Cockpit hatch and compartment work

Sorry for the lack of progress lately everyone. It turns out that I am human after all - I cannot simultaneously hold down a job, build a house, and build a boat. The job and the house are high-priority right now, so boat progress has been suffering.

This is the jig I made for locating the poptop support-arm pivot holes:

The jig was made as square and level as possible, so that I could get all of the pivot holes in the same plane. That part actually worked as intended, except that the holes were located too low in the coaming - the bolt heads wanted to dig too far into the surrounding deck next to the coamings. So I ended up filling the first set of holes and will need to re-drill them a bit higher.

The pivot arms themselves are pretty easy to make:

I also already have the UHMW plastic and the jib track+slides, to complete this work. I bought a large block of plastic and have been using the table saw to cut it into the appropriately sized chunks, per the plans (jig-saws don't seem to work for this, so far all I get is a dull blade and messy cut with melted\bubbled plastic):

I've also been working on the cockpit coaming compartments. As mentioned on other blogs, these compartments seem intended to drain into the under-seat compartment and then out. Well on my boat I wanted the under-seat compartment to stay dry. To fix this I decided to laminate some foam across the back of the compartment all the way to the coaming top:

The above compartment is obviously in primer - I did my best to fair out the interiors, but again it will be a workboat-only finish. Since taking that picture I've finished painting them and am now considering how to use some plexiglass for use as a mold, for the pre-formed flangs. The above picture also shows you the "curve" I did for the inner compartment wall. I don't think I'm perfectly per-spec on this, but it's close enough (and it looks nice, which is important). And both port and starboard compartments are nearly identical in appearance.

Finally, I had a visit today from Thatcher (lives in Seattle) and his dad John (lives in Montana). We had a nice visit talking boat stuff; they also brought along a six-pack of Moose Drool beer, a Montana-brewed beer. While bringing beer is certainly not a requirement, I enjoyed it very much. Thanks guys!

Outboard engine

After more investigation, I finally settled on a Tohatsu 6hp 4-cycle outboard engine: the "MFS6BUL SailPro" model, with a 25" shaft. I bought mine online from Online Outboards; they had a good price to start with; combined with free shipping and no state sales tax, it was the best deal I could find.

My nephew Daniel and I slapped together a storage mount for the engine when it's not on the boat:


I will order some casters to make it easy to move around.

I am also investigating outboard brackets. My goal is to know, well before fairing or painting, exactly how my outboard will be attached so I do not have any problems later on, e.g. with extra reinforcement. Adventure Marine has a simple but expensive fixed bracket, and I am also looking into the various Garelick models.

Regrettably I have some deadlines hanging over my head at work, so today was a short day on the boat, and tomorrow I will be at the office. I did finish taping the settee stiffeners in place. I spent a lot of time studying the settee seat back arrangement (see my post on the google F22 group), and also spent a lot of time dry-fitting the fwd coaming panels before finally settling on an arrangement; I then laminated the backsides of coaming panels and should be ready to start installing them next time. Oh wait, shouldn't I fair, prime, and paint the coaming compartments first? :-)

Cockpit seats glued on

The poptop hatch got an extra layer of A around the top outside edges:

I'm debating whether to put an extra layer of A on the top part. I also have collected all of the raw materials to start assembling the poptop hatch mechanicals (aluminum bars, bolts\nuts, plastic, jib track & slides, etc). I will start on that part of the project as soon as I have finished up most of the smaller jobs going on.

Yesterday I finally finished painting the cockpit compartment interiors; it took me all week to finally get down to 400 grit (yeah right). The weather has been crazy-hot lately, and it was a few degrees above System Three's suggested max temp for paint application. I compensated by thinning the paint with some slightly chilled water. I think it turned out ok:

Definitely a "work boat" finish, but plenty good enough for me. Here's another view in better light:

Here's the strategy I came up with to glue the settee stiffeners at a nice square angle to the settees: The fwd-most clamp does not have a piece of wood, since I didn't think I'd be able to get the screw out once the stiffener was glued in place. Here's a cross-section of one of these stiffeners:

I over-built the stiffeners a bit; two layers of A on each side, then the layer of A around the bottom curved edge, then another layer of A on the top edge (after routing a nice curve onto the front edge):

Eventually after I flip the hull upside down, I'll use A tape along the bottom inside join. So far, the results are quite satisfying: the settees have become nearly rock-solid places to sit. I am still however at a loss as to whether I should enclose the space beneath or not; rather than torture myself further, I decided to just leave the settees as-is for now. (With the limited space in that area, I shudder to think about if\how I'm going to fair the area fwd of the daggerboard case...)

With the compartments painted, I was finally free to glue the seats on:

Not shown in the above picture, but the initial perimeter taping on top of the seats has been done as well. I also dug out the foam from the extra layer on the aft-cabin hatch and filled it with bog (man I hate that job).

Last but not least, I began making blanks for the settee backs.

Cabin poptop hatch unmolded

Monday night I laminated an extra layer of A on the inside surface of the hatch (since the plans say A-core-A, and the inside only had B). Today I unmolded the hatch and it doesn't look too bad:

And:

Clearly it will need some trimming (both to level it out, and to shorten the sides) but I'm feeling better that it doesn't look too lopsided or otherwise unsalvageable. I plan to clamp some temporary wood supports to the hatch coamings on the boat to hold the hatch up, then scribe a trim line so the hatch fits reasonably close to the deck.

I also laminated a layer of A around the bottom edge of my settee stiffeners. Wrapping that relatively heavy glass around a 3/8" edge is hard. I routed a curve on both sides, sanded it smooth, and put a thin layer of bog on the edge and sides to help hold the glass in place, but it still kept wanting to lift off from that edge. So I brute-forced the job: continually pulling the edges of the peel-ply down on each side to force the glass back around the curve, until the epoxy finally started to setup hard. A fun twenty minutes... Clamping is another option but a clamp hard enough to hold always seems to leave indentations in the glass; not sure which option is worse. Anyway it's done and both stiffeners are sitting on top of the boat; they should be nearly post-cured after tomorrow's anticipated 100 deg F day.

Cabin hatch cover mess

My wife and I celebrated 21 years of marriage last week - yay us! Not bad for a couple of kids who were initially only given six months to make it. We didn't do anything fancy (my wife is saving up for something big on number 25), but we did spend all day Saturday driving over to see Grand Coulee Dam; this may not sound very romantic but we both enjoy looking at monumental engineering accomplishments, plus it's a nice long drive so we get to spend time together (Hoover Dam is another one of our favorites). Here I am in front of the dam:

Anyway, that trip plus a busy work week means I haven't got much done on the boat. Today I got a late start (slept in after the trip); first I taped the port settee that I glued in last Tuesday. Then I made a four-sided mold\form for the main cabin hatch cover:

In retrospect, this was a stupid way to do it. The hatch cover meets the front angled mold plate in a a compound curve that is basically impossible to get right with hand-trimming. Don't do it this way, follow Menno's example by laminating the back and sides first, then trim off the front at an angle, then do the front. I spent what seemed like forever trying to get the front of the hatch to fit against the mold, at the same time as levelling the hatch cover within all four sides (and of course you're constantly afraid that you'll trim it too far, which makes the whole process go slower). Finally this is where I decided to leave it (you can't really tell, but I used an epoxy fillet in each corners to form a radius):

You can see that the hatch is not quite level within the form....I will have to trim the hatch edges to make it level. Or maybe I'll leave the rear of the hatch higher than the front, for a "hot rod" look. I got the inside laminated and then quit for the day:

And darn it, I didn't sand out the cockpit compartment primer yet...one thing for sure, that stuff is hard after baking in the tent all week. :(