[wtenglish]

Not a lot of progress on the boat this past week with work, my one year wedding anniversary and the holiday weekend so I thought I would mix it up with some fishing pics I had mentioned earlier. This was March, Friday the 13th at the Marathon Hump in the Florida Keys. We had a pretty good haul with a couple of bull dolphin, blackfin and skipjack tuna, amberjack (I released another 40 lb'er), queen snapper and a snowy grouper. It was rough day but worth the pounding!




I did get some sanding done on the exterior transom skin this past week. It doesn't look like much but if you look back at one of the first few pics you can see all of the caulk that had been used when the reinforcing plate for the transom was previously installed. It was very tough to remove. I used a wood chisel to scrap it and my orbital sander to take off the top coat of paint and the bottom paint that was on the lower transom below the water line. I've gotten lots of material ordered and hope to really get cranked up in the next couple of weeks. It cost more but I decided to go with a 1.5" Coosa board (Bluewater 26) for my transom core so it will be a one piece installation. I also spent some time calculating the amount of 8 lb structural foam that the stringers will require. My initial estimate is giving me roughly 5.0 cubic feet per stringer. That stuff is expensive and I don't want to order more than necessary.


Other than that I just continued removing hardware from the top cap. I drilled some pilot holes to determine what the original thickness of the coring material for the bow and gunwales was. What used to be wood was nothing but sawdust and that is being kind. However, dropping a tape measure in the pilot holes it appears a 3/4" material was used in the bow and transitioned to a 1/2" at the gunwales. You can also see where the wiring for the forward navigational light was glassed in. I plan on glassing in a conduit to blow strings through to pull my wires. I couldn't imagine the headache if you had a nick in a wire and would up with a short or some other freak occurrence and need the ability to pull them if necessary.