Trim and some rigging and fittings

I’m nearing the home stretch, which involves a lot of small tasks.

Many of these tasks are just for appearances. For example, I wasn’t careful enough when painting the gussets on frame 5 so they looked kind of sloppy and were bothering me.

A small piece of scrap wood epoxied in place cleaned it up nicely though.  


The centerboard trunk also needed a cap.  The cap needs at least one opening for the centerboard lines to pass through to use to raise and lower the centerboard.

I also cut a good size opening in the aft end of the cap so I could see the centerboard to check it’s height and unstick it if necessary.  I’m also going to attach the centerboard cap with screws but no epoxy so it is removable if I need more access to the centerboard.

 

The tiller is made out of Sapele too.  I had to deviate from the plans a little bit and added a second layer of wood on the bottom of the tiller so I could lower the hole for the pivot bolt to raise the tiller and prevent it from rubbing on the top of the transom (I think my transom is a bit taller than the plans because of the trim and I had drilled the hole in the rudder before making the tiller so I had to work with that).

I’ll also need to make some cup holders and other conveniences, but those can wait until after launch.

After I varnished the deck, I installed the deck fittings - two pairs of cleats, a pair of stand up mainsheet swivel blocks and jib tracks, and the bow plate. I pre-drilled holes for all the screws and bolts through the plywood decking and solid wood backing and chamfered the edges of the holes with a countersink bit.  I used butyl tape under each fitting so the chamfers provide some room for the tape.


I put a ring of butyl tape around each fastener and the edges of each fitting to form a waterproof gasket before installing them. 

When the fitting is tightened to the deck, most of the butyl tape squeezes out but fortunately it is easy to clean up.



This is the boat with all the fittings installed:



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