Port Sloping Deck

This morning I tackled the installation of the port sloping deck. I went ahead and clamped the board to the wing beams similarly to the starboard one. After everything was trued up I decided to set my long level on the inboard side of the wing beams to check for trueness. Much to my surprise I found out that even though everything was nice and true at the outboard side, one of the "floating" (as in not attached to a bulkhead) wing beams needed to be trued up on the inboard side also. I did this by adding the level/clamp combo as shown in the picture.

Of course I figured I better check the port side and much to my dismay I found out that one of the "floating" wing beams was out of alignment! So - out came by handy little backsaw and I cut the glue joint out! (In the process I also managed to do a number on my finger nail! ouch!) Tomorrow, once the port side is all nicely set up, I am going to grab all my clamps, board, etc and fix this errant wing beam. I am glad that I checked this ahead of time. It could have turned into a real mess if I found out the problem as I was installing the wing deck panels.

As far as I can tell the root cause of most of my alignment problems has been the extremely bendy nature of of 4mm plywood and its propensity to warp. My next boat project (The Aviateur) will be made out of 9mm plywood. I'm hoping not to have similar problems on that particular project!

While I was at it I also filleted the backside of the stern mound and added a couple of small pieces of plywood to the bow of the boat to fix another interesting alignment problem where the gunwales are about a 1/4 inch higher than the bow transom.... (I did notice that another builder had this exact same problem...)

This afternoon I went ahead and put the first coat of epoxy on the wing deck panels, and on the inside of the stern mound. I was going to finish up the dagger board, but decided to forgo the sawdust bath (Apart from that the afternoon heat did not provoke me to go out there and sweat!)