I can almost touch it...............................................

Yes i have conquered the engine bay, no more will i have to crawl around this bloody space getting covered in glass dust and other crap. All the glass work was finished today (Sunday) so when i have the time i'll re-drill the holes in the Aluminium plates now bonded into the bulkheads and fit the newly-powder-coated steel angle then its chain hoist in the shed roof and get the lump in.

Got a bit giddy wiping the penultimate list off the wipe-clean board this afternoon, after this i need to attack the interior get the windows and coamings finished and we can paint.

I bit the bullet and bought the mega expensive cleats and stanchion bases i was whinging about last month but not before i sold a load of old cordless tools i no longer use on ebay to raise the money. I went a different route to start with and what got delivered was a load of damaged, poorly-made rubbish.

So after a bit of soul searching i decided there was only one way i'd find nirvana: that was buying the right gear (even if it is limb money) as i'd only regret fitting the other rubbish and you spend a long time looking at things like that on a boat......well i do,............ sad i know. 

Still the last bit of glass work in the engine bay was also my most ambitious as i went 'wet method' so cut large pieces of cloth to go from the middle of the bulkhead down onto the bilge four times in 600g bi-ax. I decided i'd do it in two hits of two each side, starting on port as that was the more uncomfortable side for me so didn't want to tackle it tired, i even penciled on the bilge where to put my feet so as not to tread in the freshly rolled cabosil.

I say ambitious as the space is so confined and squating half-in half-out with a one metre long roll of soaking wet cloth in rubber-gloved hands got me thinking i'd bitten off more than i could chew but to my amazement everything went swimmingly.

If there were any flies in the ointment it was rolling out the last two panels for the starboard side on a piece of 4mm ply i was using as my wet board, which by then had a heap of already setting epoxy from the previous three hits and was starting to gel. I only realised this when i tried to roll the newly-wetted cloth onto the cardboard roll and realised i had a battle on my hands, it came up off the ply but only after i'd stretched it way out of shape but the gods were smiling and i managed to roll most of the rucks and creases out of it in the bay. I sanded the rest out this morning to lay the final panel on the bilge floor, i just hope the gods smile on me a bit longer as i'm still determined to paint this thing asap, i'd hoped in August but somehow time and circumstance seem to conspire against me, here's hoping.

Rog