February 11, 2021

Lyra 16

Thursday

Back to work in the cockpit, once more, for another round of sanding.  Now I’d reached the point where I was only using a finer grit of sandpaper on the patches as things inched towards completion for this stage.  The two largest repairs–to the icebox hatch and the lazarette opening–would require some additional work to take care of remaining low spots, but most of the rest of the cockpit was in pretty good shape, other than some fine-tuning.

After cleanup, I applied additional fairing compound to the two larger patches, then focused mainly on forming new fillets at the edges of the cockpit sole to create smooth curves where the cockpit well met the sole, and at the corners, particularly the forward corners at the scuppers.  Finger-sanding loomed ahead.

The transducer housing required one more light sanding, by machine and then by hand, after which I called this complete and ready for transducer installation (later in the project once the bilges and interior had progressed somewhat) and paint.

With the approaching end of the substantial cockpit structural repair work and surface prep, I looked forward to getting going on the interior paint, which would be the next focus after an intensive cleaning session.  Most of the remaining jobs on the work list for now required that the cabin, lockers, and bilges be painted first.

For now, I wrapped up the day’s work with another light sanding and third coat of varnish on the forward hatch, and spent the afternoon working on another ongoing project at the shop.

Total time billed on this job today:  4 hours

0600 Weather Observation:  9°, partly clear.   Forecast for the day:   Becoming mostly sunny, 24°.