April 21, 2022

Holby 16

Thursday

Beginning, I patterned and cut five layers of fiberglass to fit within the now-molded opening in the bottom of the boat, plus three additional layers sized to extend up and onto the adjacent hull on each side.  I followed this with final preparations to the space as needed.

I installed the five layers of cloth inside the opening (the one on top says “4”, but that’s only because I stacked the final two in the wrong order), filling much of the void.  I left these to partially cure for a while.

When the initial layers had gelled sufficiently, I dressed up the edges with substantial epoxy fillets to ease the path for the larger, overlapping layers to come.  I also filled minor voids along the edges of the existing hull where I’d previously chipped out some old bondo-type filler.  I left the new epoxy to partially cure over lunchtime.

With the epoxy cured enough to continue, I finished up the day’s fiberglass work with three overlapping and staggered layers over the patch and out onto the hull.  There’d eventually be additional glasswork at the forward end of the patch, which I might have liked to do now, but alas, there was a hard corner on the tiny bulkhead that I’d not thought to ease beforehand, so the tabbing would have to wait till today’s fiberglass had cured.  The after end would also receive more fiberglass when I fiberglassed over the inside of the transom, all of which would  be heavily tied into all adjacent surfaces.  But that was an operation for another time as well, and, much as I wanted to do more at the moment, there was simply nothing more I could practically do.

Total time billed on this job today: 4 hours

0600 Weather Observation: 0600 Weather Observation: 28°, clear. Forecast for the day: Sunny, increasing clouds, 50°