hatches and cockpit floor

This weekend Karel Michielsen http://home.ozonline.com.au/f41_sail33/ paid me a visit (he was in Holland meeting family). It was really nice to talk to such an experienced builder. I'll try to pass on some of the tips he gave me in this blog. One of those tips was to put a sanding disk (grit 40 or 80)on the angled grinder and use that to touch up fiberglass seams, spills and generally do all other kinds of sanding.
Maybe this is no news for some, but I had never thought of using the grinder for this kind of work. In Holland the angled grinder is considered by most people to be just a tool for cutting & grinding metal and not a sanding tool. Anyway, I did some tests with the grinder and with some practice it indeed is a perfect tool for cleaning up fiberglass, cutting out bubbles and smoothing tape edges.

Anchor locker hatch will lie on some supports cut out of some leftover sandwich panel.
This is how it will look. I'll not bolt through the hinges. Instead I'll drill oversised holes in the hatch and deck, dig out a bit of foam and then fill with HD putty. Then I'll tap a thread to bolt the hinges with short bolts.
I made a small foam coaming for the forward hatch. Has to be touched up a bit and then I'll put some glass on.
Cockpit floor still has to be doubled. Good opportunity to get rid of the scrap foam pieces. Some of those pieces got a little sunburnt during the last two years. The divinycell is apparently not very UV resistant....