Day 145

At long last the hull cooling units are in and no leaks. Gena has been using the time-tested soapy water method for testing for air leaks.No more bubbles! Bravo Gena.

I had estimated 3 portlites a day, and ( I hate being right! ) barely met that quota. Not having had the nuts welded on added to this time, as I had to wait for the welder several times. I discovered an obvious way to fair the plate around the portlites. Cutting out a hole relieved the stresses on the cabinsides, but also caused some loss ( or gain ) in the overall curve. Some had to be pushed out and some had to be pulled in.

Then I realised that the portlight frames are attached to the cabinside frames, and the nuts I had welded on could accept long bolts which in turn could be adjusted all along the sills, and voila!

Perfection again!

Grinding so smooth!

I never even thought of it on the first 2. Sometimes things must be seen ( several times in my case ha ha! ) in order to come up with ideas on how to deal with them.
This re-inforces my prophetic belief, " it'll work out " to a tee. yay!

Wow! So this is how it will look. Cool!

Just a note: I lined up the portlights with the cabin top as the deck height changes so much. I'm not sure if this is the right way and it's pretty hard to tell on some boats. It probably depends on the angles involved. Some portlites even grow in size, as one looks towards aft, keeping an equidistance top and bottom. I would recommend ( as I have done ) taking a picture of the side of the boat and using photoshop or any paint program to "paint" up the position of the portlights. This gave me a really good idea on not only how the portlights would look, but also the aft swimdeck and the coaming. The way we origionally planned the aft would have looked horrible if we'd have gone with our origional idea. See? ...computers can be useful hey.

Just another: Some people take it much further than that by using CAD programs to design, then loft the printout from that up to cut plate patterns etc, even rig the plasma cutter like a giant x-y plotter to do computer controlled cutting. This is great innovation, and inventiveness, but I like to test my skills in the actual building of the boat, not in ways of building it. Like in the old days.

The sense of achievement either way is just as great I'm sure :o)

Day 145:
10.5 hours: Worked on more portlights, Finished Hull cooling units sealed at last!