Today I tabbed the deck panel into place then I set about filling the joins with coving material in the same way that I did on the hull panels. I filled from above first and then I went below the deck and cleaned up wherever the glue had run through (where the gaps were a bit wide). I mixed a thicker batch of filler and back filled from below. I will actually have to cove this join from below anyway but rather than do that now I decided to glue the panels together and then give it a sand and then cove again later. The cove will be fairly large so it may be easier once the panels are set in place, I will then be able to glass onto the cove wet on wet.

With the deck completely glued up, glassing is next. First I will need to sand the filler smooth from above and below. Then I will glass the joins from above and also glass the joins in the panels that I have not glassed yet (these are the topside of the joins I glassed to join the 3 smaller panels into the full size deck that I did upside down under the boat before attaching the stiffening pipes). Once that is done I will cove the underwing join and glass that. Then more glassing, the next step will be the uni’s along the bulkheads and the double bias layer to finish each stack.

With Nine Lives hull glassed it was time to turn it over. Unfortunately I missed it, but it needed a crane and only took 15 minutes or so. The hull is about twice as heavy as mine are so even with 12 people it would be a struggle to turn but easy with a crane.

I finally have a separate page for Nine Lives, so where you see this link it means I have posted extra pictures on that page. It is better for those interested in Nine Lives to have all of the photos on one page and it also creates a brief pictorial history showing the progress.