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the build II

The boat was flipped back upright and the decks were added and glassed. The overlap in the photo was trimmed with a cutter knife. I should mention that I am 186 cm so I extended the cabin otherwise sleeping would definitely be uncomfortable. The designed bulkhead became a combined deck arch/knee. A new bulkhead was added further forward with a white inspection port on the deck.

 

I cut the hatch openings, did the internal fillets, added the opening supports and painted the inside of the cabin while the the boat was on ground level. The cockpit was completed as per instructions. The twelve inch gap was maintained for the sliding seat gear that would be fitted after painting.


Then the sanding and sanding and sanding. The sanding is actually quite rewarding. Some of the mistakes that I made were carefully sanded so there was no "feel" that anything was wrong or different. Paint would soon follow and then there would then be no visual clues.


The painting was very satisfying for a while and then turned ugly. A native Australian stingless bee decided that it liked the taste of the paint and so I had about a hundred or so of these little critters walking over the boat, leaving footprints in the paint. They kind of looked cute flying around the boat with little white socks on but the paint job was being damaged. The solution was to paint a section at a time with a mosquito net over that section.