October 25, 2019

Scupper 167

Friday

I began with a light sanding for the winch islands, which prepared them for the next steps.

The initial layer of fairing compound left sundry voids in the surface, and to fill and smooth these and provide the best substrate for the fiberglass cloth, I applied  a skim coat of silica-thickened epoxy over the surface, which I left for just a little while to begin to cure before proceeding.

I wet out and applied a layer of biaxial fiberglass over the outer edge of the rebuild islands, less as a structural matter than as a means of ensuring better final cosmetics immediately and in years to come, though the fiberglass did tie together the original base with the new extension.

Leaving the new fiberglass to cure to a green state during the rest of the day, I continued picking away at the final deck preparation tasks, starting with some basic cleanup in the cockpit area and nearby.  During interior construction, I’d covered the cockpit areas with some paper to protect the areas I was constantly trodding upon as I climbed in and out of the boat 37 times a day, but now this paper and masking tape had to go, and even with it, there were inevitably little drips of varnish, or epoxy, or what have you here and there that I cleaned up with sandpaper as needed, leaving behind a clean surface ready for the final-final cleanup that would occur as soon as I completed construction work on the winch islands.  I also sanded smooth some filler that I’d apparently applied in one of the cockpit locker gutters long before, but had forgotten about.

By early afternoon, the new fiberglass had cured sufficiently that I could, with care and using a plastic squeegee to avoid snagging the cloth with a firm metal edge, apply a layer of fairing compound over the new cloth, to start filling the weave and to clean up the boundaries of the cloth top and bottom and at the forward and after corners of the winch islands.

Striving to make progress elsewhere while the islands kept me at a staid pace on the deck work, I removed the hardware from the original bow platform, much of which hardware would be reused when I built a new platform sometime in the relatively foreseeable future.

The new propeller shaft, which I’d ordered a little while ago using measurements I’d made at the end of the last phase of work, arrived now, and as always I was relieved to find that it matched my notes and required measurements:  that is, that the overall length of the shaft itself was 31-3/4″, otherwise known as 2″ longer than my prototype fiberglass tube that I’d used to make the original measurements.

Total time billed on this job today:  5.75 hours

0600 Weather Observation:  40°, cloudy. Forecast for the day:  Partly sunny, 57°