I didn't get a whole lot done this weekend due to St Patty's day. However, i did get some work done.
I wanted to lay up some solid fiberglass slats for my new tank to sit on. It's a pretty easy process but does require alot of material, i.e. cloth and resin depending on how thick you want them to be.
Start off with a piece of inexpensive tile board from home depot. It's just sitting on a piece of particle board across a couple of saw horses. i basically figured out that i wanted 6 slats, 4 inches wide, 28 inches long. SO i measured out a 26 x 30 rectangle (give yourself a little room for error) on the tile board.
What you want to do next is WAX the tile board. Not sure whether or not any old wax will work, but this is a mold release wax we bought from US composites. It looks just like regular wax. It's cheap enough so oh well. Lay on a good thick coat so the resin wont stick to the tile board.
I precut my cloth because the resin working time is slow little that you want to have it all ready to go
Then all you do is wet out a layer, add a layer, wet, add, wet, add, etc until you have the desired thickness. I did 7 layers alternating 1708 biax, mat, and some leftover 4oz cloth.
No picture, but when it hardens slide a screw driver underneath and the whole sheet will pop up in 1 piece. I trimmed the slats to the desired length and width.
With 7 layers mine came out to be just about 1/4" thick, solid fiberglass
On a more exciting note - i slipped off to a dealer to pick up this :
Unfortunately - it's not something overly exciting. However, it is a new in box 2005 Yamaha 115 2 Stroke.
I asked alot of questions to other seacraft owners about the engine/boat combination. This hull is rated for 225HP, which is overkill and anyone who has one will agree. One owner actually has a 225 on this hull and reported 62 mph top end. That's a little extreme for me. A 130 - 150 would have been nice, but i paid about 50% of the price on this 115 so i'm going to see how it runs. There are plenty of owners out there running 115's on 20 Seacrafts. My WOT is going to be in the 35 - 38 mph range with a cruise of 25 - 27 mph. For my purposes the engine should be adequate and give good fuel economy for a 2 stroke carb'd engine. I'm actually looking forward to seeing how it does perform.
I hope that re-doing the deck, cutting the fuel tank down and moving it forward will help reduce the overall weight of the boat. Likewise i'm not going to put a T-Top on. This will be a pretty simple rig, so i hope that the 115 will perform well. If i can cruise at 25 and WOT 35 i will be 100% happy. My intended purpose for the boat is really summer time fishing the upper/mid bay and spring fishing for flounder in the skinny water.
Tight Lines
-Mike