Starboard stairwell cupboard glassed in.

January 24, 2011July 15, 2014

In the meantime I am finishing loose ends still undone around the boat, starting with glassing in cabinets that are made but for one reason or another are not yet glassed in. For some the reason is that I moved on to something else. One such cabinet is the curved cabinet at the base of the starboard stairwell. I have been debating whether to completely seal this section in instead of putting doors in and making use of the space. It is now very shallow so in the end the space is not going to be missed. But because I had not fully ruled out not using the space I have been procrastinating about glassing it all in. Decision made, glassing it all in only took a couple of days interspersed with other work around the boat. I first glassed the kickboard in early on Saturday morning, and by the afternoon it had set enough to glue and glass the curved front on which set overnight and on Sunday I was able to glass the top on. The top is made up of the middle shelf and the 15mm top I had already cut being glued together to form the 30mm top thickness I need to match the rest of the boat. (The middle shelf is no longer needed as I wont have doors). I needed to glue a strip of 15mm duflex to the back of the top to make the middle shelf the same size as the top. I glued these parts together on the Saturday and on the Sunday I re shaped the top to match the curve of the front and sanded the face smooth join where the 2 15mm parts met. You can just make out the join in the pic below. It wont be visible once it is laminated or, as I have been thinking, we may laminate the tops and glue (and maybe screw) a shaped moulding to the front edges of all the bench tops so we have a curved front edge. Some people like a timber edge. I dont think we will but it can be painted. Not sure yet. Perhaps just the clean lines of a square laminated edge and top will look best.

The other project I got a start on was closing in the space behind the starboard dagger case. In the port hull this space is taken up with a grey water holding tank. In the starboard hull the space will be used as a wine cellar. I will make a front face out of plywood to close the space up, into which will be glued and glassed 90mm white pvc down pipe about 600mm long and set on a downward angle of about twenty degrees. Each will have a pvc end cap glued on to stop the bottles falling through and to seal the space behind in an airtight cavity that becomes additional buoyancy chambers, and then once that is make it gets glassed on to seal out the cavity. I will have the panel overhang the inside face of the back edge of the dagger case as I intend having lining on the dagger case so this overhang will form the corner of where the lining will butt into. I marked out the pvc pipe positions and can get 8 pipes in and each could probably hold 2 bottles. That should be ample. We only like one kind of wine! Merlot which I think wine connoisseurs look down upon.

Well that pretty much rounds out a disappointing January from a boat work point of view. Tomorrow I head off to the US on a 2 week business trip (that I am not paying for otherwise I would not be going) so I wont get any more work done until mid Feb. January always promises the hope of getting a heap of work done as I have more time off to do it, but the heat in our shed is so stifling that I find myself easily distracted from it, whether it is the Ashes cricket on TV or my growing list of friends with boats inviting me sailing (I find that a particularly easy justification for not working as I need to get my experience up) and the hours I do spend at the shed are much less productive because of the heat. Anyway, this should hopefully be the last summer spent building the boat and many many summers ahead enjoying the fruit of that work.

Next month I hope to start work on the outboard wells and the kick up rudders so that the rear steps can finally be glassed into the boat. Then in March we will turn it and the boys will finally start fairing the outsides whilst I finish the bathroom and start making all the final cuts into the hull for the various through hulls so I can glass in the last of the furniture. Then I will run all of the wiring around the various conduits I have been laying as I build furniture ready for fitting electrical fittings and hopefully we will get the other worker I had lined up (no pun intended) to start making the linings. This is going to be an exciting year!!