lid is on

Last weekend, I finally put the lid on my boat. All the plywood decking and the coach-house roof is now on.
The decks were pretty easy to do. I coated them with epoxy on the undersides first and then started from the bow and glued them on. I was pleased to see that there was good contact with all the deck beams and the decks all look fair. For the aft-most piece of deck, I glued on all the hardware doublers, then epoxy coated it and painted it first as I didn't fancy having to paint the undersides of it once it was glued on. I also painted the lower deck area first

looks like a stir ven now!

the excess deck was trimmed with a router

lower deck area painted (I like my two small planes)

the cabin seems to fit the boat well

The coach house roof required the building of a jig which I did out of MDF (left over from the crate that my plywood pieces came shipped in) connected with pine stringers. I then epoxy coated the 3 layers of the 4mm ply (each layer was made of 2 pieces finger-jointed together) first with neat epoxy then with slightly thickened epoxy. I clamped and weighted and screwed down the ply (only at the edges which were to be trimmed off anyway). This seemed to work really well.

The roof, when I put it on, was just perfect. It sat perfectly in contact with the bulkhead, coamings and cabin front. I am very impressed with Mr Vivier's designing skills.

I am right now in the midst of deciding what to do about the deck. I really planned on putting a laid/glued timber deck on but I am having serious second thoughts.

positives - it looks really, really beautiful, feels nice underfoot

negatives - more maintenance, laborious to make, small risk of water getting in and causing problems with the ply, more expensive.

Regarding the expense, I was quoted $1250 for teak!!!! $6.30 per metre of 30mm x 5mm strips. I also considered celery-top pine a local Tasmanian timber that is used for decks but it has a tendency to splinter. Vitex, that Mike Randall used is a great option. It's just like teak but much, much cheaper. If I decide to do the strips I will try and get Vitex.

At the moment though, I am tending towards glassing and painting the deck. It will be easier, cheaper and less maintenance over the long term.

foaming mad!

Vivier recommends foam in the 3 flotation chambers for very good reason. If a chamber is punctured and fills with water, the vessel may list and become unsailable. I looked into foams. Polyethylene foam  (trade name in Australia - microlen) that Vivier states is the best is the only foam that our Marine Safety Authority in Tasmania allows on vessels in survey. I think the reason is that's the only foam that is truly non-absorbent over years and is also totally fuel and solvent resistant. The problem is that it's very expensive. One sheet (2.4m x 1.2m x 0.1m) costs about $260. I figured that I needed 3 sheets and gulped at the costs.
I spent a while thinking about other options - polystyrene, plastic bottles etc etc but then thought that, seeing as I am using the best materials I can everywhere else (Austral marine ply, Bote-cote epoxy, Si-bronze fastenings) it would be silly to put in a foam that I might regret and then never be able to replace (those flotation chambers are sealed shut with epoxy).
So, I bought the expensive stuff. One relief was that I accidentally thought that all 3 chambers were the same volume. When I double checked, I found that the rear ones were smaller and so I only needed 2 sheets of foam. $500 instead of $750 - sounds cheap now!!

almost full of foam

After putting in 3 coats of epoxy (and drilling the limber holes and adding the eye for attaching the anchor rode) I started packing the foam into the front chamber. I fit most of one sheet in here (about 288 litres and the chamber is supposedly 300 litres).

I then fitted the foredeck to seal it all in.

foredeck on

I then asked my wife, Briony, who is the best at doing 3-D type spatial puzzles in our family if she could fit the foam into the rear chambers. She did a very neat job!

nice to see a bit of beauty in the boat shed!

The polyethylene foam is very nice to work with. It's stiff and won't compress much at all but it cuts easily with a sharp sashimi knife and doesn't make any crumbly mess.

Decks are now going on.....