Footwell

It feels like a bit of a fool’s job to first cut oval holes in the bulkhead 6 and then create plywood pieces to fill those holes. However, this had to be done because there was a change in the vision when a decision about adding a footwell was made.

Bottom of 9 mm didn’t feel that dependable, so I glued a doubler on it, and then filleted the edges of the well.

The general recommendation is to make the footwell short, in order to minimize its volume to avoid the so-called free surface effect which can compromise the stability of the boat in certain cirsumstances. However, I decided to defy this advice and make a full-length footwell to make it big enough for more than two persons’ feet. To limit the free surface effect, I built a separator board of 12 mm plywood in the footwell.

I used plywood dowels to help glue the separator board, but temporary screws might have been a better option. The length of the separator board turned out to be a little too precise, which caused problems during installation. I shortened it by a few millimetres, which made it easier to slide.

The footwell was primed with Tikkurila Temacoat RM 40, a two-component epoxy paint. It seems to have adhered very well to the epoxied plywood.