and end up crashing through the bottom skin. And of course I will clean up the doorway edges and get that panel glassed into the boat, then later in the month making the electronics cabinet and the cabinet that goes from the back edge of the dagger case to the new wall. All interesting work.

May 10 Rear bunk wall dry fit

Sometimes small things make a huge difference. Just cutting the door out of the starboard aft wall and dry fitting it again made a huge difference. Being able to step through that door and get a feel about how the bedroom will work with the walls in place makes all the difference. The uni rope had set and needed to be trimmed and cleaned up around the edges. Here and there I will need to fill small voids but overall a very good finish. I also cleaned up the leading edge of the wall. This will eventually have a door abutted to it hinged off a rail that will be in the cabinet directly adjacent to it inside the cabinet.

The panel needed to be curved or have an angled corner in it so that it changes from the angle it comes in off the stairwell at into the front of the cabinet that runs parallel to the bulkhead. This was about as easy as it gets. A single kerf on the inside of the panel so that at the bend the gap opens, filler was pushed into the gap whilst the panel was held at the angle required and a tape over the join to set at the correct angle. From start to finish that took about an hour.

I am now just deciding if it will be easier to build the electronics cabinet in first then tape this bulkhead in or the other way around. I still have to cut a small section out of the bottom of that panel at the leading edge in order to create the recessed kickboard and that wont become apparent until the cabinet is in place. All high visual impact stuff and very satisfying.

I also cut the plywood discs that will get glassed into the de-cored section around the mast. But I didn't have time to glue them in and hopefully I will get that done tomorrow, or perhaps I will wait for the weekend and glue and glass them in all at once. Sometimes it is easier to glass wet on wet sometimes it is easier to let the glue set and sand it back to smooth before glassing. It wont make any difference to the strength so it comes down to what is easier. I will clean out the de-cored section and see if there is a ridge at all, if there is, then it will be easier to let it set then sand it smooth, if there isn't or is a slight depression (the ply disc is slightly lower than the surrounding area) then it might be easier to lift the ply to the correct height with glue then glass it whilst wet. Either way, I am hoping to have the glass mast load spreading pad which consists of 4 discs of 457gsm double bias glass starting with one 800mm all around from the centre of the mast, then 600mm then 400mm then 200mm from centre so 400mm across. Then the final things that will need to be done before the hulls can be faired is for the dagger cases to be glassed on to the side decks.

May 15 Mast bases glassed

Having de-cored the balsa around the mast (the mast is 200mm across and the ply base is 400mm across) I cut the ply pads to size and glued them into the spaces. I decided on gluing them then sanding back rather than glue and glass wet on wet. There is a small 1mm ridge between the height of the ply and the height of the deck around it. So letting the glue set then grinding it back down makes that difference negligible but trying to ensure no bubble under the glass by wet glue/filler is not as easy. And this glass is a load dissipater so bubbles that weaken it are too big a risk. And you have enough work to do in a big wet out without having to worry about any other issues.

So during the week (Tuesday night) I glued the ply pads in and put another layer of glass over the areas in the underside glass that were broken through (they were joins that had not been glassed and they should have been so sooner or later I needed to do that anyway). Then on Thursday night I sanded them down, nice and smooth transitions, and I also extended the bare glass by removing the bog on the side and foredecks ready for the glass. And Friday night I cut the glass to shape and size ready to wet out the next day.

The plans call for 4 layers of 450g of glass, the largest of them on the bottom is 125mm forward from the middle of the mast and 110mm aft from the middle. And 750mm wide from the centre either side of the post. Then each layer is 100mm shorter all around than the one below it. I don't have any of the 450g cloth left of I used 600mm cloth figuring there is no harm being stronger than it should be. I toyed with the idea of only laying 3 layers because 3 layers of 600 is the same as 4 layers of 450 but erred on the side of safety.

As I did with the mast base glass on the cabin soles I rolled the bottom 2 glass sheets up together and gradually unrolled them as I wet out with a brush under them on the substrate and onto the top of the glass so at one point I had 2 layers of glass wet out on the deck and the other half of them still dry. Being large areas of glass you either construct some way to suspend yourself over the glass to wet it out or you figure out some way to reach across it. I don't like standing on wet glass because disturbing the cleanly laid down glass can result in air bubbles or areas not adhered properly to the substrate, not to mention getting glue all over the place or you come up with some method of getting it all down without either standing on it or being suspended over it. The 2 smaller upper layers can be reached across so that you can wet them out one at a time with only the occasional stepping on the edge, no harm done.

 

The wet out took about 4 hours, I started at 8am anticipating it would be a long day and a big job, but in the end it was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. I have lost count of the number of times I have said that about a looming job only to breeze through. I had a break for lunch while the resin tacked off a bit and then spread a thin layer of bog over the wet resin to get a chemical bond. The glass would need sanding with or without bog, and if it would then be bogged and sanded again I figure it just removes one of the sanding efforts and also removes the risk of sanding through the glass accidently. The bog acts as a warning, when it is gone, stop sanding, but with no bog as a guide it is possible to sand too far and through a layer.

May 16 Start on Nav cabinet

A short day today, Jo is down for a week, but I leave for the Sanctuary Cove boat show on Tuesday so because of us living in separate states for a while we went out for the afternoon. I did manage to get a start on the nav cabinet that will house the electronics and paper maps and other navigation equipment.

The aft bedroom wall forms the start of the cabinet as it emerges from the stair well so the first step was to make the shelves that will ultimately dictate the shape of the cabinet. I have a set curve that I used on each corner of the settee so using that curve to maintain consistency all that was really required was that curve on the forward corner, the rest are right angles and the depth and length. The depth was already decided and the stair well wall bend has already been set to the depth, I made it so the top is the standard 600 deep. The door and the chamfer dictate the length of the cabinet, a neat and relative to depth, 1200mm. So making the shelves was a fairly simple matter.

The height of the kickboard is also set by the rest of the furniture on the bridgedeck so once I had run a strip off at 150mm (the height of the kickboard on the saloon settee) I measure the length required, cut it to length, measured where the curve started and ended at the front right corner, cut kerfs on the inside of the panel and bent it around the shelf in order to glue it and glass it to shape. I ran some sticky tape on the panel to stop it from sticking to the shelf because I was only using the shelf to set the shape, but I wanted to glue and glass it to the bridgedeck before attaching the shelf later although I may change my mind on that as I am likely to get a better bond glassing the kickboard to the shelf and then glassing the shelf and kickboard to the deck.

Next Tuesday I head off to the boat show so I wont get any more work done on my boat until late the following week, set up is Wednesday so I drive up Tuesday, then the show runs from Thursday to Sunday. If you are going to the show stop in to my tiny stand and introduce yourself and have a chat. Stand TP-18P Boatebiz. TP stands for The Promenade, 18 is the number of my P, for pagoda, which is a tent in the street rather than a booth inside one of the main big tents. Its about 1/4 of the price cheaper, and who knows it might be better than being inside with all the other booths. The big variable is the weather, if it is as bad as last year then I have probably made a mistake if it is nice then it may pay off, who knows.

May 29 Aft bedroom bulkhead glassed in

Back on the boat after the Sanctuary Cove boat show. Numbers were well down at this years show, and it didn't help that I had a pagoda stand outside so when it rained I had no-one passing my stand, and it rained most of Friday. Last year we lost an entire day due to weather and this year I lost most of a day because of weather. Having said that, whilst being in one of the main halls (giant tent) during the rain may or may not be advantageous. Just because people are milling about indoors near your stand does not mean it is better than them not being around, often you get people crowded onto your stand with little or no interest in your product and literally blocking access to genuine customers, so it is debatable whether having a captive audience if of benefit. Anyway, as is usually the case I wont know if the show paid for itself for some time because often (and I am not different) people will take a pricelist and go back and consider their options and measure up to ensure the hatches I have fit their boat.

Apart from being outside my stand looked pretty much the same this year as last, there has only been a few minor changes to the range, the round 10" hatch now has a friction hinge instead of a strut, a new stainless trim to the oval port light, the large size tackle center and the inspection plates.

Back on the build I have started glassing in the aft bedroom wall and the cabinet that it forms into as it comes up from the starboard hull onto the bridgedeck. The first part to be glassed to the boat is the kickboard of the nav cabinet. The aft bulkhead wall bends around in front of the kickboard so if the wall went in first it would make getting the kickboard glassed both sides quite difficult if not impossible.

When setting up the wall I had to be absolutely sure that it was plumb (square to the floor) along its length. To do this I just had spirit levels set up at various points along it. They all remained level so I have a plumb wall. By the way, using a spirit level as opposed to a square (which I also use but this must be removed to glass where the spirit level is clamped on through out) you are assuming that the boat is still level. I set the hulls and bridgedeck levels over 2 years ago so it would not be incredible for it to have moved, but I recheck the level on a regular basis but running the spirit levels across the top of bulkhead 5 as my reference point. It is the one between the saloon and bedrooms and is about the middle of the boat for and aft, I also check the level fore and aft across the top of the bulkheads that separate the bedrooms. So far the boat is still level, if it were ever to move I would have to figure out how to re level it.

It took me pretty much all day to glass the wall in. It doesn't look like that big a job but it took me 6 hours. I did a few other bits of work, such as back fill some edges of exposed shelves in the nav cabinets and called it a day.

I dry fitted the shelves of the nav cabinet, which nicely shows the end shape it will take. I have to decide on the shelf height, there are arguments for a variety of heights but in the end I think centered is about where it will go.

May 30 Nav cabinet shelves glassed

The kickboards on the bridgedeck are 140mm high (50mm may be hidden under a false floor), and on a boat with limited space that is a lot of shelf space to lose. And the black box processor of the 8000i screen is quite big, so I have decided that a great place to mount it would be under the bottom shelf in the space created by the kickboard. It is out of the way yet still accessible if I make the bottom shelf removable and being directly below where I will be mounting the screen it all works well. In fact there will be a couple of other black boxes, one for the broadband radar and one for the broadband sounder unit there is plenty of room n there for all of them, out of the way so they dont use up valuable shelf space above. And whilst I probably should not be broadcasting it on a public forum, it also hides all of the units out of sight, which should deter thieves from breaking into the boat to try to steal it all. I am working on the principle that thieves dont generally break in to see what you might have, and thieves generally dont read build blogs.

In order to have a removable shelf, I had to cut it yesterday, decore the edges and back fill them, which fortunately I did. So today I was ready to glass the 2 parts of the bottom shelf either side of the removable middle section, which today I did. And having a removable middle section meant I was able to reach in under the 2 parts of the shelves being glassed in and glass the underside to the bulkhead and kickboard. Reaching in and under to cove upside down is not that easy in a confined space but is doable as is getting glass to stick upside down.

Then glassing the tops of the bottom shelf halves was easy. As was setting the spacers up to hold the middle shelf in place while I glassed it in. This was a little harder work as I had a much longer cove to apply and a longer tape along the bulkhead to get to stay stuck upside down, but again with some resin on the underside of the shelf and bulkhead to tack off a little before rolling the tape on did the trick.

I also got the 25mm duflex offcut from the window cut-out and started to make the top from it. It will need another part glued and glassed together to form the entire top but I plan to have a hinged section at the doorway end of the top, which will form a lid that opens up to house the plotter screen when not in use. Its a big screen and is somewhat obtrusive when not being used, so housing it under the bench top when at anchor will serve 2 purposes, besides storing it out of sight and out of the way, it also hides it from view to again stop thieves from being tempted to break in to steal it if we are away from the boat for any extended time. I hope I dont sound too paranoid. An once of prevention and all that. The anti theft is a bonus and not the primary motivation.

Once the nav cabinet shelves were in and setting I had enough time to get started on the bathroom wall template. I use a template to transcribe the exact shape to the polycore sheets so that I dont have any mishaps cutting the panel to the correct size and shape. It actually saves a lot of time. I am actually going to move the wall about 100mm forward from my initial position. I will need to cut that 100mm from each of the steps already glassed in, but this is no big problem, I trimmed the steps on the starboard hull to get the wall in at exactly the right angle. And the steps into the port hull are already a bit wider (by about 120mm) than the steps in the starboard hull, which is part of the reason I am moving the wall. I initially thought the space was better used having a wider stairwell but now that the stairs are in the starboard hull with walls and cabinet either side, I can tell I dont need the steps wider and have changed my mind and decided I would rather have a bigger bathroom. Its not so much the space in the room but the space on the chamfer panel after the wall goes on, between it and the bulkhead. I want to fit the vanity unit on it and still have space for the escape hatch so the wider it is the better. It is currently 1100mm but I will add another 100mm to make it 1200mm which splits nicely to 600mm for the vanity and 600mm for the escape hatch. That should just be enough.

Tomorrow I might get another couple of hours done gluing and glassing the 2 sections of 25mm polycore together to make a panel big enough to cut the bulkhead from. As I did last time, I will need to decide if I have the join going horizontal or vertical, last time I chose horizontal and will probably go the same way this time. The bulkhead wont be as wide as the starboard one, because this bulkhead will be square to the centreline not on an angle, but I dont think this will persuade me that joining it vertically will be better, as with the starboard hull, a lot of the joins will be hidden inside the cupboards either side of the doorway leaving only a small section each side visible that will need fairing. If I do get a couple of hours tomorrow, it will mean I have managed 62 hours on the build this month, which isn't too bad considering I was away for the boat show for 8 days.