Well, Cathy came through for me one more time and helped apply the second coat of epoxy to the inside of the hull and deck floor on Monday. I followed this up on Tuesday by tackling the first part of the deck installation. I started the process by carefully locating the daggerboard slot on the deck floor and undercutting the opening about 1/4 inch in all 4 directions. I sanded down the deck cleats with my nifty long board sander that has the vacuum hose attachment (It works great - you don't have to clean up the sanding dust mess after your done!), and laid on a thick coat of epoxy glue. I carefully installed the deck floor on-top and made sure it was aligned prior to stapling the flooring the cleats. For good measure I added clamps at the rear end of the boat.
During the deck installation two things popped up:
1. the daggerboard locker alignment is about 2 mm off center. I'm pretty sure this has something to do with my previous issues that I had with the alignment (see older posts for details). I'm confident that I can overcome this with the
installation of the small wooden blocks that will align the daggerboard inside the daggerboard locker. The good news is that the daggerboard is 15 mm thick, and the locker is 20mm. this should give me enough play to align everything up perfectly and get it true to the hull.
2. There was a bit of a gap between the deck floor and portions of the bow sections. I fixed this by wrapping a tie down around the nose of the boat to bring the hull in contact with the deck floor, and by laying a thick coat of epoxy at the joint. I followed this up today with the filleting
epoxy which I will let sit for a couple of days.
Finally I got the first coat of epoxy on the underside of the side deck panels today. I'm hoping to get the 2nd coat on tomorrow and install them on Friday. I'm still pondering how to line up the wing beams correctly for the gluing operation. More to follow!
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