Lackey Sailing | Calliope Girl 80

March 8, 2024

Calliope Girl 80

Friday

First thing, I finished the modifications to the teak cockpit seat lid. It took one more round of test-fitting and a final modification before the seat fit properly and I could reinstall it. I’d finish up the installation of the new cockpit locker and propane locker hatches soon.

Next: on to some sanding, first the primer coat on the new battery enclosure.

Then, I lightly sanded the tabbing securing the water tank bulkhead, just to remove hard edges, and afterwards I test-fit the tank and marked each end where the 4″ flat I’d designed into the top of the tank landed on the bulkhead and on the hull. This was where I needed to build a support platform. I also marked the ends of the tank so I could properly position forward and aft support bulkheads.

With the tank tipped out of the way once more, I cut a support cleat and installed it between the forward and after reference lines, then went through my normal template process to eventually come up with a scribed plywood platform to fit the space. I secured this to the cleat with screws, then test-fit the tank again to ensure it landed properly on the platform, and to make some additional reference measurements for the small bulkheads at the ends.

I templated and eventually cut and fit the final 12mm plywood bulkheads at each end of the tank space (leaving a bit of extra room at the forward end that I could fill with a spacer later). Then, after final preparations, I tacked these bulkheads in place above the base platform with hot glue to hold them securely, and installed epoxy fillets along all the inside edges and corners of the space, including to bond the platform to the hull and inboard bulkhead.

While I let the fillets tack up a bit, I prepared two layers of tabbing for all of the seams and, when the time was right, wet them out with epoxy and installed them all around. This tray would provide a strong and sturdy base to support and secure the tank. Later, I planned to also tab the exterior portions of the two transverse bulkheads, but at the moment the tank’s awkward position made working at the forward end unnecessarily difficult, so I held of on the additional tabbing for another time, once the tank was in place in the cradle.