Taking the side decks off the starboard hull allows me to finish the chores that I had not had access to. I have finished them in the port hull and now the starboard hull. These chores are glassing the inside of the foredeck and side deck joins and coating the inside of what will be a fender locker with white epoxy. What this reminded me of was how annoying a task glassing upside down, especially inside small cramped spaces. I almost always get resin in my hair and today was no exception. That and the fact you wish you were an octopus with 4 pairs of hands to keep it all up while smoothing it out. One little edge comes away and all of the sudden the entire tape is falling. It takes a little longer to glass upside down because to be absolutely sure it sticks it is safer to give the panel a coat of epoxy first, let it tack off, so it gets sticky, then run the tapes. So I ran the coves first, then brushed some epoxy on and let it go off a while. In the middle of cold winter, that while was a couple of hours!

I went on to do some other work, a bit more trimming of the dagger cases, come grinding of glass edges inside the boat under the cockpit seating in readiness for glassing the rest of the joins under there and cutting some plywood for making a grey water tank that will go between the port dagger case and the hull sides. I then wet out the tapes and finished the glassing inside of the forward sections in the starboard hull including inside the D section open to the hull. With these sections glassed on both hulls the side decks can now go on leaving just the insides of these joins left to glass through hatch lids or in the case of the most forward section, through holes I will cut in the 0 bulkhead and glue back in once the tapes are on, then the nose cone will go over the top of that bulkhead, sealing that area forever.

I also glued and glassed the ply pads for the outboard rails onto the back of bulkhead 6. These odd jobs are not done yet for a reason. They are unpleasant jobs that I have put off until now. But I can tell you this, as unpleasant as they are, winter is definitely the best time to be doing them. They are doubly unpleasant and or more difficult in the heat of summer.

I am waiting on a tool to arrive that I have bought on ebay. It is called a die grinder. It is a high speed air tool that with a shaped tungsten carbide burr (I actually already have the die grinder, $30 delivered and a set of different shaped burrs $50 have not arrived yet). This tool will be perfect for easy and fast decoring of balsa. I have to de-core both the hull edges around the dagger case and the dagger case edges. Once de-cored I will back fill with uni ropes and glue and glass the cases in. In the meantime there a a lot more jobs I want done before the side decks go on. The most important of these is re positioning the doors into the ensuite (starboard) and wardrobe (port) to make room for the mast posts. I also have the lay extra glass in the hulls to accept the loads that the masts will exert. This work will be easier with the side decks off due to extra air and light in the hulls.

Hopefully I will show some pics of how a die grinder helps with decoring when it arrives. I don’t have a decent camera at the moment and have been using my phone. Hopefully I get hold of another camera soon so the pics improve.