Bow eye progress

Long no time post. Work has been very busy; same old song, I know. Plus my mom came to visit for a week so I spent a bunch of time with her. (Hi Mom! :))

I've been doing little jobs here and there, trying to keep making progress but it's been hard. Here's the upper bow nose closed in; nothing pretty about this, just formed some foam around the bend (with a slot for the bow web), then bogged it into place along with some screws to hold it:

That long upper section on the foredeck is wastage, it was only there so I didn't have to deal with heat-forming a small short piece. I cut it off today and sanded it down even with the foredeck - looks good, but seems that I forgot to take a picture (next time).

Have started fairing the daggerboard also:

Looks good so far. I have not weighed it yes, but I'd guesstimate about 20-25 pounds at this point, based on feel.

I finished fairing the port lower hull foam, and also filled in all of the screw holes and plank gaps.

The bow eye is in progress. Here I am getting ready to mark the angle it should be placed at:

(Yeah I used trig to place the tape on the square; how geeky of me.)

Here I was figuring out fore-aft depth for the bow eye:

I am glad that I waited to make the bow eye, because the length specified by the plans will be insufficient if you add extra layers of foam to the bow leading edge (which I did). So I first figured out how long it needed to be , then glued up the rest of the bow eye (the triangular part). Here's an inside picture; I know, it's a bit hard to see anything but you should get the idea:

Yes the bow eye fit is a bit sloppy, but I'm not going to lose sleep over it. Makes me even more glad though, that I didn't spend days trying to construct the bow eye exactly as specified in the plans - I'd have ended up trimming and sanding it to fit anyway.

I still don't have any true "G" carbon, so I am making do with a lesser weight (9oz) which means I needed more layers around the front of the bow eye. Rather than use plastic for the temporary mold pieces, I used taped-over plywood. This is my bow-eye taping station, ready to go:

Doing the carbon on the bow eye wasn't too hard, but I did worry about compaction of the laminate in between the plywood - I used a popsticle stick, cut in half, to work it down in the crack but it was hard. This is the bow eye with all the carbon in place:

Finally, the extra "B" laminate for the bow eye has been placed in the hull, so I am ready to install the eye next chance I get.