6am start today to beat some of the heat. The task for today was to sand the gluing I had done yesterday, cove the joins where needed and glass the joins before the heat of the day (noon) made work in the shed unbearable.
This is going to sound familiar because it pretty much mirrors the joins of the top to sides. I sanded the outside easily enough. But doing the inside was possibly the most horrible job I have done on the build so far. Lying upside down on the bridgedeck in the forward bunks, with a hairnet on, long sleeve top (although I had long shorts on, I should have had long pants on) and the full face mask on I sanded the join upside down above me getting covered in dust the entire time. And working overhead has to be the most tiring on your arms than just about any job in the build. My sanders all feel like they are 20kg. It is slow going, and where it took about 20 minutes to sand each side outside it takes more than 30 minutes each to do each side inside.
Anyway I got the inside sanded and rounded ready for glassing. There are still some holes and low areas here and there that will need some coving material just before I glass. I then started on the wet out of the tapes for the outside but by now it was about 11am and the roof had really started to heat the shed so I only wet one tape out at a time. Again I opted for 250mm and 200mm tape instead of 200mm and 150mm. I wet out the 3.8 meter bottom tape (from the middle of the cabin side forward to the end of the curve) 250mm wide on a plastic sheet on the bench and rolled it up and took it to the boat. I rolled it out and pressed it down into place as I went being careful that there were not air bubbles or tight areas around the curves. Wet double bias glass is really easy to lay around bends, you just let it bunch a little around the inside of the curve and make sure that the outside of the curve is loose and flat, then once the outside is in full contact with the panel you push the wet inside glass around until all of the bunched up tape is fully spread out and also in full contact with the panel. I then repeated this with the narrower 200mm tape which is also a second chance to be sure now that both the bottom tape and the new top tape have no bubbles. I then applied peel ply as best I could, peel ply does not go around corners quite so well at least not the recycled stuff from on the panels I sometimes use when the reason is not to add structural tapes over them. I only have bog to go on now.
Once I had the port side done I did the starboard side. By the time I am finished both sides it is about 12.30 and it is just too hot to do much more, although inside the boat it is still a little cooler than outside, the duflex acts as an insulator (which is a good sign for the tropics). I have managed to be at the shed 6 hours although I am only counting 5 hours work today.
Jo had arrived to come and collect me for the day whilst I was about half way through the outside tape wet out. She offered to do the wet out to save me climbing up and down and to save a little time (and she actually used the term “wet out” which was quite impressive!) but she was not in old throw away clothes so she sat patiently to wait for me, after having done a kick boxing class in the heat. Once I had the outside finished I called it a day. I was about an hour short of completing what I had set myself to do for the day (I spent half an hour vacuuming the entire top of the boat) but I will do that tomorrow morning before I embark on a clean the shed day (or more, the shed is a mess!). There wont be any more fairing on Nine Lives for a while and also not much more work to do on the outside my boat once the rear steps and duckboard are done so I am hoping that once cleaned up the shed might stay clean for a while.
I had the gloves on and was taping for about an hour by the time I had finished. When I removed the gloves my hands were soaking wet from sweating inside the gloves. They looked like I had been swimming for an hour. I will have to start wearing cotton gloves inside the rubber gloves again. It is more restricting and hotter and your hands still sweat just as much but whilst the gloves get soaking wet they seem to be easier on the skin.
On more minor point carrying on from the downtime my sight has had this week and the confusion of it reverting to 2 years ago, someone has emailed me to say that some antivirus software is alerting when my site is opened and also some advertising pop ups. I don’t have any advertising linked to the site other than the link at the bottom to Boatebiz and occasionally links to Jo’s online business, so I would appreciate it if this is happening more widespread (I have only had 1 email about it) that readers would shoot me an email to let me know so I know how widespread and serious this issue might be and perhaps a screenshot so I know what to tell the tech people (whilst I can use FrontPage and an FTP uploader to build the site, that is about the extent of my computer skills) what I want fixed.
