Sanding, sanding over the ocean blue...

Since last time I've gotten in the cockpit seats and begun a lot of sanding.  Basically I want to get everything at least primed--and the area under the foredeck finish painted--before the deck goes on.

Time to fit the cockpit seats.  This photo shows test-fitting the top of the starboard seat while the port seat front is fitted to the curve of the bottom.  Tere's a fore-and-aft cleat that runs along the tops of the floors.  The seat front notches over the floors and screws/glues to this cleat.  It will later act as the bottom of the three locker openings. These lockers will be watertight for flotation.

Here's another view, showing the seat tops in place.  Starting to look like a boat!  But still some work to do on the seats, namely cutting out the locker fronts for hatches.  I'd call them doors but they won't have hinges but will be held in place with simple thumb cleats.

A couple of stiffeners (gussets) are added to help support the hull under the seats and openings are cut in the seat fronts.  These gussets separate the under-seat space into three lockers.  Here's the whole thing being glued/screwed into the boat.  Epoxy fillets join the gussets to the hull, but regular cleats are used along the tops because I don't want to epoxy the seat tops to the boat. Rather, I'll bed and screw them in place so they can be removed later for repairs/modifications.  The forward gusset is made of 3/8" ply and has a large hole in it to lighten it a bit.  The aft one is solid 1/4" ply.  (This ply all comes from left-over bits and pieces from planking the boat.) The aft gusset is solid (watertight) so that the aft-most locker can be a "wet locker" while the forward two are "dry lockers" with watertight hatches.  Or I can add a hatch to the aft-most locker to make it watertight too, I'll decide that later.

Here I've tilted the boat over onto the starboard side for better access and begun a few hours of sanding in preparation for primer paint and epoxy-coating the bilge.  I don't care what anyone tells you, sanding epoxy is not fun!  But it'll be a thrill to see almost the whole boat with some paint on her, that's for sure.

Lots more sanding to do...then coating and priming...then more sanding.  Then I'll be able to get to work on the deck hurrah!