After a recent birthday I found it was a good time to get patched up again. Some boat building contortions had aggravated the hernia I've been babying for a couple of years now. I had surgery on this hernia for the second time about a week ago and soon the stitches will be removed. Boat building is such an obsession for me that I've been putting off the fix so I wouldn't be laid up for a while. It got to the point that my motions were restricted by the condition and inhibited what I could accomplish. Time to take the cure!
Both forward lockers received locking hardware. Two hooks are visible in the locker opening. These hooks engage metal plates, suspended from the lid, to lock the lid. The hooks are mounted on a linkage that is operated securely from inside the cabin. The hooks lay flat against the inner coaming in the unlocked position. This arrangement works very well when it is necessary to secure items in the boat, but the lockers will also have latches operated from the outside under normal conditions.
The locking linkage is operated through an inspection port between the locker and the cabin. A person must crawl forward into a low space that is mostly intended to receive feet as part of the forward bunk. It was as I wormed my way forward to test the locking latch that I aggravated my hernia. As a result, I've been giving some thought to a manipulator stick to operate the latch from a more comfortable cabin position.
The lid interiors and inner coamings have received their first topside paint coat. Another coat or two will bring these lockers up to a finished condition.
I should test my regular readers to see if they can identify the above parts as the beginnings of the port cabin top. I had to comb through my scrap materials to scrounge up all the bits and pieces to close up the port hull. In the foreground is the companionway inner coaming. The four arcs, to span and shape the cabin top, are in the background. The foreground and background items rest on the 3/8" plywood that will close the cabin top.
The smaller items have received primer and will require painting before installation. An opening has been cut in the plywood to receive the coaming. The list of hull completion tasks is growing smaller, but the hulls are still the project's most monumental sanding task ahead to brighten my future.
My 15 year old digital camera may be done for. I've been operating it for a while using cable ties to hold the battery compartment together. It doesn't boot up anymore; it gives up as it fails to extend the lens as normal. My tablet is no help as it is out of service. I'm fortunate to have a video camera that stores still images on a card so that I can continue documenting this build. Special batteries for video camera have given up, but it came with an AC power supply to tether me. I suppose I will have to give up part of my retirement fortune to a new camera.
