Deck seats (11)

Two more hours todayto give a double coat of clear resin to the low side of both deck seats.

Total work time to date: 606 hours

Deck seats (10)

Three hours today do give a double coat of clear resin to the upper face of the deck seats. We first completed sanding the surfaces with 60 grit to remove epoxy putty residuals all around and 120 grit to finish. We used about 800 grams of resin. The plywood edges suck a lot of resin so one has to pass the brush along several times. We gave the first coat at about noon and the second one at 6 pm. Here's how it begins

and here's how it looks at the end

Total work time to date: 604 hours

Deck seats (9)

Just one hour yesterday morning, to make two properly sized epoxy putty fillets between coamings and deck seats.

Total work time to date: 601 hours

Deck seats (8), crush plates

Five hours today, so we hit the 600 hours mark!
This morning we both worked on the seat decks, rounding edges and grinding epoxy drips, using power plane, power sander, surforms, rasps and sandpaper. Hard work indeed.

In the afternoon, together with my friend Franco Toscano, who professionally builds high end astronomical telescopes in Matera, we built the sixteen "crush plates". Those are square (75 mm sided) pieces of 6 mm thick aluminum, and are supposed to work as washers on steroids. Four of them (with a 12 mm dia. central hole) are going on the outboard ends of the swing arms, where those are connected with the steel studs on the akas' decks. The other twelve will go here and there around 10 mm dia. bolts.

Total work time to date: 600 hours

Deck seats (7), outboard mount

The idea of having the two deck seats only glued to the low side of the coamings made me a bit nervous. I know, epoxy is fantastic but, just in case, we decided to secure the two seat platforms to the coamings with 5x40 mm ss screws on 15 cm centers... We also glued two 6 mm plywood pieces on both sides of the outboard mount beam. Here's a pic showing both things.

Total work time to date: 595 hours.

Deck seats (6)

Two hours of work yesterday morning to glue the coamings to the deck seats, using about 200 g of microfiber thickened resin.

Total work time to date: 592 hours

Deck seats (5)

Here we are, back at it, after more than one month. August in Italy is vacation time. I actually remained in town but it has been so hot that working at the boat would have been very unpleasant.
Anyway, today we worked two hours and made all remaining measurements to complete the deck seats. Here's Cinzia scribing the glue line for the coaming on the port deck seat.

and here's a complete view of the cockpit including both deck seats and one crew

Total work time to date: 590 hours.