Finishing the bottom glassing after the hull was turned was straightforward and uneventful. After applying fillets and glass to the inner chine, I cut 12” wide strips of 24oz biax to use on both sides of the main stringers. Since the stringers were just a bit over 7” tall, this left a generous portion of glass to wrap down onto the bottom. I felt this gives a bit of extra strength where it can most be used – tying the hull to the stringers. Renn is right about soaking the 24oz biax with epoxy when he says to ‘pour it on’. It takes a LOT of epoxy to saturate that 24oz cloth. I applied the biax in 7’ long strips and this is about a long as I would want to do it alone. Coat the stringers first, then liberally apply the epoxy to the biax, put the biax on the stringer and bottom, roll it out with a bubble roller, then more epoxy on top and another firm rolling with the bubble roller. This gets the biax down nice and snug.

For the ‘secondary’ stringers, I decided to use ¾” plywood which adds a bit of strength and allows me to go without a nailing strip along the tops for the deck. All stringers were filleted and glassed with 10oz glass, then given a final coat of epoxy to completely fill the weave. I also didn’t forget to give multiple epoxy coats to the inside of the limber holes.

I added just a ¾” spacer on the tops of the stringers – just enough for the deck to clear the fuel tank. At the transom, you can see where the 24oz biax ties the transom to the boat and also the ‘sump’ which will contain the pumps for dewatering. (You can easily make out the 24oz biax because its whitish since its too thick to become completely transparent when glued) There are also the 3 limbers leading from the 3 separate underdeck spaces into this sump which will normally be plugged, except when the boat is on dry land. I will be running no wires, pipes or hoses under the deck.

Once the underdeck areas were complete, I filled them in with loosely applied closed-cell polyethylene foam. This will provide a tremendous amount of flotation (approx 40cu ft of flotation) while still allowing water to drain and air to circulate. I removed and plugged all of the screw holes along the edge deck nailing strips. All fasteners (screws) that would not be removed were 316 stainless.

Before installing the deck, I made little signs and took close ups of all under deck areas for later reference in case I wanted to install something later.