The heat is restricting the productive work time. And there are 6 months of this to look forward to. Whilst building the boat I much prefer winter to summer (of course once it is done I will be chasing an endless summer!). I have a plan for when the boat is closed in and the work moves inside the boat. I intend to run an air conditioner into the saloon through a panel I will use to close the door up and keep the cold in and hot out. But in the meantime I am not getting the hours in I should because after about 1pm the heat in the shed on a sunny hot day is stifling.
I have managed to glue all of the scraps and offcuts and panels made for the walk through transoms into the finished cockpit shape I had envisaged. I have made my cockpit as wide as I could by making the seat uprights right on the chamfer so the cockpit is the entire width of the bridgedeck. I figure this is an area of the boat we will spend a lot of time on and with guests we wanted to feel as large as we could make it.
With the seat tops made I have started to glue the side seat backs onto the boat, from these the seat bottoms will be glued and glassed and once they are in the shape forms a girder like structure and should become very rigid, so that they can be sat on or walked on without direct support below.
Under the helm I glued a partition so as to create an area that can be open to the cockpit with a lid that will have a drain plug in the bottom (straight out under the bridgedeck) and will be used as an ice trough for drinks when we have people on board to save going inside for cold drinks from the fridge, the rest of the time is can be used to store anything really. Behind that the cupboard formed will be open to the aft bunk for clothing. It is quite a large area more than a meter wide and deep but about 500mm high. I may put a partition inside, but it will have double doors on it. There will also be a smaller cavity area inside the aft bedroom under the seat top but this will only be large enough for a few books, or a cup of drink, more like a bedside drawer. Inside the port side mirrors that of the starboard side but because the port side will be the bathroom there is no need for the entire width room (as needed by the bed on the starboard side) so I will put a blackwater tank in the rear section and a wall will close off the sides, into which a cupboard will be built for the water maker. There isn’t the wide cupboard formed by the helm seat on the port side.
The starboard side is also taking shape. I have decided that instead of gluing all of the wrap around seat back together into one long section then kerfing them in the correct place, it will be easier (and perhaps a little stronger) to just join the corners in 2 panels then to cove the curve in or glue a small kerfed shaped panel in to form the curve. What is behind it is hidden and not a space that can be used anyway so it wont make any difference to the end result.
In the last photo you can see the gap I am leaving in the rear seat back. The seat back will be formed by stainless steel tubes (2) with round padding around them and a small gate in the middle, then entire stainless fence area about 2 meters wide. You can also see the start of the step I will make so that the step down from the walk through which is at seat top height from the duckboard (which will be raised to the same height with cupboards below once made). Once the middle section is glued and glassed the ends can be tortured around the the seat again to form the symmetrical curved step. This will complete the cockpit fit in.
After all of this is glued and glassed in on the outside, the next step is to cut the lids into the seat tops so that the inside glassing can be completed.
