For an even deeper accounting of the day's tasks: Tim Lackey Sailing, LLC
On Wednesday, the 13th of November, Tim Lackey and I turned our attention to the starboard and primary bulkheads once again, and to prepare for eventual tabbing. I started off by water washing the epoxy work done the previous day: spray with water, scrub with a Scotchbrite pad and then towel off the excess water and amine blush. Amine blush is a film that is left on cured epoxy, and that must be removed prior to any further epoxy work.
I finished this task by scuffing up the cured epoxy with 40-grit paper to prepare the surface for a mechanical epoxy bond (tabbing in the bulkheads). The starboard primary bulkhead...
...and the port primary bulkhead.
As soon as I finished water washing and scuffing the cured epoxy, Tim moved into cutting the finished width of both bulkheads. We purposefully left both bulkheads oversize (in the width dimension), as we planned to later come back and measure for the width, drop a plumb line, and then cut to this width.
The port bulkhead being cut by Tim Lackey...
...and the starboard bulkhead being cut to the proper width.
Next, we turned our attention to the engine room bulkhead - the aft bulkhead of the main salon. We began by referring to the Westsail construction manual - a manual designed for the "kit boat" customer...a manual going on 40 years! The placement of the engine room bulkhead called for 10' 10" from the primary bulkheads. Prior to our eventual placement of the new bulkhead, we discussed maximizing the salon space by tucking the bulkhead under the bridge deck. However, we quickly realized that pushing the bulkhead toward the stern of the boat would have potentially left very little room for the engine installation. Amazing how everything on a boat (everything!) is connected in some way. We also checked the installation of the factory engine pan prior to final placement of the engine room bulkhead - hull #667 came with a factory prepared engine pan ready for installation. I lugged the engine pan down into what would eventually become the engine room to determine fit. After consulting with Tim, and specifically with respect to the Beta 38 engine, it became apparent that this pan was far too narrow for this engine. The Westsail 32, a large number of them, came equipped with the Volvo MD-17. The MD-17 has a smaller footprint that the Beta 38 (less horsepower as well), so while the engine pan was fine for the MD-17, it was not for the Beat 38. We decided that it would be best to scrap the "gorgeous" engine pan, and opt for building a custom engine bed and pan for the Beta 38 installation.
So, back to the engine room bulkhead placement. We made a series of marks 10' 10" from the primary bulkheads, placing these marks on the aft portion of the overhead. We checked for square of the overhead line (running athwartship, and perpendicular to the boat's center line) by taking diagonal measures from companionway to center line, on various points. Once we determined we were square with this line, we dropped the line to the hull through a series of plum-bobs - there has apparently been quite a technological revolution in plum-bob technology, as we discovered the crude nature of my particular plum-bob tool! The following photo shows two lines, one of which would eventually help to place an engine room bulkhead. We carefully discussed and sorted out the advantages of an inch here and an inch there, though finally, and with peace of mind, settled on the location of the engine room bulkhead - not far from the Westsail manual...but enough to call it "custom!"
Next, we began the carving and fitting of the bulkhead template. Tim often does this with sheets of cardboard saved from deliveries made to his shop. He also works with door skin material in addition, as this more rigid product provides and excellent way in which to model the final installation.
Once we had completed the template, we laid it out on 3/4" (18mm) meranti, and used a jigsaw to cut out the bulkhead.
Here is the engine room bulkhead being fit in its new home.
Finally, we wet out the edges of the bulkhead with straight epoxy, and then followed that with a thickened mixture (cabosil), spreading out onto where the bulkhead edge would contact the hull. We cleaned up the excess squeeze out, and then looked for the next to-do.
Turning out attention the cabin sole, the first order of business was to obtain the height cabin sole substrate - the dimension from the bilge to the underside of the plywood underlayment. This dimension was more or less determined by the overall height of the water tanks - to be installed beneath the cabin sole. I needed at least 14" of clearance in this dimension - the dimension become greater as one moves aft, due to the slopping of the bilge. A quick phone chat with Bud Taplin confirmed the 14" clearance. In addition to the water tank dimension, I also had to take in account my overall height and what would feel comfortable to me walking inside the cabin. Ultimately and after considerable consultation with Tim Lackey, I settled on a starting point of 14.5" from the bilge floor. From here, there would 3/4" meranti as the sub-floor, and then a 1/4" finished teak floor. This additional inch left 77" to the overhead. The overhead would need to allow for an inch to be taken up by overheads beams and the finished overhead material. In the end, I was left with 6' 2" of head room at the mast bulkheads, and increasingly taller dimension as one moved aft - comfortable to say the least.
Once, I was settled on the starting point dimension, Tim and I prepared 3 cardboard templates for what would become a floor timber at the mast bulkhead (the primary bulkhead), and can be seen in the photo below. The pictures ran out here, but this floor timber was eventually laminated together (3 sections) - glued and screwed. The floor timber was set in thickened epoxy (cabosil) in its pictured orientation.
The last thing we did on this busy day, was to find the location of the forward bulkhead to the head (which is also the aft bulkhead to the V-berth). After much discussion about elevating shower pans and heads, we settled on the placement of this bulkhead and then prepared the template that would be used to cut out the actual bulkhead from the meranti material. This bulkhead would also be a two-part bulkhead, and I opted to cut a dado down the adjoining sections for a more seamless marriage of the two sections. I finished the day by cutting the dado on one of the two sections that would make up this bulkhead.
Total Time: 9 Hrs.
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