May 2, 2019

Scupper 138

Thursday

There wasn’t much I could do in the boat while I let the fresh cabin sole cure, but I’d planned this around a short shop day in any event.  After inspecting the last coat of varnish and deeming it satisfactory, I removed the masking tape while perched on the settees or in the bilge in the main cabin, thus avoiding stepping on the fresh varnish anywhere.

Back on the shop floor, I sanded, cleaned, and varnished anew the drawer fronts, engine room door trim, and galley cabin sole piece.

In the aft part of the boat, I solvent-washed the remaining parts of the lockers port and starboard to prepare them for paint.  Later, I applied paint in these lockers, working from the transom forward to cover the remaining area.

There was no way to get all the surfaces while I was in the lockers–I had to leave enough room to maneuver and turn around and get out of the spaces without getting into the fresh paint, so I did what I could from within, then taped my brush to a long pole and finished up the rest, as the lockers were much too deep for me to otherwise reach from the cockpit.  On the starboard side, I left the new generator platform uncoated for now in order to give the fresh epoxy there some additional cure time before I tried to overcoat it; I’d either prep it with 2-part epoxy primer later and press on, or wait a couple weeks for the epoxy to fully cure before proceeding.  In any event, it was nice to get these spaces mostly painted out.

The new door for the chainlocker, and the one for the cooler storage area in the galley, were designed to actually rest upon the lower surfaces in each location, and thus wouldn’t take well to traditional hinging.  So for these two doors, I installed a pair of stainless steel dowels in the bottom rail, which would later fit into corresponding holes at each location to hold the doors in place while allowing easy removal for access to these spaces when necessary.  To aid the friction fit of the dowels in the door frame, I roughed up the metal surface a little and applied some thickened epoxy to help hold the dowels permanently.

I had hoped to assemble permanently the companionway ladder, but, running out of time, I decided to hold off rather than rushing through.  I settled for dry-fitting the plywood back panel in place to confirm its fit and prepare for final assembly another time.  I was quite looking forward to having the permanent ladder back in place so I could pass between the main cabin and head/engine room without removing my awkward construction ladder;  there’s a reason doors with hinges caught on long ago.

Total time billed on this job today:   3 hours

0600 Weather Observation:  40°, light rain.  Forecast for the day:  Clouds and rain, 46°