More deck work
Once the deck was on, it was time to fair. Planing, longboarding, finding the low spots… slow, hard work. Next we filled all the screw holes and low spots with epoxy and fairing compound (we’re using West Systems 110 for this).
Normally when you fill screw holes, you get your fairing compound to about the consistensy of peanut butter, press it into the hole and leave it just a little proud of the hole to allow for shrinkage. That’s how most of the holes are handled in this photo. When you do it this way, fairing becomes a simple matter of hitting those spots with sandpaper or maybe a plane and you’re done.
However, one guy didn’t really like people telling him how to do things, and you can see his work in the upper left of that photo. Yes, the Blob. The guy who did this was not really thinking about the consequences of his technique. It was more a git-r-done approach. He got-r-done.
And we planed and sanded for half a day to get that done.
Yep, those are just epoxy shavings. No wood at all. I’d say we removed 90% of what he applied. At some point, I switched off this job and went below to install the supports for the halyard winches. These guys are mounted on the sides of these twin posts. The main, jib, and spinnaker halyards are led down through the center of the mast, and come out near the base. This gets rid of some of the deck clutter from these lines.
In progress. They’ll have blocking between them to stiffen them up. You can see that the sole is starting to be installed as well. This is in the forward cockpit, or the pit, where the grinders will work. Here’s the aft cockpit where the boat steerer will sit.
Yesterday we were finally ready to seal the deck with primer paint treated with an anti-mildew agent.
Looks nice. There are a few unfair spots left, but they’re quite minor and only visible to people who’ve obsessed over the deck. Soon we’ll get some canvas on this puppy.