Anchor well in place

Before fitting the anchorwell I put some fairing compound on the visible areas and sanded it down a bit. I didn't try to get it perfect.
Then put a thin flat basecoat of normal white housepaint on top of that. In real it looks better than the photo suggests. Because it's a thin coat the gray fairing putty shows through. Also on the picture the paint is still wet and a bit shiney, highlighting the defects.
Below the anchorwell is fitted, but has to be taped yet. I only had a template for cutting the aft side of the well, and made the well fit by doing some measuring, cutting and trimming of the front end. Not too much work.

Painting the front side of the boat was a good experiment to decide on the kind of finish. I think with a bit more fairing and sanding painting the inside with flat paint would give a good enough finish without too much work. But I think I will go for a 'zolatone-finish', which should be better. I'll try to get some more informationg about zolatone.

But now I can stop working the interior for a while, because yesterday the beam mounts arrived. I hope to level the boat this weekend and start cutting the beam-mount openings.

main hatch coaming & anchor well

The beam mounts are shipped but haven't arrived yet. In the meantime I'll keep on working on some smaller projects. Like the main hatch coaming.

I first laminated the corners of the hatch coaming, like this.
Also pre-laminated the end of the coaming with tape (this plies much easier than the normal cloth). Like this (tape has to be trimmed yet),

After that it wasn't difficult to laminate the sides and front of the coaming with the specified two layers A. To keep this heavy cloth from lifting in the corners I used the two tricks I know: a bit of putty before laying down the cloth (thanks Jay for this tip) and using plastic over the laminate. As I was still not certain the cloth stayed put I ended up using some pieces of wood and some clamps.

Succes! Glad I can move on to new parts of the boat. It feels like I've been working on the hatch coamings for ages. It proved to be much more work than I thought.

One of the projects is a hull-extention. When I planked the mainhull I figured it didn't matter how far the coamings on the side would extend, as long as they would extend beyond the aft beam bulkhead. Later I received the update of the plans with the instructions for installing the beam mounts, and it seems aft of the aft beam bulkhead a small portion of coaming will be used. So I had to extend the coaming a bit:
More work in progress: laminating the anchor well. I first laminated the outside, let it cure, then the inside, and put the well back on the former to make sure it cured in the right shape.

Hey stupid! part 3

Making mistakes is part of the building (at least part of my building) and as you may have noticed I decided to show them even though some are a bit embarassing. I hope others will benefit from it.

When I made the hatch coaming I figured it would be best to start it at the beginning of the deck-main bulkhead radius:

Then I realised the aft side of the hatch will slide on the coaming and drop down at the end of the coaming. The coaming should thus be extended to be level with the aft side of the main bulkehead, or els the aft end of the hatch can (will?) drop down on the cabin gusset and on the hatch slides.

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Fixing it: molds of foam scraps to extend the coaming with some putty.

Putty out of the mold.

Coaming + putty end shaped and ready for lamination.

Main hatch flanges + hull supports

Laminating the flange for the 'doorway' (don't know the proper word); four layers A-cloth. I used some scrap wood + clamps to keep the cloth bent around the former.

This worked well....
Flange roughly cut.
Hull is standing on two supports made of scrap MDF with some tube-insulation; works really well. I'll have to get the hull leveled yet and will probablye use an car-jack to fine tune the supports.
Picture to get an idea of the size of the hatch.

I'm still waiting for the Beam Mounts. They should arrive this week and I think it will take about a week to install them.

Bow bulkhead and main hatch

As I expected, glueing and laminating the bow bulkhead was not a nice job to do (understatement). I made the 'hatch' in the bow bulkhead by laminating a rim on top of the section I cut out of the bulkhead. The hatch will be fastened with screws. You may notice the cutout section is not fully centered. It is 5-7 mm too far to the right. I don't know how this happened. Maybe I made a mistake cutting the section or maybe while fitting the bulkhead I didn't trim the left and right side equally. Luckily it will be out of sight once the anchor well is in place.

The main hatch opening cutout and coamings are glued in place. Nice job to do! A very big hatch (nice). The boat immediately feels much roomier inside.
My plan is to use the cutout section of the roof to make the hatch. It already has the right shape, I only need to add some extra cm's foam at the sides.
My brother is helping me. Here he's forming the foam for the anchorwell. In the plans I'm missing the template for the front of the well. I'll ask Ian about it.

update on progress

Hull laminating is ready. I've got to wait for the beam mounts (expected this month) before I can continue. In the meantime I'm doing some small jobs like cutting out the anchorwell hatch and fitting the bow bulkhead.
It's easy to move and roll the hull on your own. I lift the hull with two rope hoists (one near the anchorwell and one near the main bulkehead) and once it's hanging free just turn it in whatever position you want and drop it on some foam pads.