17 Working in the sunshine again

Yes, the weather's improved and the epoxy is going off in reasonable time again.



Yesterday I spent about two hours fitting watertight screw hatches to the fore and aft buoyancy compartments - basically I wanted to get inside them to have a look for any nasties, and it's always handy to have somwhere to stow small, light items safely when you're sailing. (Yes, I promise not to compromise the reserve buoyancy!)

The difficulty with these hatches was that they were bought as four inch diameter - handy, because I have a four inch hole cutter. Unfortunately they were actually four and a quarter inch diameter, which meant I spent a long time filing out the holes to fit after I'd used the tank cutter. Still, they look good, and seem pretty watertight.

Inside the buoyancy tanks there was a very little damp right in the bottom, but as some idiot had drilled small holes in them at some stage this was not surprising. The holes may have been drilled because water seepage - possibly osmosis - led to the sound of water sloshing about in them, but I've seen no sign of any problem yet. I've decided to epoxy the hull on the outside anyway, so for daysailing it shouldn't be any problem. And I'll block up the little holes with epoxy putty.

Incidentally, the tops of the two buoyancy tanks are made from threequarter inch thick end-grain softwood with GRP on both sides - it took an age to cut through and even longer to shape. Fortunately the vertical faces of the tanks are just an eighth of an inch of GRP - that rear one was a lot quicker.



Now this is getting to be something like: today I started on the main thwart, using one of my nice pieces of oak. The pic shows the thwart wedged in place with a temporary strut and a couple of folding wedges, and you can also see the clamps securing the final laminations of the inner gunwale where it's thickened for the thwart supports and rowlocks. At the back you can see the hatch in the aft buoyancy tank.

Since I took the photo I've roughly shaped the hanging knees which will support the seat; I promised a diagram of them ages ago and I'll explain them in more detail in the next article; I must also mention my patent epoxy putty next time - it's very cheap and very strong. Tomorrow should see the main thwart in place: fingers crossed!