Cross Deck

Took a weekend break from the boat to go sailing in San Diego - rented a 40' Beneteau - Nice boat! But now I'm back in business!

First thing was to fillet the "cross" in place which I accomplished during the week. I followed this up on Friday afternoon by sanding down the fillets of the cross deck frame prior to installing the cross deck. I figured out it would be easier to do this prior to putting the cross deck in place. I found the center of the cross deck, drilled a hole and installed a brad nail. I drilled a small corresponding hole in the center of the cross deck frame so that I could easily locate the center when test fitting the deck structure.

Cross Deck being temporarily fitted

I temporarily attached the cross deck so that I could determine where to trim the arms up against the rub rails. After trimming the arms I re-fit the deck and marked the rub rails so that I could cut the recesses with the router. It took a combination of the router and my vibrating saw to cut the recess due to the fact that width of the arms created a span that was to great to cut with the router alone.

Next step I glued the cross deck in place. As you can see in the picture I ended up clamping a couple of pieces of wood on one of the cross member arms in order to straighten it out (It's that darn 4mm plywood!)

After letting it set up overnight I removed the clamps and trimmed/sanded the edges - Looks good!

Finally I glued up the mass steps and the spinnaker pole support.

Next steps will be to fillet the cross deck to the cross frame and install the cross deck doublers.