Topside Fiberglass

I can safely say I have figured out how not to do this.  The first thing to note is that this is now a 3 step process. I cut the fiberglass in two places so I could do a third at a time. I know cutting the fiberglass is not optimal. But I just can't work on it that long to get it all done in one shot. Doing the bottom was an entire day's work, and it did not have any odd features to work around.  It think I've whined about that before, so I'll move on to lessons learned.

My approach of clamping the fiberglass in place did not work. I ended up with waves in the glass around  the corners of the hatch opening trim.  I'm not that worried since I will have plenty of filling and fairing work to do anyway so I can fix the waves at the same time. The filling and fairing is mostly going to be to hide a the overlapping layers of fiberglass.  Next time I will fiberglass corners and odd features using fiberglass tape first.  Then I will cover the large sections with fabric.

It was good to be out in the boat shed. Even though fiberglassing is my least favorite job.  I'm beginning to think everyone should build a boat.   It does not have to a boat exactly, I suppose it could be anything, but it has to be an ambitious, personal project, sans a due date. Even though I haven't made it to the boat shed much lately. My life is better for it.

Below is a picture of how I left it. One more section of topside glass to go.