After two months of sanding and painting, its been good to get back to fabrication. Our focus is the deck, followed by the turret & targa bar.

Before we could begin installing the fore-decks we needed to complete the fore-beam. We realised that finishing the forebeam in its installed position would be extremely difficult in situ, 2.3 meters in the air, so we took it down so we could work at ground level. We then cut a length of 150mm PVC pipe in half lengthways, and fitted it to the forward face of the beam. Then Deb fiberglassed it into position with two layers of glass.

The next step was to fiberglass electrical conduit onto the top of the rear face. This will later be used to fix the trampolines in place.

Then we troweled on a coat of Q-Cell.  We have been fortunate to have the use of the workshop while Russ is on holidays. With the recent cold snap, our epoxy curing times have blown out to more than 4 days, even using fast hardener. The workshop has a wood heater, which has help speed things up a little.

While Deb was busy on the forebeam, Pete worked on the fore-decks, installing stringers and frames to support the deck panels.

Another major job finished was machining out the notches for the deck stringers. As there were 40 to be done, it was worth the time to fabricate a jig for the router.

The decking above the sleeping cabins span 3m x 2.3m each without any supports. Covering this space with decking requires some interesting timber engineering, utilising the strength of compound curves.

The designer warned us that mounting this beam is one the trickiest woodworking procedures of the build. The beam is six metres long, cambered, angled 12 degrees from horizontal, and is notched at both ends with visible joins that are angled on three planes. Pete lost a bit of sleep figuring out the best way to tackle the job. In the end, he realised that our decision to install a storage locker between the cabins gave the opportunity to cheat by cutting the beam in two. It could be re-joined with a doubler in the locker that would be invisible in the ajoining sleeping cabins. This made things heaps easier. He then used a piece of scrap to practice the notch joins, to give him confidence to cut the real ones. If people wonder why boat building takes so long here is a classic example. In all, it took us two days to set-up and install this one component.

Stingers were installed in the fore-peak areas, as per the plans, and the decking was rough-cut to suit. The foredecks incorporate a storage locker each. These are accessed by overhead hatches, and being external, are fiberglassed and drained to the outside.