The seams between deck and cabin house had been a significant source of leaking before. Following my boatyard mentor Jeff´s example, I put a rounded over piece of teak wood all around the cabin house, to seal the joint. Building the pieces for the round forward corners proved to be a test in patience, as it had to be made out of tiny little puzzle pieces glued together..
Two big wood projects were still waiting.
The first one were the toe rails. After realising that my hope to use the old toe rails again was very unrealistic, my friend Lisa and I started diving into this challenging chapter. Since our longest mahogany boards were around 10ft long, we had to splice three pieces together to built a rail long enough for Alani´s 36ft deck line. We built a box to make the cuts for the long splice that would connect two pieces of wood. After glueing the joints together, we faired, sanded and varnished the rail. The installation on the deck, I had decided, should be a combination of the classic closed toe rail and a lifted up one like on the Belizean fishing boats, that made it easier for water to drain. Again, a lot of prep work was necessary before the team of us was ready to install the long boards.
The other deck wood project were the cockpit coaming together with the winch bases. I still had two long beautiful mahogany boards from Belize, that I used for the coaming. We changed the design from round, steam bent corners, to straight corners, put together with three boards. The winch bases and connection pieces to the cabin house, I built of 2inch mahogany boards, glued together and shaped.
Additionally, I built a reinforcement piece for the bow, the base and cover for the lazarette hatch and put some trim wood on bow and stern.
Meanwhile, my wonderful and talented friend Lisa had been working on the chart table area. She built some super nice drawers and put together a smart storage area, together with a locker for the batteries underneath the chart table. How lucky was I to have such incredible friends…
What a delight it was to paint! How long had I been waiting for the moment to put some coats of paint on the finished topsides and decks. After some primer, I used two part polyurethane on the topsides and deck edges and Kiwi Grip as the non skid deck paint.
Read the next chapter Mast and Rigging