Lackey Sailing | Further 27

January 19, 2023

Further 27

Thursday

After final cleaning, I skim-coated the sidedecks on either side of the cockpit, smoothing any minor undulations in the surface, filling minor voids, and wetting out the surfaces. Once that was done, I began wetting out and installing the initial two layers of material for each side. These layers extended over the inboard edges of the coamings by a few inches, and also up the inside edge of the short toerail section where the original winch islands had once been. I let the top edge of the fiberglass run a little wild at the toerail, giving it plenty of room to stick well to the edges of the existing fiberglass.

While those layers set up for a while, I cut the remaining two full-size layers for both sides.

The first laminations brought the field (cored) areas generally even with the adjacent deck edges, as intended, but there were a few variations. With the initial layers cured to the tack stage, I applied a thickened epoxy mixture here and there as needed to ease some of the minor transitions between layers and edges around each side of the cockpit.

Once that had cured a bit over lunch break, I wet out and installed the two top layers of 1708 on both sides.

With the day’s main goal complete, I had enough time left before the end of the day to sand the most recent application of fairing compound on the sidedecks and foredeck.