After the office hours, I headed to Biscuit to continue the installation of her hardware. The goal for the brief session was to prep for the installation of the winch bases and to complete the installation of the coaming cleats - both successively achieved. I started by laying out the location for the winch bases at roughly ~20 inches aft of the cabin's aft bulkhead. I applied tape to the deck as well as the coaming, and then marked for the fasteners holes (three 1/4"-20 bronze machine screws for each winch bases). After locating the fasteners, I used a center punch to start the drill bit. I used a 1/2" forstner bit for the one 1/4"-20 machine screw to pass through the deck, and drilled through the top skin and the balsa core to remove it - the old drill, fill and drill exercise. For the coaming fasteners, two 1/4"-20 machine screws, I progressed through drill bit diameters to ultimately pre-drilling to then tap for the machine screws. With the coaming fasteners holes prepped and the core removed from the deck, I then turned my attention to the coaming cleats.

Again, I located these roughly 12" aft of the winch bases, applied tape to then mark for locating the machine screws - two per coaming cleat, and of the 1/4"-20 sizing. The coaming cleats were a nice upgrade from what was on Biscuit - a mix of standard cleats of different material. The new bronze coaming cleats, procured from Spartan Marine, were of the Typhoon ilk and provided a bit of bronze pop to the mahogany coamings. I progressed through smaller-to-larger drill bits, and then tapped for the 1/4"-20 bronze fasteners pulled from my inventory. These went on without issue and were bedded with SitkaFlex 291-LOT, mahogany in color.

To complete the session, I came back to the over-drilled deck holes, cleaned them with acetone and then filled with West System epoxy, thickened with West System 404 high density filler. I topped off the work with a small peel ply patch and will come back tomorrow with a final filler pass to bring the surface into fair with the deck. These plugs isolate the balsa core from any water ingress, and will be tapped for 1/4"-20 bronze machine screws. The winch bases will be completed in the coming weekend work.

Total Hrs: 2.25