After spending yesterday and all morning today finishing up another job in the shop, which had distracted my attention during the past week or so, I looked forward to getting back to concentrating fully on Kaholee.

This afternoon, I began by sanding the epoxy patches on the cabin trunk, which completed the bulk deck fairing (not including the cockpit).  Next, I returned to the inside of the boat, and sanded most of the surfaces with a finer paper than I had used to remove the paint previously, all as part of the interior paint prep process.  With generally uneven and rough-finished surfaces inside, I didn't need to take the sanding prep too far, but nonetheless I hoped to make the ultimate finish as nice as it could be given the limitations of the unlined interior of the deck.

I finished up the day by preparing some of the larger filled holes in the deck for some fiberglass reinforcement:  the two large holes in the coachroof that had previously held mushroom vents; the hole from the old cowl vent on the foredeck; and the old waste and water deck fill openings, one on each sidedeck.  These larger openings all required more than simply filling with epoxy; they required fiberglass reinforcement to tie both sides in with the deck structure.  To that end, I similarly ground out the underside of each of these openings as well, so that the repair would effectively recreate the original sandwich construction--albeit with an epoxy core.

I ground out the center portions of each filled opening, and tapered the sanding outwards to achieve roughly the desired 12:1 taper ratio for tying in new material.  Since the holes were circular, I ground out a circular pattern for eventual circles of fiberglass material that I'd lay up in the openings.  This took me right up to quitting time, though since I had more of this sort of prep work to do in the cockpit tomorrow, I didn't bother cleaning up the mess left from today's efforts.

Total Time on This Job Today:  2.25 hours

<Previous | Next>