More mount work; starting cockpit

These are the pieces of hardwood (maple) for the compression pad reinforcement; two thick coats of epoxy were applied to ensure waterproofness:

I glued them both in place (no glass yet) to ensure they wouldn't move around later, at the same time I glued on the fwd mount doubler plates:

Here it is after laminating the uni and C glass (hard to see details in this picture, I know):

I spent an hour or two sanding the exterior of the starboard front mount; sanding inside the beam mount "arm" gets tedious (can only get a few fingers in there), but I'm almost ready for glass on this one:

Next I worked on the fwd beam bulkhead "flange". Following Menno's example I used some leftover foam (I have more left than I want to admit) to form the mold flange:

The plans call for several layers of uni glass to wrap around the entire edge of the mold, forming the bulk of the flange; I didn't use any overlaps which resulted in a very long stack of glass:

The uni glass (well-soaked in epoxy with slow hardener - this was a long job and I wasn't taking a chance it would kick on me before I was ready) wrapped beautifully around the flange mold:

I also did the fwd-side layers of C glass while the uni glass was still wet; the thin crack in the picture above requires a few layers of C glass, which was difficult since I could barely get my fingers in there. Ended up shoving things in there as best I could with a brush; I hope it works.

Minor builder's tip: I don't know how other folks do it, but a strategy I use is to wet-out all of my tape outside the boat, and then carry it into the boat on a board. The tape gets wet-out first (even when using fast hardener, once it's laid out flat the cure will proceed slowly enough to give me time for the other steps); then I mix up some bog to use for fillet material; then I move the tape over to a small portable board covered in plastic; and then I carry the whole lot into the boat. Peel-ply gets pre-cut (as best I can predict) and pre-staged near the lamination site; once you've got the wet glass on the surface you want to move quick to get the peel-ply applied. I use the little 2" disposable chip brushes for applying the peel-ply (fingers tend to move the underlying glass around too much). This is some of the glass tape for the forward side of the bulkhead flange:

The uni-glass for the flange turned out awesome. Here it is the next day after stripping off the foam mold plate:

This afternoon I finished off the last of the flange glass. I did this lamination in two halves, starboard first, then port. The starboard side was easy; on the port half, the upper glass sections kept wanting to fall for some reason. To fix this I clamped a piece of wood to the flange to hold things in place:

I've also started on the cockpit. For some reason, I didn't notice until today that I could have already installed much of the cockpit stuff (bulkheads, seat fronts), way back on sheet 19. No big deal though, just means I had more room for doing the aft beam mounts. Good thing I noticed it though, because at the same time I realized that I still had not done the cross-cockpit uni glass that was called for on sheet 19; so that got done Saturday night. Today I taped the main seat fronts in place:

It might have been easier if I had cut the compartment access holes first before taping these in place, and also the drain holes...oh well. After studying the various options, I decided that I am going to make the quarter berth openings from inside the boat (mainly for more dry storage, I doubt we'll be doing any overnighters with anyone other just my wife and I); I also plan to make the safety-compartment as called for in the plans.