26th February

Long time since an update.  I have spent several hours every day in the workshop but doing nothing exciting.  I have put on 2 coats of epoxy primer (with sanding in between) on top of the epoxy resin on the complete interior of Nuts.  This was after fitting some plywood doublers where cleats, push and pullpit will bolted on.  Also redrilled (and trial fitted)  all chainplates, stern drouge fixing points and bow towing/anchoring U bolt where I overdrilled the holes and filled with epoxy.  80% of the interior has its first coat of polyurethane finish coat and 10% has the second final coat on.  Deck ply has its first coat of PU finish coat on the underside.  I think I will give it the final coat before fitting so most of the surface will be painted and only have to do the deck beams and deck stringers once the deck is glued on and the epoxy fillets are done.  I dont like working with epoxy paint / PU paint fumes in a confined space so doing as much as possible before closing up the hull.  Finished all the painting in the bow and stern compartments so started filling with foam.

I cut slabs of 50mm thick foam sheet and had to plan it so I could fit and remove it through the hatch in the bulkhead.  Must be removable for access to the inside of the fixings that will be on the foredeck.  Not a tight fit so can jiggle the sheets out from inside the boat and refit. (tested)

A view from inside the forepeak.  I did a test with empty PET bottles and the best flotation I got was 50kg (in the bow top)  ie. 50 liters of empty bottles.  I tried with various size bottles to get the most flotation but there was always a lot of space between bottles.  I decided to go with foam and got close to 70kg of flotation in the same space even though I didnt try to make a tight fit.  I measure each piece of foam and calculate the cubic decimeters to get the kg buoyancy.  Fwd buoyancy flotation is now finished - however I might add some more under the bunk in the forepeak.  After all I am building my liferaft at the same time.

Started fitting foam flotation in the stern compartment.  That is 92.5kg of flotation so far and the foam weight 2.8kg.  Also making it a loose fit so it can be removed through the hatches.  The stern compartment will end up with over 400kg of flotation and I want to balance the bow and stern flotation.  There is a lot more plywood in the aft half of the boat which is buoyant as well.  I would be a bit happier with some more emergency flotation close to the bow.  The requirement is 700kg total  and I am hoping to have a bunch more than 800kg buoyancy.