Work Day 17

Today I took a break from the anals of scraping the paint off.  Though the back isn't all scraped I decided it was time to move the boat to a closer location.  After a recent Tornado we had to cut down one of the trees in our backyard.  The yard backs up to a dried up city lake. It only fills when it rains and is promptly emptied by a pump into farm fields.  So we took the initiative and moved the boat to the backyard!!! Great commute to work on the boat, on the flip side it stares back everyday begging for attention during the work week.

Before I moved the boat I decided to put 2-3 more layers of fairing on the cabin deck that I was going to drop in.  This took a lot of time and actually had to order more epoxy.  After the 2nd coat and copious amounts of sanding I figured it was good enough to drop in the boat.  I would eventually have to put another layer on to seal the deck to the sides of the hull.  At that point we can focus on the really fine sanding.

The first few days we left it on the driveway because it would be close to power sources for wood work.  I began fitting the floor this weekend and working with the final install boards before I seal the floor in.  First I had to build a forward bulkhead from scratch and then a smaller forward bulkhead where the floor would rest on.  In the process of this I realized that there was an error made when I attached the front cargo support several weeks ago.  I had not left a spot for the bulkhead to sit flush under the forward cargo cabin.  So had to sand and laboriously cut at odd hull angles to get 3/4" off of the main support and the bulkhead to sit flush.

The process of leveling and sanding the different floor supports took about 2 hours.  Unfortunately the forward support that I made today was trimmed down too small on the final cut.  So had to start over from scratch with a new board. Luckily when I trimmed this one a little more precisely it fit and the floor of the boat dropped in and did not move.

This is the small bulkhead that I will trim down as the floor support.

You can see the gap here as it does not sit flush...hopefully will filler it

The main bulkhead

Boat in the back yard, you can see the wood from the chopped tree

Though my goal was to seal up the floor forward cabin this weekend I would rather take my time as this is a critical phase.  So everything fits now its just a matter of getting a few days to drop in the deck and set the forward bulkheads.  The bulkheads will take one day to set then the floor will be epoxied in the following day.  At that point there will finally be no more bailing water out of the boat every time it rains!!! This is because I will have the bilge installed!