It was such a beautiful winter day today that I decided to have a light day and take Jo (an Jake) out for a late lunch at The Entrance. So all I did today was to grind down the starboard case overhang to flush with the hull panel (removing the copper epoxy) and glassing the case from the outside and bogging it.

I did not do as good a job of the angles when decoring and backfilling on this side so whilst I had the top of the case edge almost exactly flush the bottom of the case edge protruded about 10mm which all had to be ground off. I had buried the uni rope about 5mm down so by grinding 10mm off I was grinding some of the uni rope out. Hard work. Anyway whilst it was a little harder than the port hull it was not a major problem and once I had it ground flush and the copper epoxy stripped away I set about glassing and bogging the edges. After cleaning dust away (with compressed air) I applied a coat of epoxy and some filler to fill the tiny gaps that you get when you grind a uni rope, and let it set off a while. I wet the glass out too so it would tack off a little before I applied it.

While I was letting it all tack off I sanded the glue joins of the repositioned doorways in preparation for glassing the parts back on to return the full panel strength. I also need to fill the small void created by the new door shape but before I do that, the plans now call for 4 layers of 450gsm glass as a platform for the base of the mast posts. The plans call for the glass to span both sides of the bulkhead so I think I have to remove the base of the bulkhead against the chamfer panel, glass the support platform and replace the bulkhead base, so in effect the void will get bigger before it gets filled back in.

With a half hour or so of contemplation with plans in hand about how I might tackle this next glassing task and equally important when I might do it as this glassing goes onto the sole so I need to be sure that I have all the plumbing or wiring that I need to go under that sole in before I can glass it down, I sanded the bulkheads and went back to the glassing job on the remaining dagger case. I easily applied the glass and mixed up some bog with some left over resin that was also starting to get warm in the tub so I needed to use it a little sooner than I would have liked but I got it on without disturbing the glass.

I will have to let this bog set a few days before I attempt to fair it as the resin is taking a couple of days to fully set in winter. I am glad I finally have the dagger cases in the boat, I have been putting them off for some time (as I do with jobs I either don’t like or don’t feel confident about) and is another of the to do jobs ticked off.