Dorade Boxes | Paint On The Filler Pieces

The filler pieces for the incorrectly located ventilator holes were ready for paint, so the area around each piece was masked off and five coats of primer were applied.

When hard I wet sanded the primer to a P800 finish.

Lastly, I pulled the masking tape and wet sanded to feather the edges back to the original surface.

Here we are wet sanding, in the by now usual fashion.

This is the starboard Dorade box. The left half has been feather edged, and the right half still shows where it was masked off. 

When the primed areas were smooth and flush with the surrounding painted surface, I masked them off again and applied gloss.

This is the first coat on the port Dorade box.

I don't think the final finish will be invisible, but it will be very hard to find ...

Companionway Hood | Paint On The Interior

Waiting for replacement parts to arrive to allow fitting out to continue, I did some odd jobs to fill time.

One such activity was to paint the join between the companionway hood and the cabin roof, to cover the glue line.

I applied four coats of primer, as here looking at the starboard side.

Then the first coat of gloss was applied, starting to cover up the glue line quite nicely. This is a view of the port side.

I think it's starting to look nice in there.

Boom Gallows Support Poles | Test Installation

Happy that the tabernacle had been successfully installed I moved on to the boom gallows.

First I tried the poles in their sockets. Here they are.

So far so good. Straight and true and a perfect fit.

The poles are held in place by stanchion supports. Here is one fitted to the starboard deck and pole.

That fitted beautifully, but the one on the port side refused to go into place.

At first I assumed that it was either a poor casting or had been machined incorrectly, but after some time wrestling with it the penny finally dropped.

It was the wrong size. The poles are 1" diameter so require 1" stanchion supports. One of mine was actually 7/8", so it would never fit.

I contacted the kit vendor, and a replacement is on its way.

Time to move on to something else!

Tabernacle | Test Installation

While waiting for a new pivot rod for the rudder to arrive I decided to install the tabernacle.

This should not be a big deal because it had been carefully made to fit, although that was some time ago and things could have moved a little since then.

I reamed out the bolt holes to clean out any paint and made sure the bolts fitted nicely.

Then I stood the tabernacle in place on the foredeck and tried to fit the bolts through the front cabin wall and support pad.

The top two bolts slid easily into place, but the bottom two were ever so slightly out of whack. Not much, but enough to prevent the bolts sliding through.

So I inserted two lengths of threaded rod into the bottom two holes and screwed them through with a pair of pliers. Like this.

Next I unscrewed one of the rods and drilled right through the support pad, cabin wall and the tabernacle, to clean out the hole. A bolt then slid easily into place.

The same thing was then done to the remaining bolt hole and the nuts tightened up inside the cabin. Here they are.

They are dome nuts and look really nice.

At last. Something is actually finished.

Rudder | Getting Ready For Installation

After the bow eye the next fitting out task is the installation of the rudder.

This is rather a big deal because it involves drilling holes through the beautiful varnished sapele transom, so everything has to be right first time. There is no going back if the holes are in the wrong place.

I laid out the various parts for the rudder pivot mechanism and was immediately struck by the size of the stainless steel rod. At 10mm diameter it seemed a bit skinny for the eyes supplied for the pivot mechanism, and at 75cm it was definitely shorter than the one depicted in the manual.

Here I am measuring it up.

Yep, definitely too short!

I did a drawing nonetheless to see if it could work. This is it.

Nope. It wasn't going to look right or work properly, so I contacted the kit vendor who confirmed that it should actually be 12mm rod and 33" in length i.e., 85cm.

So, I stopped work on the rudder and awaited the arrival of a new rod.

Bow Eye | Installation

The time came to permanently install the bow eye. I had practised this during the test fit so wasn't too worried, although I did think it would be easy to make a horrible mess with the caulking compound.

The build manual tells us to use 3M 5200 sealant, which is a more or less permanent bond when it is cured.

I applied some caulk to the outer plate and the threads of the two legs and slid it into place. Then I coated the inner plate and carefully slid that into place with the two nuts, then tightened everything up with the daisy chained socket.

It merely remained to wipe away any squeezed-out caulk and sit back and admire the finished article.

Here it is.

Thats the first step of fitting out complete!

Bow Eye | Test Fit

It was time to test fit the bow eye assembly, with its new internal support pad.

First I glued the pad in place, using a temporary screw through the stem to hold it in position until cured.

The screw would almost certainly become embedded in the resin, and I would probably have to use the heat gun to heat it up and loosen the resin to get it out. It would be a real problem if the screw snapped, to put it mildly!

But ... using the heat gun directly on the stem would ruin the paintwork. So I made a removable spacer to hold the screw away from the stem, which when removed would allow me to heat the screw itself without damaging the paint.

This is what it looked like.

The spacer is in two halves held together with tape. Remove the tape and knock away the spacer to heat the screw head.

Here it is in place when installing the support pad.

It worked perfectly but the screw did not require heat - it came out easily!

Then I cut the legs of the bow eye to the right length, like this.

The bow eye was then fastened in place, seen here outside the stem.

The nuts were tightened using a daisy chained socket to reach down to the fitting, as shown in the build manual. Like this.

And here is the view inside the bow compartment.

I was concerned that this exercise might not go well, but it turned out OK.

Now I need to get some 3M 5200 adhesive sealant to fix the eye in permanently.

We're getting there!