February 12th and 13th
Spent a good part of Saturday sanding and fairing the transom/splashwell area of the Jumbo. Routine was to sand and taper the tape edges, and any high spots and then clean everything with damp rags. Then I filled any low areas and screw holes with thickened epoxy. Epoxy was slow to cure so I was limited to scraping the freshly filled areas. Will try and sand all the newly epoxied areas next weekend.
Tops of the battery boxes were not as flat as I'd like, so I'll be doing some more filling and sanding. Also sanded and then recoated the edges of the gunnels from the transom up to the cuddy cabin. Beyond that I'd already rounded over, sanded, precoated with epoxy and glassed the gunnel edges. The rounded over edges really sucked up the epoxy and required three coats. I still notice a few dry looking spots.
Sunday was exciting because I started on the wheelhouse. This included lofting out the curved roof molds and then hanging them on temporary frames. Also I made a profile of the forward slanting windshield and tugboat roof to get a better idea of the scale of things. First roof profile seemed small and out of proportion, so I doubled the height. At this point I'm not entirely convinced I still want to go with the forward leaning windows and tugboat roof. So I'll live with it for a few days or week and then try a profile of rear leaning windshield and normal roof. Pictures and drawings only tell part of the story. Real life scale completely changes the way the boat feels. As part of this decision process I'm going to have to pull the trailer out and look at the boat from a distance. It's just too close and confining in the driveway. I'm starting to think that the forward leaning windshield and tugboat roof make the boat look rather slow and heavy like tugboats that push around heavy barges loaded with fill. But then again, I've gotta live with it for a few days.
