Put in about 5 hours today and basically a repeat of the last two work days. Just filling in the detail panel, the surrounding decking and the edge strips. At this point I have a few last deck strips, a partial edge strip on each side and a few edge filler pieces and the deck itself will be done.
In the first and third pictures you can see the cockpit opening more or less taking shape. So I’m getting to the point of deciding which set of steps to do next.
Depending on which book you read or which videos you watch or which blog you find there are varying approaches now. Pretty much all start with a scraping and sanding to get a smooth and fair surface to work from. After this you have the following approaches:
- Cut cockpit, install riser, install coaming, fiberglass outer deck
- Fiberglass outer deck, cut cockpit, install riser, install coaming
- Cut cockpit, fiberglass outer deck, installer riser, install coaming
- Put deck aside, sand and scrape hull, fiber glass outer hull, sand and scraper inner hull, fiberglass inner hull, work on deck separately using one of the three above options.
I haven’t decided which set of steps but it will probably be one of the first three. At the moment the third one is in the lead as this approach is used by Nick Schade on his Petrel Play build and the coaming on that build is the closest to the method I’m planning to use. However I’m not planning on a cockpit recess, or at least not a full recess, instead perhaps just a small one at the front which would bring it (as shown on my templates) from the 42″ to 39″ for the actual cockpit opening and provide a flatter front vs. the peaked front that the design currently has.
Next steps will be to finish stripping, ensure the line between the hull and deck is consistent and then scrape and sand. At that point I’ll then have to make up my mind on which approach to go with.