Today we managed to tape the joins on the inside of the rear buoyancy compartment. We also managed to clean off the glue from some the joins ready to glass them. And to glue the floor into the hull. That is the most visible of the work on the dingy.
I coved and taped the bulkheads and hull panel joins in the rear compartments. This is the compartment bordered by the transom bulkhead and the internal bulkhead. This compartment will be sealed for buoyancy. The middle compartments between the internal bulkhead and the forward bulkhead will become storage compartments for the petrol tank on one side and life jackets etc on the other side and will have hinged hatches. The bow compartments will also be sealed for buoyancy. The hull overhang behind the transom bulkhead will also be built into a buoyancy compartment to stop the bow lifting and to give the boat higher floatation at rest to counter the weight of the outboard. We will also have an anchor locker in the curved bow section of the bridgedeck in front of the forward beam bulkhead. We haven’t quite figured out how we will hatch that one yet.
We then turned the hulls over and trimmed the overhang of the hull side panels. They were made slightly oversize. We will be able to make the second boat more accurately so that such trimming wont be necessary or at least not as much. Warren used an electric plane to trim the bulk of the overhang and then used a sanding disk with a soft back to sand the rest down smooth. We have used a router to round the sharp edge off the keels and will sand them smoother before glassing. We will also need to round the keel to outside hull panels a little rounder, I will use the random orbital to do that next time I work on the boat.
To fit the bridgedeck we marked the line from the bottom of the transom bulkhead along the hull and screwed an mdf board into each hull as a platform for it to sit on. We then dry fit the bridgedeck and marked the kerf lines for the curve we wanted it to take. We then removed it and cut the kerfs and glued them and also the edges of the panel and refit it. We then screwed the panel in place through the hulls to pull the join tight. We then removed the mdf panels and left it to set. There was not much more we could do as we couldn’t move the hull until the bridgedeck was set. So we called it a day and relaxed with a couple of drinks to enjoy the achievement so far. We spent another 4 hours on the dingy today for a total of 22 hours each. It does not equate to 44 man hours on the boat as we are building 2. I will calculate a build time once we have finished the second boat.
I only managed 32 hours on MM this month but have also done about 22 hours on the dingy project so in all I did about 54 hours work, which is not a bad month.
February will be an exciting month. We should have both dinghies launched, I will finish the forebeam and get a start on the daggerboards and start to finalize where I will move to in March.
