Hydro: bits and pieces

The deck of the hydroplane is taking shape.
We have formed the cockpit and combing.  The front fairing is getting closer to the final shape.
This week we stopped at a store in Oriental called Marine Consignment.
It is a great old shop with a crazy collection of nautical parts.  There are a lot of sailboat parts and various odd items.  One thing they have new this week is a bubble glass cockpit that was ejected off a fighter jet.  This was pulled from the Neuse river and was probably last airborne in the 1960's
I will try to get a photo of it to post this week.
We also found some bits for the hydro.....

The hydro is about 14 feet LOA. We will pull out the tape and check it after all fairing is completed.

A great wheel...

A great seat...

Stainless u bolts for the transom...

a bow eye...

The transom is a lamination of three pieces of 1/2 inch birch ply.
When we are done, it will be glass sheathed, faired and painted.
The u bolts will be set high and wide on the transom for pulling skiers and for any hoisting and securing needs.

Hydro: top sides shaping

The hydro's top sides are being designed in place.
We had a overall idea of the form of the deck before construction began.  Once we had the hull to work with, we began building the needed structural reinforcements. With these in place, we started  shaping with the leading edge of the pontoons.
These were filled with 2 part 2 pound foam.  We are using a rough grit disk sander to shape these.
Today we started forming the cockpit fairing.  To do this we cut a radius on a thin piece of ply and epoxied it in place.  We used this to hold pine battens.  These were resin coated and stapled in place.
Over these, we are adding layers of heavy biax glass.
After the pontoon foam and cockpit fairing is satisfactorily shaped, the whole deck surface will get a lamination of glass cloths to bring it up to strength.