Cabin beams

Adding support beams and other framing for hatches to cabin roof now.

More coaming work

Inner coaming fitted back on the boat, top ply added to coaming, yet to be shaped and rounded off.

Cover close up

Here you can see the shape of the small plywood hooks I made to hold the covers at their top edges

Rear of covers

The covers have a simple plywood hook to hold them in place on the top edge, the bottom edges just have two small blocks to hold the covers at the right height so the outside margins around the covers stay even.

Face of coaming

The hatch covers sit nicely in the openings

Routing the frames

I then deepened the frame a little with a small router to allow room for epoxy, paint and stick on rubber sealing on the frames.

Rear of coaming panel

This is what the support frames look like from the rear

Gluing opening support frames

I cut plywood support frames and glued them to the rear of the panel while it was fixed to the boat so they would take up some of the curve in this area.

Cutting out storage hatch lids

The inside face of the stbd cockpit coaming.

The space behind the coaming makes them ideal for storage of items often needed from the cockpit, like spare rope, flares, horn, fishing gear etc.

Finaly skinned up the Stbd side

During the Christmas break 2007

My son Jarrod and I got stuck into the boat again.

The day we did this it was 40 degrees C, man it was hot, had to work double time to beat the epoxy going off.

Rear of pump housing and valve manifold

I made up a manifold out of PVC irrigation fittings, it is basically just three 25mm ball valves and an assortment of elbows and sleaves. The hose is probably overkill but it was going cheap and will outlast the boat, it's heavy duty rubber with wire reinforcing suction hose used to pump out waste pits and is acid and fuel proof.

Front view of pump and valves in cockpit

The handpump is a top quality English made unit that can deliver a sustained 50 litres a minute and is self priming.

The handle will sit in a clip just under the seat lip out of the way when not in use. The two small holes under the pump are drain holes at the base of the closed in bulkhead pump housing. The Left valve is the Port ballast tank, Centre is the Bilge and Right is the Starboard ballast tank. The three plugged and patched holes under the valves was a mistake :-) I changed my mind and moved the whole lot up a little higher.

Starboard cabin bunk top

Storage space has been sacraficed a little due to the water ballast tanks, so I have tried to make the most of whats available. The larger lid is for general storage and the smaller one is for the battery compartment access.

Battery Compartment

Still need to fit restraining straps to the batteries. The batteries are 12V 17.5 Amp sealed lead acid motor bike units, I am going to wire them in parallel to give me 12V x 35 Amps which should be plenty if used carefully.

In time I will mount a solar panel on the cabin roof to charge the batteries.

Port quarter berth

The two access holes are for airing the compartments out and access to the rear of the ballast tank hardware.

Rear Deck dry fit

Ply is Gaboon (lovely stuff) and the trim is Doug fir or known here as old growth Oregon, gotta love those curves!

Cockpit seat opening

Only two lids in the cockpit to keep things simple.

The framework under the lids have channels built in to drain water into the cockpit and out the transom drains.

Home made Bollard

I got a little artistic here and decided to play around with laminating light and dark wood to see how it looked.

The lighter wood is Tassie Oak, the darker wood is Merbou (rare as hens teeth nowadays)

I recon it will fit in with the overall look of Sweet Pea nicely, what do you think?

Water ballast tank hardware

Here is a top down shot of a ballast tank valve, it is a PVC ball valve with a 90 bend through the floor and straight into the tank side (could'nt get any simpler) and glued into place with Marine Sikalex (pricey stuff !!! )

Inside the ballast tanks

Top down view into the tank, the hole on the left is the pump outlet. Tanks are well sealed in epoxy and three undercoat, with 3 top coats of enamel paint. Ya think that will be enough to keep the water in - er - out ?? :-)

Profile

Over Christmas I fitted wheels to the building jig so now I can move the boat around to make better use of space. It was great to see her out of the shed for the first time so I could step back a bit and finaly see her lines from a distance.

Sides going on at last !

Most of the ply is Queensland Hoop Pine, not too bad if you store it flat and keep it dry. The bracing near the bow was to keep the sheet flat in this area, it wanted to bow out with the twist up in this area. I was in agony deciding if I should leave the bow in or not... Decided that the rest of the sheet is flat so why should this area be any different. Lets hope theres no dips and waves when I get those braces off !?!? :-)

Center Case Step

This shot is a little confusing to those not familiar with the boat. It's a downward angled shot of the center case that projects into the cabin space, the step down from the bridge deck is quite large so I decided to make a fancy top cover to the case and have two triangular steps either side of the case. You can see the two support peices either side of the case, they project past the case and will have a pin that goes through them to retain the center board in the fully up position. The plans showed this pin going through the case closer to the water line, I decided to put it here for easier access and to put the pin above the water line, one less hole to worry about with water possibly getting into the cabin area I figured. The angled peices in the photo are just temp braces holding the temp bulkhead #3 in place.

Cockpit Sole (Floor)

It's finaly fitted! Still to be filled and pre-coated yet. I also have the cockpit inboard seat supports in place, they also need fairing at this stage. The ply sheet used for the sole was 9mm Hoop Pine AC variety, it was half the cost of marine ply in the same thickness, and I figured it will be plenty strong enough for the job, I also plan to apply glass cloth to the complete cockpit area anyway. The underside of the sole was sealed with 3 coats of epoxy but not painted. You can see in this shot that the cockpit seat tops will span big gaps so I advise you to use 9mm sheets for them, the inner face of the seats should be ok with 6mm. I will most likely not fit opening lids to the seat tops but rather make removable hatches to the inner face between the transom and bulkhead #7, this will give good access to both spaces aft of the quater berth end panel.

Under the Cockpit

It's taking shape. Here the underside spaces of the cockpit floor are complete. Treatment? One sealer coat of epoxy to all surfaces, filleted all corners and layed 75mm cloth tape to same. Then another two coats of epoxy. Sanded and painted with enamel paint. It might seem like overkill, but this area is inaccesable later so don't take shortcuts here. Oh yeah! it's hard to see in the pic but all bulkheads have scuppers (drain holes) to let water flow to the under cockpit bung in the transom.

Transom (or the blunt end as opposed to the pointy end)

As you can see from this shot, my working space is pretty tight. Moving large materials involves some pretty fancy foot work with the mandatory mutterings and curses. It could be worse, I could be outside trying to battle the elements.

During winter the nights got down to 2-3 degrees C so I had heaters going to keep the shed warm. Otherwise working with epoxy would be out of the question.

Stem & temp bulkhead

Stem is done and the temp bulkhead that holds the cabin area in shape while sheeting the hull.

Bulkhead Two

This bulkhead forms the front of the cabin, the large opening in the top half is for access to the galley flat, the smaller opening at the bottom is to access storage areas fwd.

Note: I decided to fit the bunk rails before fitting this bulkhead so that they could be done full length. The rails run from this bulkhead right through under the quarter berths to the bulkhead at the aft end of the center case. This was a stroke of genius on my part! :) It saved me lot's of hassels and a better finished job was the result.

Tiller and extension

Tiller is hardwood, the extension is an alluminium extendable duster handle.

Rudder head lifting tackle

Blocks are small 30mm Ronstan

Your's truly with rudder assembly and bright sun!

Completed rudder and tiller. It's a fair amount of work but a good one to save for those times your waiting on materials or more funds for the rest of the boat.