Working on the vaka deck

Four hours of work today, to continue finishing the vaka deck.
First, we measured and cut the whole cockpit opening. Here's yours truly cutting the 12 mm plywood deck with the jigsaw

and here is the first view of the whole cockpit.

We then continued the fairing of the deck. Here's a view of the deck "wing" and of the forward port aka mounting block.

Total work time to date: 418 hours

Deck fairing

Only one hour this morning to fair the forward deck under which we had previously glued the doublers. Here is how it looks after many fairing passes, starting with the power planer to Surforms, rasp and finally the sanding board.

Total work time to date: 414 hours

Deck doublers

We worked two hours on Monday April 25th (national holiday). We had spent the previous week in Vienna for a scientific conference, and the last week end went for other commitments. Anyway, we glued the two deck doublers under the forward deck "wings". Here are the two doublers

and here they are glued under the deck wings with the usual epoxy resin thickened with microfibers and cabosil.

Total work time to date: 413 hours

Vaka cockpit

6 hours of work in the last two weekends to make the cockpit the vaka. Our plywood sheets are 2.5 meters long, and the hull is 6 meters long, so using one sheet for the deck forward and another for the deck aft, a remaining space about 1 meter long must be filled.
The first picture shows all the four butt blocks (2 cm thick) already glued and screwed to the two esisting deck panels.

while the next one shows the two fillers glued and screwed as well. Those butt blocks needed quite some work since their shape is a bit tricky.

Next time we'll cut the whole cockpit and round the hull to deck joint.

Total work time to date: 411 hours

Vaka decks

It took five hours, but at last we did it. We glued both forward and rear deck on the vaka hull. We spent the morning preparing everything: we sanded and cleaned the surfaces to be glued and prebored the screw holes. After lunch we inserted and tightened the 8 bolts for the aka blocks, bedding each one in 3M4200.
Finally, we prepared about 800 grams of thickened resin and glued the two decks using the marks which we had previously scribed on the hull.

Total work time to date: 405 hours

Paint test; appendages

Five hours this weekend between friday and today. First, we coated the bow and stern lockers with a two part epoxy primer. Very smelly stuff... The color of this primer is also quite strange

Waiting for the primer to dry, we started to work on shaping the centerboard. I had already cut several "guide" grooves whose position and depth is given by a NACA profile

Today we painted the interior of the lockers with a two part polyurethane white paint. This is very smelly too, plus it is not that pleasant to apply. I'm not enthousiastic about this stuff. I hope it will set properly but most probably we'll use other kind of paints for the rest of the boat.

Total work time to date: 400 hours.

Fairing/finish rehearsing

We've decided to rehearse a fairing/finish schedule on the parts of the main hull wich will be completely decked (bow and stern lockers). So, the last two saturdays we worked 4 hours to sand down the tape edges and other asperities.
We also prepared and squeegeed some fairing putty to see how it works. We'll then prime bow and stern lockers with an epoxy primer and paint with poliurethane paint in order to verify the results before painting the visible parts of the boat.

Total work time to date: 395 hours