Mast step and coamings

Two hours of work this morning. We prepared the mast step for fiberglassing

and started to round the edges on the coamings

Total work time to date: 583 hours

Coamings

Two hours only last saturday to work on the seat coamings. Those are 2x4s beefed up at both ends. Even in this case the measurements on the plans were a bit confused so we had to correct something...

In thje meantime, we ordered and received another 12.6 kg batch of resin (hopefully the last).

Total work time to date: 581 hours.

Akas glassed

Four more hours today to finish glassing the central beam of the forward aka, and grind away the fiberglass edges from the other pieces. Here's a view of the beam before glassing, while we're measuring where to pur the mast step which is anothere hefty piece of wood.

Here's how it looks at the end of the day

Total work time to date: 579 hours

Still glassing the akas

Four hours of work this week end, still glassing the akas piece by piece. Those are 6 big and heavy planks and one has to glass one side at a time, so it takes time. Here's a pic showing resin and hardener (about 350 cc in total) in a cup before mixing. The mixing ratio is checked with an electronic scale and a precomputed table. I hope this doesn't bring bad luck, but we have never screwed up the resin proportions...

On Friday we glassed the lower faces of both forward swing arms.

On saturday we glassed the doubler of the rear aka. Here it is before

and after.

Finally, on sunday we glassed the remaining sections. The forward aka is waiting for fiberglassing (upper face) in the background.

Total work time to date: 575 hours

Glassing the akas

Five hours of work this weekend to continue glassing the akas with the usual 160 g/sq.m. cloth and epoxy resin. We glassed one side of the forward swing arms and both sides of the rear swing arms. Here's a pic taken on saturday morning by Daniele, a friend who came to visit us together with Mario shown here watching me and Cinzia working.

Here's a pic taken on saturday evening, showing all swing arms on sawhorses with one side glassed.

This afternoon we removed the fiberglass edges all around the planks using Surforms and then glassed the other side of the rear swing arms. Here they are with the FG cloth on, ready to be wet out (on the left you can see yours truly coming with the clear resin can)

and here's how they look at the end

We're running short of resin again so we have to buy one more batch. 

Total work time to date: 571 hours

Three hulls, one trimaran

Six hours of work in the last two saturdays, messing around with diagonals and the like on the aka system. Once the beam system is on the boat, we had to convince ourselves that it's impossible to "close" it to better than, say, 1 cm. So, after much rimugination, today we decided to kill the scientists and to assemble the boat as it is. Well, it worked! Here's the whole boat

Of course it started to rain in perfect time, so we had to cover the beams (not yet fiberglassed) with plastic. Neverthless, we tested the retractable aka system with the real amas (floats) and it worked so well that we decided to open a VERY good bottle of prosecco to celebrate.

Total work time to date: 566 hours

Back to it

After almost one idle month (boatwise) here we are again. Three hours today to fiberglass the bottom side of the two akas.Here's Cinzia cutting the fiberglass to size

and here is the complete job after the second resin coat (three hours after the first coat).

Fiberglassing is unpleasant. Air bubbles appear all over the place; there's always an unseen splinter which will stand proud under the wet cloth; rollers and brushes leave residuals. Anyway, fiberglassing is not critical for these pieces so it should be ok.

Total work time to date: 560 hours