Foam Deck

Foam Deck

We started on the deck by making the cockpit sole. The entire deck is made of foam and because it needed to be vacuumed for glassing we couldn’t put any holes in it. The deck didn’t take long because it is all big pieces of foam laid out on the deck. Most pieces of the deck was scribed and shaped to fit and the edges were beveled to join them up when gluing them together. The blister or cabin top was a bit tricky to do. Strips of foam were beveled and tapered to the shape of the blister and it needed to be held down when glued without putting holes in the foam

The entire deck was glassed and vacuumed down. The glass overlaps by 50mm and we had to rebate out 50mm wide for every overlap to ensure it is smooth and flat. The beam of the deck was made 50mm bigger which left us enough space to get the vacuum tape down and away from the wet resin. Along the deckline from the forward end to aft there was another rebate for when we glassed the outer skin of the hull and it could lap over the deck by 50mm.

15mm Thick Solid glass plates were made and installed on the blister where the mast will be and on the transom and hull topsides for extra strength for all the pressure and tension it’s going to need to handle. Carbon uni strips was also glassed on the bulkhead forward and aft face in exactly the same place for extra stiffness. These carbon strips run from the top of the bulkhead all the way down to the hull through the cockpit sole and disperses out. A hatch was also cut out to enable a person to get inside the boat.

Vacuuming  has its benefits: it ensures the fiberglass is pressed down tightly to the deck and without spanning. It eliminates air bubbles to prevent delaminating and it gets rid of excess resin to make the surface smooth. It is a fairly simple and smart concept but can be tricky sometimes if you make mistakes and anything can happen. After a few goes and errors we quickly realized where our mistakes were and we improved our skills. After each time when the vacuum pump was turned on it was time to listen for any air escaping into the bag or holes in the bag and seal them up with some vacuum tape until there is complete silence and the pressure gauge shows we have a vacuum!