You remeber this boat...........

The 38' Northern Bay, the most important boat in the shop. And now the number one priority. Greg is back in Rhode Island with his 36' Calvin and after a couple of days of fishing hasn't found any major problems. The Northern Bay will now become my primary focus and if possible I won't be working on any other boat until it is out the door. Today I cut in the 3 aft deck hatches (not pictured). I was only going to cut in the aft starboard hatch so I could install the house batteries but once I was set up to cut hatches I made an executive decision to cut in all three. The hatches ended up being 28" square. Making all the hatches the same size will make it easier for John to make the aluminum frames that will act as the "guts" of the hatches. The aluminum frames will have a built in gutter and some type of way to lock the hatch down. All the gutters will be hosed to a larger hose that will drain overboard. Six deck hatches in total will make for a lot of hoses and gutters but it will all be worth it when under the deck is dry at all times. The decks are made out of 1" nidacore so they had to be decored, after the top layer of fiberglass had been cut out the plastic "honeycomb" material was knocked out with a hammer and chisel.

Between cutting hatches and hammering plastic, I made a custom battery box to fit under the deck on the starboard side of the boat. I was going to use the Blue Sea plastic battery boxes but two of them couldn't fit in the space provided because of the engine exhaust that runs through the area. The battery box was made out of plywood and will house 2 8d batteries. The box will be fiberglassed and screwed down to small stringers to hold it in place. By tomorrow there should be some pictures of the heavy duty battery cables run under the deck. The second picture is of the flybridge seats, guttered flip-top and a removable panel at the front to make for an area long enough for a full sized human to lay down. In other Northern Bay news the smaller Lewmar hatches arrived (finally) and they can be cut in tomorrow (one over the galley and one in the shower).

SHOP NEWS SHOP NEWS SHOP NEWS.

Dan Jr. gelcoated the hull of the small repair job captain's blue today, 4 coats of gel and it looks awesome (not pictured). Jeff ran 4/0 battery cable on Fish Tales and tracked down a couple of leaky fittings, then started on the bilge pump installation on another repair job. Clay finished off the deck replacement yesterday and moved onto repairing the hauling side of Lee's boat (not pictured). Otto remains sick with bronchitis. Dan returned from his quick vacation to the NASCAR race at Martinsville. John made a sick bait/lobster box (pictured), a steel flat bar cage, and half of a steel round rod cage. The weather is warming and three of the boats in the yard are getting launched tomorrow. Gotta catch those lobsters before the price drops.

Good post, Bad pictures. Except for the aluminum box nothing we did is in any of these photos. I'll take some better pics on Wednesday. This post is now officially long enough. Was it worth checking back in? We are up to 15 yes votes on the poll, however no one has sent me a deposit check yet. You are probably waiting for your tax return checks to arrive.