As part of the electrical project, we intended to move the engine panel from its position on the port side of the cockpit well back to the aft end of the cockpit well. Since this would necessitate some glass repair, we decided to take the opportunity to remove some items left over from the old A4 engine, as well as relocate the manual bilge pump which a previous owner had installed in the cockpit sole.

Lazarette Access

Since we intended to put the engine panel in the opening which was originally designed for access to the lazarette area, we needed to provide some provision for lazarette access. The obvious solution was to provide top-loading access to this area.

I decided on an appropriate size and built a simple rectangular cleat of poplar. This received a coat of epoxy for water-proofing, then was used to mark to position of the opening. Once the layout lines were drawn onto the poop deck, I drilled holes at the four corners and cut the opening with a jigsaw. I was amazed to find that the poop deck was cored with 3/4 inch balsa, and had a total thickness of over one inch!

Once the opening was cut, I rough sanded the edges and painted them with epoxy to waterproof them. I then marked and drilled for the fasteners for the cleat, which I planned to bed in polysulfide and install with stainless screws. I followed standard procedure for holes in the deck, overdrilliing and then filling with epoxy. Once the epoxy kicked, I then redrilled a pilot for the fastener. I also milled a small countersink to allow for a pocket of sealant around each fastener.

Once this was done, I carefully masked both the cleat and the deck area. I squeezed out a heavy bead of 3M 101, making sure that I had plenty of bedding compound, and installed the cleat with six stainless screws. Once the cleat was fastened, I carefully cleaned up the squeeze-out.

Lazarette Hatch Cover

Once the opening was cut I was able to build the cover for the lazarette access. The cover was a simple mahogany frame with a mahogany plywood lid which was set flush in a rabbett. Construction was simple, with the frame being glued up first and the rabbett being cut with a rabbetting router bit. Once the lid was fit into the rabbett and glued into place, I carefully trimmed the edges of the frame flush with the lid with a block plane.

Once the lid was built I scribed the camber of the deck onto the frame and shaped it to fit tightly to the deck using a coping saw and a low-angle block plane. A final sanding and 8 coats of varnish completed the project. The hatch cover currently simply rests on the deck, held in place by the cleat. If I ever consider off-shore sailing with Dasein, I will modify the hatch arrangement so that it can be fastened in place.

Engine Panel

During the first couple season of sailing with this boat, one of the constant irritations turned out to be the location of the Yanmar engine panel. It was located on the port side of the cockpit well, forward of the cockpit lockers. In this location, the stop key was constantly getting caught on the jib sheets, or getting knocked by a shin while moving about the cockpit. I decided that we should move the panel to a more protected location at the aft end of the cockpit well. I discussed this with Tim Lackey, who had put Glissando's panel in this location, and he seemed happy with the location. Ultimately, however, he decided to build a new, deeper surround, to offer his panel even more protection. He graciuosly agreed to build two identical surrounds, thus saving me from that small project. Click here to read about the surround construction.

The first step was to remove the panel from its old location. This proved to be a real challenge, of course, as the panel was fastened with cheap self tapping screws which threaded into cheap metal clips on the other side of the bulkhead. These were, as is typical, corroded beyond hope of removing. Ultimately I had to grind the heads off the screws. Of course, I scarred the edges of the panel somewhat in this process. Further, whoever had originally installed the panel had over-tightened the screws and cracked the plastic. To hide this, I milled some simple flat trim and used that to cover the mess.

Once that was done, it was a simple matter to install the panel and surround in its final location. I screwed through from behind, and bedded the surround in 3M 101. I built a simple plywood cover to protect the back of the engine panel and wiring harness connections, and ultimately will install a simple plexiglass cover for the front. Click here for another view.

Once all of the miscellaneous items in the cockpit had been removed, it was time to start the glass work. I had a major hole in the cockpit well where the engine panel had been, 3 small round holes from the old A4 instruments, and two holes in the sole from the manual bilge pump and the A4 shift linkage.

Warm-weather Glassing

The first step in getting the holes glassed in was to grind a 12 to 1 bevel around the edges to allow for a good bond and smooth transition.Then I made some temporary backers for the openings by wrapping corrogated cardboard with heavy plastic. I held these in place with some short lengths of 2x4 which I wedged between the backer and the hull.

I hoped that I would be able to get all the glass into the opening left by the engine panel in a single operation, but since my cockpit sole is cored, I knew that those holes would take several steps. I started by cutting several pieces of 24 oz biaxial fabric for the panel opening, and a single layer of 24 oz biax to act as a lower skin for each of the openings in the sole. I mixed up a pot of epoxy, wet out the fabric, and rolled it into place.

Despite the fact that it was an early April day, the sun beating down on the cockpit made it amazingly warm. So warm, in fact, that about an hour after laying in the glass when I came back to check on the cure, I found that it was quite hard! Well into the green cure stage. Amazing. I took advantage of this fact and went ahead and installed the balsa core into the sole along with the top skin.

Then, about another hour later I was able to lay on a the first coat of fairing compound. I had a little trouble with this step, as I mixed the epoxy and filler indoors, where ambient was about 55 degrees. I mixed it to what I thought was the right consistency, but when I got the compound on the cockpit well, the blazing sun warmed it up sufficiently to really lower the viscosity and the stuff oozed nastily down the well. UGH! Fortunately that same blazing sun kicked the epoxy in no time flat, and amazingly I was able to sand and apply a second coat of fairing compound just a few hours later! Four days worth of epoxy work in just one day!

Fill and Grind

The gelcoat on Dasein is in decidedly poor condition over the entirety of the boat. Since I was fairing the new glass work anyway, I toyed with the idea of grinding all the gelcoat out of the cockpit to produce a nice surface for fresh paint. (even though I was only planning a temporary paint job in the cockpit just to cover the new glass—when the decks get recored I will be awlgripping the deck). However after 10 minutes with a 7-inch high speed grinder with 40 grip disks only managed to grind about a 1 square foot area, I decided that now wasn't the time to go crazy with the grinding.

Instead, I decided to simply fill the worst cracks, gaps, and missing chunks of gelcoat with fairing compound. I then gave the whole cockpit area a moderate sanding, concentrating my efforts on the smooth gel areas, while attending less effort to the nonskid areas. Again, I was only intending this paint job to last a couple of seasons at the most. My primary goal was to cover all the new epoxy and glass, and to improve the footing in the cockpit by renewing the nonskid.

Prime and Paint

Once things were acceptably smooth, I cleaned all the grinding dust and wiped down the entire cockpit area with paint thinner. Once the thinner had flashed off, I masked the arbitrary lines I chose for the ending of the cockpit paint and brushed on two coats of Brightside primer, sanding between coats with 210 grit paper. The pure white of the primer was blinding in the bright sun. Click here for another view.

Once the primer was dry, I turned to the task of painting the borders around the nonskid areas and the walls of the cockpit well. I used "White" Brightside paint for these areas. I started behind the icebox hatch lid and worked around the seats in a clockwise direction till I reached the aft end of the starboard seat, then I went down into the cockpit well and worked back around in a counter clockwise direction along the well. I then went back over the port seat from the aft end back up to the ice box hatch. I used 2 coats of the white sanding lightly between coats.

I let the white cure for several days before I masked off the nonskid areas as I wanted to minimize the chance of pulling up the paint before it had fully cured. I used the expensive silver tape for this procedure, as I find that the cheaper tapes don't hold up as well, no do they come up as nicely after baking in the sun all day. Masking the nonskid areas took quite some time as I made an effort to create fair lines throughout. At all the corners I overtaped and cut a small radius (using a quarter as a template).

Once the cockpit was taped off, I mixed up the paint for the nonskid areas. I used Brightside "Seattle Grey" with flattening agent and the Interlux Polymeric Noskid Additive for grit. Application was simple and I rolled on 2 coats of the grey using a 3-inch roller, allowing about 3 hours between coats, as the paint was curing very quickly in the hot sun. I pulled the tape as soon as the second coat of paint had been applied. Click here for another view.