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!