Exposing the ballast pig

Looking forward

Ballast pig looking aft

Templating floor partitions

Making floor partition templates

Aft Hanging Locker bulkhead

The hanging locker bulkhead tacked into place

Aft Head bulkhead

The aft head bulkhead went together very easily. It was trimmed to fit, several coats of Minwax Wipe-on poly was applied and it was tacked into place and then filleted and glassed with three layers of biaxial glass.

V-berth; installing the bunk platform & hull ribs

The platform was built in three panels. Each panel is approximately two feet wide and spanned the width of the hull. They are screwed to the partitions and have epoxy fillets and a layer of biaxial glass tying them to the hull. The forward compartment is accessed through a small rectangular hatch. The middle compartment has three six inch round access hatches; the outboard ones to access storage compartments, the center one to access the water tank clean-out port.
The aft panel has an access hatch to port and a hanging locker to starboard.

The hull ribs were constructed of two to four, quarter inch layers laminated together with epoxy. Two layers of 1/4" "wiggle wood"; a very flexible plywood that bends into a tight radius without a lot of tension. It is sold in 4x8 sheets of various thicknesses and I've heard it referred to as flex-ply, wiggle-wood, and rubber-ply, depending on whom I was purchasing it from. I purchased the last sheet at Windsor Plywood and asked the salesman what the trade name was. He shrugged and replied "we just call it wiggle wood,...and if you try carrying a 4x8 sheet of it you'll know why!"

V-berth; installing the water tank

The aft partition was made of 1/2" plywood and was glassed into place using two layers of biaxial cloth.
We ordered a 30 gallon water tank to fit the space under the forward berth. Once the tank arrived and we made sure it would fit, we glassed in the forward partition. The tank was placed in the space and two part expanding foam was poured underneath the tank. We did the pour in two stages; during the first stage the boat was a little cooler than the recommended temperatures for the product and it did not expand as much as we expected. During the second pour the vessel was warmer than the recommended temperature and boy did the foam expand!
The stuff is very temperature sensitive to work with. Once it cured we used a large serrated bread knife to trim it; the large serrated blade goes through the foam very easily. The foam was shaped using a 4" grinder with a Zirconia flap sanding disk in it. After a few minutes the grinder quit working and I switched to my spare; I'm used to burning up grinders as the fiberglass dust is very hard on them and always have two on hand. After a few minutes the spare quit working. I think the foam dust was melting on the armature and fouling the brushes,......I'll have to disassemble them when we have time and see what happened. I switched to an air powered die grinder with a 2" sanding disk and finished shaping the foam. The foam was then resin coated with west system epoxy. Once the epoxy cured it was sanded and painted with Pettit Dura White paint. They claim mold and mildew will not grow on the painted surface so we are using the product throughout the cabin and lockers. The forward partition has three 4" holes in it; two that allow ventilation to the compartments outboard of the water tank and one in the center to access the tank vent fitting. The aft partition has two 4" ventilation holes outboard of the water tank that will have covers that can be screwed into place if desired. It also has two holes in the center to facilitate the tank filler and supply line fittings.

Welcome Aboard new crew member; Jesse

Jesse, one of our favorite barista's at our local Starbucks expressed interest in the project and coming along on a passage as crew. We invited him to come by and look the boat over and discuss it further. He came over a few nights ago and we talked about the boat and voyages (past and present), we got out the old charts and photo albums and chatted till after 11pm. After seeing the boat and reviewing the data he was still interested in helping with the project and crewing offshore. He is bright and cheerful and a welcome addition to the crew.

WELCOME ABOARD JESSE!

Last night he came over and started in on the project. He assembled our new router table and helped template the forward V-berth partition.