The forward half of the deck has been fitted to the boat. I'm extremely pleased with how well this came out. The deck fits perfectly with the cabin top. I used the West System scarfer to angle the edges of the three plywood panels that make up the front 2/3's of the deck or so. These joints were very well aligned and will take only very minimal amounts of fairing in order to be perfectly smooth.
The boat made its first trip outside of the garage this morning. I moved it out in order to get better pictures. However, I took the opportunity to clean the garage floor that was under the boat. The following pictures show the deck trimmed to match the hull.
The last panels to be fitted will be the sides of the cockpit. Hopefully these will be finished this evening. After these panels are fitted, there are a handful of items internal to the boat that need to be managed before everything is glued in place.
Creating and fitting deck panels took quite a bit of time. The picture to the left shows the back deck panels, the cockpit floor and the curved sections on the inside of the cockpit
There have been quite a few broken rudder attachments on i550's, so while reinforcing the rudder tab on the transom I added an extra inch of hight.
I also cut out the companionway. The top hatch is going to fit flush similar to the hatch on Critical Twist.
A lot of small tasks have been accomplished since the last post. The photo to the right shows the installation of floor supports for the cockpit. These outside supports were built as small I-beams with lightening holes along the vertical component.
The 12oz carbon fiber cloth finally arrived so I used some of it to reinforce the keel box. I described the design of this critical component below and I think that it was actually strong enough before the carbon fiber was added. However, the cloth went on very easily and molded beautifully to the shape of the existing structure.
The photo to the right shows curved edges for the cockpit that I built using 3/8" by 3/8" cedar strips. The floor piece was cut some time ago. I may need to add a bit to the edges up by the front of the cockpit where the cockpit sides curve quite a bit.
