After some family activities Saturday morning, I arrived at Somerledi ready to progress the work towards completion. Today's docket included fitting the anchor locker shelf to move on to further fabrication work and final install, but also included installing five of the seven G-10 backing plates.

The anchor locker shelf was templated for and cut out of a fresh piece of sanded oak plywood; I had also applied a layer of 1708 biaxial fiberglass cloth to the topside. Templating, typically, is an iterative process and I expected the templated shelf would get me 90% of the way there. Arriving at Somerledi, this was my first task, to fit the anchor locker shelf and "dial-in" the fit in order to install the removable shelf. Setting the shelf in place, I quickly saw areas that required some trimming work, so I made marks and removed the shelf to carry off the boat. With an angle grinder and 4-grit flap disc, I removed the portions required, shaping to the angle of the hull. A couple additional trips to fit the shelf and back down to adjust the dimensions allowed me to progress to the next step: taking back to the shop to complete the encapsulation in fiberglass and epoxy, make a smaller removable access panel to set myself up for further install prep. I set the anchor locker shelf to the side and turned to the backing plates.

The TruDesign composite seacocks require a minimum hull thickness, advise through their testing to achieve ABYC standards. The hull thickness of Somerledi is 3/4" in most places, so it was just under the 20mm minimum. I decided, therefore, to use a 1/4" thick piece of G-10 for backing plates to allow for the minimum thickness...plus some.

I started by water-washing the amine blush from the areas skim coated with thickened epoxy on the exterior of the hull, and then sanded those areas fair. I worked the interiors of the hull penetrations by hand to get them back to their original diameters, as some thickened epoxy had made its way into this cavity. With that task completed, I made my way into the cabin and cleaned the interior surface of the waste discharge hull penetration with acetone to prepare for epoxy work. The two layers of biaxial cloth laid up on the interior surfaces of all seven hull penetrations were finished off with peel ply, and so sanding was not required. I wet the surface of the hull and the G-10 backing plate with "neat" epoxy, thickened the balance of the epoxy with 406 colloidal silica and 407 low-density fairing compound and buttered it with the thickened material. I pressed the backing plate in place, using the small diameter drill bit hole to more or less align with the larger skin fitting hole. At this point, I made my way out of the boat and visually aligned that small diameter hole in the center of the larger skin fitting hole, cleaning up squeeze out at the same time. I then move back into Somerledi's cabin and cleaned up the additional squeeze out, shaping a nice fillet around the edge of the backing plate. This completed one for the five backing plates for the day.

I repeated the process for the four additional backing plates, and then rolled up my gear to head out. More to come.

Total Hrs: 5