The Count Is Nine

September 2026 has arrived and the count of boat build years now equals nine.  This is something I thought I could do in two years and possibly would have ended up with something embarrassing.  Hopefully that is not the case and the build end is within sight!  

All the boat componets were previously assembled to nail down mounting locations and identify any necessary modifications.  The boat has been disassembled to complete the modifications and to paint or repaint where necessary.

The longer this project continues, the more chaotic things become.  Here the inverted cockpit rests on sawhorses below the mast suspended from the ceiling.  The gaff and tillers are tied to the window bars.  It is difficult to accomodate all the removed boat componets in the shop so they can be worked on.

Free horizontal surfaces are hard to come by with the crossbeams taking up such spaces.  The anchor locker and boarding ladder rest against the back wall.

Once the cockpit sides were painted, the cockpit was placed on its' side to improve acess to the other faces requiring paint.  This also provided much needed horizonal surfaces including a plastic protected area to perform epoxy operations. 

With the sawhorses freed up I've gained some usable bench space to immediately cover with the cockpit locker lids.  The crossbeam mounted mast tabernacle and top boarding ladder step have received the top coat paint.  Several holes were drilled and fill with epoxy to later accept screw on fittings such as, cleats, cockpit hold downs and a main sheet cleat.  The burgundy paint has not held up well and it tends to chip off.  A good sanding and fresh burgundy paint will likely give the same result, but that is on my dance card.

There is about one inch of clearance between the cockpit sides and the hulls.  When the cockpit is in position, the sloping cabin sides leave a large gap between the cockpit and the cabin.  A bolt on plywood splash guard fills the gap between the cockpit and the cabins.  The splash guard is cantilevered over the cockpit's edge so it is not capable of carring much load.

People tend to step on the splash guard when entering the cabins so a greater load carring capacity is needed in this area.  To that end, two fixtures have been built to better support the splash guards.  Above they are shown in the fiberglassing process.  This took a number of days to complete as the overhanging fiberglass edges prevents the faces at 90° from being covered in one operation.

This is an underside view of the reinforcement epoxied to the splash guard installed on the cockpit side.  The lower left image corner is the cockpit bottom.  The splash guards also serve as the hinge mounting location for the locker lids so there are seperate splash guards for the forward and aft lockers.

For the next months my days will be filled with sand, paint and repeat to provide two coats of primer and three coats of top side paint.  This is my least favorite part of the build until the last coat goes on and the finished product is before me.