Foredeck Is In

November 1, 2015 Hours spent building to date: 1,623

A light week highlighted by a visit from our friends Bjorn and Louise from Sweden. Lots of time touring around in the best weather and most brilliant foliage I can remember after 30 years in Connecticut.

Bjorn helped me with the foredeck a couple times, saving a lot of work for me by handling all the scribing and fitting from the ladder, while I cut and glued from inside the boat. First layer went on nicely. I tried to hold the whole works together with Gorilla Tape to pattern the second layer, but it was a failure — climbing off the boat, the taped assembly starting bending and breaking apart. Luckily, I had enough witness marks to recreate the shape on a full sheet of plywood.

Sometimes you just get lucky. I had anticipated a couple hours rasping and sanding and fitting, but when I dropped the top layer of plywood into the boat it was a perfect fit — the edges couldn’t be any closer. A small piece up by the stem, epoxy, screws and done.

I should note that final fittings of the beams was a head scratcher. The plans say they go into the bottom half of the shear clamp, creating a nice toe rail around the foredeck area. But it doesn’t make any sense to notch in beams, when all the pressure is from above. So I used strong metal straps and L-brackets, in addition to epoxy for the fastening. In retrospect, I think I could have notched the beams in from the top, since there’s a bulwark surrounding the whole foredeck. But I also like the safety of a toe rail and bulwark. Since the fittings don’t show and are super-strong, I’m happy with the way it all came out.