I continued the varnish work on the new window trim with a quick sanding and third coat.
During the remainder of the day, I finished up the masking for the brightwork maintenance on deck, this time focused on the interior of the poop deck, cockpit, and coachroof, along with above the port eyebrow trim.
I lightly sanded the new epoxy filling the old deadlight screw holes to flatten it and remove any hard spots.
While I had the trim down, and since I’d already drilled small pilot holes at each screw location, I took a moment to drill 3/8″ diameter recesses to accept bungs later. I did this on the drill press to ensure accuracy and consistent depth.
Now I test-fit the trim again. I would have liked to drill and tap for some of the screws to help me hold it, but the fresh epoxy would hold threads better if I gave it come cure time, so for now I relied on clamps. I arranged the trim so it fit in all the corners, and clamped it in place. But checking the reveal inside, I noticed that the lower forward corner was too low, the result of the bottom trim piece being slightly too long. This wasn’t a surprise, since I’d suspected all along that the broken-and-repaired old trim that I’d used as a pattern had “grown” a bit in the process, making it slightly longer than original and therefore skewing the forward joint.
I needed to adjust the joint between the forward end of this lower piece and the forward vertical piece, so from outside I adjusted the lower trim till it was at the correct height, then overlapped the two pieces to make some reference marks for a cut. I started by taking a small amount off each piece of trim, as both required minor shortening, then, on a last test fit, marked the upper trim with a final cut line where the bottom overlapped it. I cut the upper piece because I didn’t want to take more off the lower piece, which might bring the fastener location too close to the edge; there was more room for a cut on the other piece. The line in question in the photos below is marked with two V-shaped pencil marks, or what looks like a W.
After this final cut, the pieces all fit correctly in the corners and with proper reveal all around. To help mark and later recreate the alignment, I used masking tape along the straight outer edges of all the trim, which would make future placement straightforward.
With all the trims fit correctly, and knowing that the outer curves aligned when in place, I removed the trim pieces to the bench where I could clean up the insides of the corner joints as needed and round over the exposed edges, then finally sand the trim clean and smooth. Then, I applied a sealer coat of varnish; since sealer coats largely soak into the wood and dry quickly thanks to the large amount of solvent in the mix, I hoped to do a second coat later in the day.
With the work on the deadlight done for now, I turned back to the rest of the brightwork on deck, mainly the interior cockpit coamings, handrails, and some other trim that was not reachable from the staging, and finished up the sanding to prepare for brightwork maintenance. Then, I vacuumed the deck and trim, and solvent-washed everything to prepare for masking.
I spent the remainder of the day masking off everything I could reach from the staging: toerail and rubrail; taffrail; outer cockpit coamings; windows and ports; and the edge of the cabin trunk above the eyebrow.
I got to work on building new trim pieces for the starboard deadlight. I found a teak board of appropriate size to work from, and laid out the original trims to ensure there was plenty of room to duplicate. Then, I resawed the board into a blank about 3/8″ thick before planing it down to a final thickness of 5/16″, which was a bit heavier than the existing trim to better allow for bungs over the screw heads, but not so thick as to stand out from the older trim on the boat.
I traced the old trim pieces on the new board, and cut out the replacement pieces, leaving the line so I could ease them down to final contours as needed. Then, with each corner aligned and clamped over the end of the bench for access, I shaped the four corners so the pieces would mate correctly, then lightly sanded down to the cutlines along the inside edges.
Using the old trim as a guide, I marked all the screw locations and drilled 1/8″ pilot holes through the new stock, which then allowed me to set up the trim in place on the cabin side with small nails through the holes for alignment, and some clamps holding the trim securely.
While the test-fit was generally a success, it soon became challenging when I attempted to match up the screw holes using the #8 machine screws that would be needed in the final installation. I started with one piece of trim (the bottom trim) and enlarged the pilot holes slightly with a bit large enough to allow the machine screws to go through, and tried to get all the fasteners installed as a test. But several of the holes weren’t lining up conveniently and I soon fell back on an idea I’d had earlier, and which I should have just done from the getgo, which was to slightly drill out and fill all the existing holes with a structural epoxy mixture.
I used a 1/4″ bit to enlarge the #8 holes–I would have liked something larger, but the holes were close enough to the edge of the opening that a larger bit would have caused problems there. I filled the holes using a syringe, and covered each hole with some tape to hold the epoxy in since it was a looser mix than I might have used because of the requirement to get it into a syringe. Once cured, the filled holes would allow me to simply drill and tap new holes for the fasteners, without the headache of trying to match existing holes to the same extent.
To help protect a few key contact points when nesting the forward hull inside the aft hull, the kit included four leather pads, which needed to be installed in specific locations. I prepared the four locations as directed, and masked off around them to protect adjacent areas while gluing in the leather. There was one patch on the inwale, at the centerline notch; one on the bottom of the dinghy roughly a foot forward of the transom; and one on each side at the forward end of the gunwales, where the bulkhead gussets were. To gain the best access to the two patches at the aft end, I stood the hull on its transom next to the bench. This also allowed working on the two patches near the upper end of the gunwales.
Once I’d masked off the perimeter of the patches, I sanded off the glossy paint and nonskid as needed, and cleaned the surface.
The leather was all cut to size and scored with alignment marks on their centerlines to help with positioning. To install them, I applied two coats of contact cement (the real stuff) to all the bonding areas and the back side of the leather patches, letting each coat dry in the usual way. Then I installed the leather in its designated areas, which frankly went more smoothly than I’d been expecting. I used a small roller to press the leather down securely in all areas.
To finish off the aft seat, I secured the other end of the bungee cord to the newly-installed padeye on the deck, and cut off the excess. I left the cord tight, to hold the seat in place, but with enough slack to enable one to lift the seat and store it alongside the starboard aft tank, wedged between the padeye and support cleat, where the seat could be placed when nesting the two dinghy halves.
Now that the risers on each end of the daggerboard trunk were cured, I drilled the mounting holes for the turn dogs, and installed the latches the same way as with the forward hatch, with some epoxy in the screw hole to secure the screw, and the screw tensioned just enough that the turn dog could still move. This pair of latches included slim plastic washers beneath, for clearance, and the after washer included an extra tab with a hole to which I could secure the lanyard from the cover. The forward latch doubled as a hold-down for the pin that I’d installed in the leading edge of the daggerboard earlier; the daggerboard still needed a short loop of line to secure to the hole in the top of the board and provide a grip for installing and removing the board.
Next in the rapidly-dwindling list of remaining tasks was the watertight gaskets required for the forward hatch, daggerboard lid, and the forward hull bulkhead. These gaskets were made from 1/4″ surgical tubing and the book recommended thick-style cyanoacrylate glue (super glue) as the best method for securing them in their respective grooves.
I started with the forward hatch gasket, and dry-fit the tubing to determine its final length; afterwards, I butt-glued the two ends together in a simple corner jig made from a block of wood clamped to the bench, with plastic tape against both surfaces; this allowed me to easily hold the two ends together and in alignment when gluing, and thus creating a one-piece gasket for both the forward hatch and, later, the daggerboard. This worked well. Then, I taped the gasket in place in its grove to hold it and allow me to incrementally glue it in place by lifting one section at a time around the opening.
Gluing was straightforward and effective in this way. Several inches at a time, I’d lift the gasket, apply a small bead of the glue, reinstall the gasket, then dog down the hatch lid over the whole thing to hold it in place briefly while the glue cured. In practice, the curing happened quickly, and soon the gasket was in place and complete.
I worked on the small daggerboard lid concurrently, alternating gluing operations with the hatch, and before long both these gaskets were complete. The book made it sound like it would be more challenging than it turned out to be.
Next, I propped the hull up on its stem so I could access the gasket notch in the bulkhead with it held horizontal for weighting purposes. (In reality, at least with the glue I used, I probably could have easily glued this gasket with the hull in its normal orientation.) I used a scrap of plywood and a lead weight over each section to hold it while gluing, and had bits of tape ready if needed, but I never needed the tape, and the gluing process went quickly.
To help prevent the gaskets from sticking to their mating surfaces during longer periods of assembly, the book suggested a light coat of paste wax on the opposite surface–not on the gasket. So I applied some paste wax to the underside of the hatch lip, the deck around the daggerboard, and on the aft hull bulkhead opposite the gasket. This treatment is suggested periodically to ensure the gaskets avoid the tendency to stick.
Now I could move on to the final task remaining in this build: installing the rubrail. From the start, I’d not looked forward to this, and again the book seemed to suggest it would be profoundly difficult. (The book does this a lot, actually.) To begin, I prepared the outside faces of the gunwales on both halves of the boat with a thorough sanding to remove the bulk of the paint (hindsight note for another time: it would have been simpler not to paint the gunwale faces). I sanded enough to ensure a good bond with the glue required on the rubrail, but not so much as to worry about sanding through the fiberglass on the gunwales.
The vinyl rubrail came in three pieces: two shorter pieces for the aft hull, and one longer piece for the bow–here it would wrap around the stem and do both sides in one section. I nailed these to my bench with the mating surfaces facing up; this held the strips taut so that I could sand the back sides with coarse sandpaper (and also so that later they’d be secure for applying the glue).
Next, I masked both sides of the gunwale–the top and bottom–and also some 4″ strips (1″ tall to match the rubrail) onto the transom face, as the gunwale would wrap onto the transom. I sanded the transom areas, as well as the rounded part of the stem, once I’d done the masking.
The rubrail was to be installed with hypalon glue, and now I mixed the glue according to its instructions, then coated all the gunwales and rubrail pieces with one coat. After 30 minutes, the first coat was ready for next steps, and, one section at a time, I applied a second coat of glue to boat and rubrail, then installed the rubrail. This was a contact-type adhesive, so it stuck upon, well, contact. I was pleasantly surprised by how not-bad the whole installation was, as the instructions certainly were thorough in pointing out the potential difficulties and pitfalls. But in fact it went smoothly and quickly, once the prep was done; the sanding of the gunwales had taken the bulk of the time needed for this particular installation.
At the transom, I cut an angle into the rail where it ended at my tape marks, and cut the ends at the mating bulkheads nearly square, with the slightest angle away from the joint.
I propped the hulls closely together (but not connected) for the final photos. The book suggested masking over rubrail at the curve at the stem to hold it against a possible propensity to sag down while the glue started to fully cure overnight; I’d seen no suggestion it might do this in practice, but why take the chance, so I masked this area for security.
With that, the dinghy construction was complete: nothing remained on the to-do list or in the manuals.
To wrap up the project, I had a couple final videos still in the works that I planned to post soon, and will have some parting thoughts about the kit in due course as well.
Checking the boat first thing in the morning to see how the sealant was curing and whether I could remove the braces, I was mightily disturbed to discover a pair of cracks in the center of the glass. These cracks had appeared on their own sometime overnight, and I was baffled by it. Since the lens and trim installation had gone so well overall, and the end result yesterday had so obviously not included any glass cracking, this was not really the start of the day I’d been hoping for.
All I could think was that there must have been some pre-existing flaw in the edge of the glass that, at some point after installation, had caused the cracks to grow. This was laminated glass, and anyone with a windshield in their car has probably seen a tiny chip grow into an inspection-failing crack in mere seconds some winter’s morning when the defroster was on, or any other circumstance. Perhaps this is what happened here; I truly did not know.
And frankly, it didn’t really matter right now. I allowed myself a few moments of self-pity.
What mattered was that I’d have to start over and remove everything I’d just installed so I could get the glass replaced. I had the small benefit of the knowledge that the sealant had had little time to cure, and therefore removal right now would be about as easy as it could possibly be, so I got right to it. To begin, I removed the bracing from inside and installed the two short pieces of interior trim, at the vertical ends, to give something for the window to lean against if it wanted to move during trim removal outside. I needed the glass still intact so it could be a pattern for the new lens.
Here’s a few more photos of the cracks for posterity, and with a clearer view with the bracing removed.
Next, I removed all the screws from the exterior trim, then removed the trim carefully. While the sealant might not have been fully cured, it was still plenty stuck, and it was a challenge to remove the poor old trim pieces without damage. The bottom piece of trim, which had had some damage previously (and been repaired after the last removal) did not survive this second removal in as many weeks, unfortunately, but I was hardly surprised given its condition anyway. Now I planned to make new trim pieces for the replacement installation.
With the trim off and the glass out, I scraped away the bulk of the remaining sealant, and sanded and solvent-washed the area clean again. Any final remnants of “old” sealant could be removed a little later, but I got it 95% of the way there. Then, I left to take the old glass to a glass shop where I could get it replaced.
Preparing to install and rebed the deadlight, I started by masking down a sheet of plastic to cover the deck and environs for protection during the work. Then, I installed the interior trim to give the deadlight frame the bearing surface needed for installation.
Working from outside, I masked the inside edges of the glass lens, then set it in the opening to check the fit and trim the tape along the edge of the trim on the inside.
To help hold the glass in place during bedding and installation, I rigged up some blocking to push the glass tightly into the frame from outside.
But throughout this, it didn’t look right. Because of the way I’d ultimately disassembled and removed the deadlight, I’d assumed that reinstallation and bedding would occur in roughly reverse order, and from the outside of the boat, since the interior trim featured a lip that extended into the opening behind the glass. But on the outside, this left a wide 1/4″ or greater space between the lens face and the cabin side, and since the exterior trim was flat, this meant that the trim would never bear against the lens and make sealing difficult.
There was just no way the installation was going to work this way, and after looking over the remaining three deadlights, it seemed clear that what I had to do was basically the opposite of what I’d started: I’d need to install the exterior trim first, then bed and install the window from the inside, creating a tight seal where it mattered at the outer edges of the deadlight. The excess thickness and space could be better managed from the inside, and better matched the existing installations.
So now I dismantled my setup, and removed the trim from the inside of the opening. Working from outside, I dry-fit the exterior trim, using at least two screws in each piece driven in all the way to hold it for now, but also partially inserting every other screw to ensure that they all fit correctly and would thread in as needed. I had to clean out a couple of the screw holes with a tap.
I masked over the edges of the outside face of the lens, then, from inside, placed it in the opening, holding it with some tape and then some braces extending across the cabin to apply light pressure. Then, from outside, I ran a knife around the edge of the trim to score the tape so I could remove the section beneath the trim later.
Satisfied with the clamping setup and the overall arrangement, I removed the braces and glass, trimmed the masking tape, and then, from outside, removed the trim to prepare for bedding and final installation. Then, one piece at a time, I applied heavy beads of sealant and fastened the trim down securely all the way around, ensuring good sealant squeeze-out in all areas. I cleaned up the excess sealant around the outside of the trim. I used Sikaflex 295UV sealant.
Inside the boat, I applied more heavy beads of sealant to the inside face of the trim and around the opening, then pressed the glass into place, applying hand pressure till I felt that it had evenly pressed into the sealant all around. I installed some masking tape to hold it, then the braces running across the cabin.
Outside, the squeezeout was excellent all the way around the glass.
To finish up for now, I cleaned up the excess sealant from the glass and pulled the exterior masking tape. I’d leave the interior bracing in place for as long as needed to ensure the sealant cured sufficiently.
In other works, I reinstalled the forward hatch to check the fit of the new seal and to determine if the clamping block needed adjustment. The seal seemed to work well, but when I attempted to engage the hold-down clamp, the screws pulled out of the top of the hatch, apparently unwilling to properly dig into the holes that had worked once, during initial installation, but would not grip the screws again–but not before I determined that the hatch had seemed to pull down correctly with the pressure, as the replacement gasket was a bit taller than the old one. So I planned to glue the block in place to hold it, and make no modifications to the height. This would happen next time.
The owner was interested in exploring the possibility of a manual windlass, and I spent a little time making a rough, but accurate-enough, paper template of one likely candidate, the Lofrans Royal, to show the overall footprint. Space on the foredeck was limited, and part of the exercise was to determine how well such an installation would fit. Given the requirement for the chain lead straight out of the chain gypsy on the starboard side of the “windlass”–the center of that rectangular protrusion there–and the need for a roller at the stem in line with that, placement options were limited to centerline, somewhere aft of the mooring cleat roughly as shown. Most rollers are about 3″ wide, depending on anchor type (some are narrower), and such a roller would fit between the center of the stem and the bow chock, but not with much clearance on either side, and such an installation would likely impact the utility of the bow chock on whichever side the roller was mounted. At this stage, I’d not yet determined specifically what sort of roller would be needed here.
Inside the boat, the chain locker, as it were, extended aft to a spot approximately in line with the aft pulpit bases, so in the configuration shown here the windlass chain pipe would be aft of the chain locker.
In short: a windlass installation would be possible, but with numerous complications and likely need to reconfigure certain things while making some tighter access to existing installations on the foredeck, and provide a means for the rode to enter the chainlocker cleanly, assuming a chain rode leading off the gypsy. In addition, the gypsy on this particular windlass was chain only and wouldn’t work with rope rode, though the winch drum on the opposite side would. But that seemed like it would be cumbersome to say the least. Some windlasses have gypsies that work with combination chain/rope, though the chain needs to be spliced to the rope in a specific way for a clean transition.
With only final details remaining in the build, I attacked the list of remaining projects, hoping to complete most of the list.
A few days earlier, I removed the dry-fit alignment clips, reversed their positions so the correct clip was on each side–with the angled sides facing outboard and generally inline with the angled bulkhead above–and permanently installed them with sealant at the screw locations.
Now, I started with a cove stripe, which I chose in an accent color (light gray) to coordinate with the boottop color of the owner’s sailboat. Installation didn’t take long, and it added subtly to the appearance of the boat.
Next, I permanently installed the rudder gudgeons. I’d previously laid out and dry-fit this hardware, so now it was a matter of installing the pieces again with sealant to finish the rudder installation. I forgot to take photos of the rudder in place, but did take video that will be available sometime later.
Next, I installed the rowlocks.
I’d planned to leave the boat assembled so I could install the rubrail, but discovered that the rubrail was designed to be installed in separate pieces, so with that I separated the boat to make access to the foredeck a little easier, and because there was no reason to leave it assembled for now. Separation seemed a bit more challenging than I’d expected, but I discovered that some sealant had seeped out on one side when I installed the alignment clips earlier, and this had glued the halves together somewhat. You can’t get good help anymore.
The aft seat required several additional steps, and with epoxy involved, it meant I couldn’t call the installation complete just yet–something that would become a theme of the remainder of the day. The installations on this boat frequently require steps that can only happen on multiple days. For the seat, I started with a pair of fiberglass pins in the forward ends of the support cleats, just forward of the forward corners of the seat. These pins would hold the seat in position.
The other part of the aft seat securement was a carbon fiber eye strap, which I had to mount with epoxy to the hull a bit off center to one side (on the lowermost chine). This eye strap would eventually hold one end of a bungee cord that would secure the seat in place, but allow easy removal for when the boat was nested. I masked around the faying surfaces, cutting the tape as needed, then lightly prepared the tiny bonding areas with sandpaper before epoxying the piece in place.
The daggerboard trunk cover required several steps now too, though I couldn’t finish installation either because of the need to wait for epoxy cure time. At either end of the trunk cover, I installed a small fiberglass riser, which I’d taken aside and painted a few days earlier anticipating the installation now. I painted them black to match the turn dogs that would later be installed on them. These risers also got installed in epoxy.
The cover itself needed a lanyard to hold it to the boat, which I installed according to the book by inserting the end of the supplied lanyard into a hole filled with epoxy. Later, the other end of the lanyard would get tied to one of the turn dogs that I was currently working on.
Similarly, the forward hatch received a couple short pieces of line too: one formed into a loop that would function as a handle for removing the flush hatch, with a 3″ piece of small stuff epoxied into a pair of holes on the starboard side of the hatch, and another lanyard on the bottom side, which could later be secured to the mast tube inside the boat.
To secure the forward hatch, I installed several turn dogs around the opening. I’d prepared these holes much earlier in the build–they’re filled with epoxy–and before painting had been insightful enough to mark each location with a small pilot hole. making installation easy now. At each hole, I used a larger bit to drill a pilot hole for the fixing screws, then dry-fit all the turn dogs. Afterwards, I removed the screws and dribbled some epoxy into the holes, then reinstalled the screws tightly, before releasing them just a bit to allow the turn dogs to actually turn. When the epoxy set up, the screws would not move, but the latches would spin on their axes.
There were more installations I’d hoped to address now, including the vinyl rubrail and some leather protective patches for when the dinghy parts were nested, but with the various epoxy installations underway and taking precedence. new work would have to wait will another day, along with the final steps on the various projects I’d started but couldn’t finish now. With luck, one more work day would take care of finishing all the remaining tasks.
First thing, I lightly sanded the window trim, then applied another coat of varnish to all pieces. These trim pieces would be ready for reinstallation after the weekend.
I installed a new gasket on the forward hatch, keeping it continuous at the corners with a small relief cut on the inside edge to allow the bend. The new self-adhesive gasket material was 5/8″ x 3/8″, with a hollow center that allowed for ample compression. I made the seam in the gasket at the center of the aft edge of the hatch.
Next, I cut and installed new gasket material in the opening ports. The new rubber material was 5/16″ in both dimensions, with a slightly rounded top edge, and fit well in the gasket groove. The gasket featured a hollow center to allow for compression, and seemed to offer good resistance and sealing when I closed the port, with gasket material visible from the outside when the port was dogged down.
With the pedestal recoating complete, I removed all the masking, then reassembled the pedestal with the steering wheel and cockpit table to complete the related work.
After an appointment away from the shop, I got back to work on the deadlight opening, removing the clamps and lightly sanding as needed to clean up any excess and cured epoxy. The opening was now ready for reinstallation of trim and lens as soon as the remaining parts were ready.
To that end, I finished up prep work on the last two pieces of deadlight trim, which I’d had to lightly glue to fix some splits, then I applied the first of a couple coats of varnish to all the trim pieces. The interior pieces just needed sprucing up before reinstallation, and I wanted a couple good coats on the exterior trim for protection before I installed the deadlight with sealant.
I removed the forward hatch so I could replace the gasket and work on the minor modification to the hasp setup. Removal was a simple matter of removing the hinge screws from the hatch frame. Once on the bench, I removed the old gasket and adhesive to prepare for the new gasket when it arrived. Then, I removed the block securing the hasp latch so I could trim it slightly as needed to ensure a more positive seal around the hatch.
Now I turned to brightwork preparation. I started with various small parts I’d accumulated on the bench, including the forward hatch, companionway boards, and the tiller. I gave these all a sanding with 220 grit to prepare for maintenance coats of varnish.
I spent the remainder of the day working on the brightwork on deck, sanding the existing coating with 120 grit with a sanding block and by hand to prepare the surface for probably two or three maintenance coats of fresh varnish; I chose this grit because I thought the old coating needed a more aggressive approach to surface preparation given its condition and the overall situation. The wood beneath the old coating had been heavily weathered and neglected when this owner bought the boat, and there remained plenty of grain texture in most of the wood, so the goal of this sanding session was not to correct that which could not be corrected, but only to prepare the relatively old varnish coating well for maintenance coats over the top. Several areas where there were chips or flakes would require a couple early coats of touch-up varnish before getting to the full coats on all areas. I did my best to sand out existing drips in the old coating, but resisted the urge to take such corrections too far as I didn’t want to sand through the old varnish.
By the end of the day, I’d made it around the boat sanding everything I could reach from the staging, including the toerails, outside coamings, and cabin trunk. I left the cabin trunk immediately around the starboard forward deadlight alone for now, as I wanted the old coating to be intact when I reinstalled and bedded the window and trim soon, but once that was done I’d finish up the sanding there.
