Took some time over the 4th weekend to do many little things to improve Katie's lot in life. One of the most eagerly awaited was installation of a hawsepipe for the anchor rode - the big bundle of rope and chain hanging off of the bow pulpit does nothing to enhance her sweet lines, so I've been wanting to make a path for it to go below easily. Here's what I did:

First, this is a side view of the cutout for the hawsepipe hole. We Ariel owners have a generous 3/4" thick foredeck, and Katie Marie has (thankfully!) nice dry balsa up in there.



Here's the hole in the deck. I thought I'd be more nervous than I was when I put the spinning, sharp drill bit into the virginal (tho' old, for sure) deck glass to start the cutout. Perhaps because I knew it was for the better, I didn't have too many nerves about it.



Here you can see that I gouged out some balsa around the circumference of the cutout, extending back under the holes where the mounting screws would go. I only drilled those holes through the upper skin; I figured that way I could see when the gouging was sufficient, without worrying about epoxy drips down into the boat at those points. I backed the main cutout with some paper taped to the underside of the foredeck.



Here is the epoxy and microballoons slurry in place, and mostly hardened. Before I added the microballoons to make the goo that you see here, I used a Q-tip and some of the plain (kicked) resin to saturate the balsa between the deck skins. BTW - epoxy makes the cotton come off of Q-tips pretty fast; I used 2 of them just to wet the edges of this small hole. After the balsa was wet out, I mixed in the microballoons to make a dry, peanut-butterish consistency slurry, let that sit for a few minutes in the pot, and then smeared it in. After I took this pic, but before the resin had cured all the way, I used acetone on a rag to clean up the surfaces around the hole.



And here is the new hawsepipe in place:



To give a better idea of how it sits in relation to other hardware on the foredeck, I offer this pic:



And last, an image to show you the progress I've made on the brightwork. It was all sanded back to bare wood, had 1 thin and 2 normal coats of epoxy applied and sanded prior to receiving the varnish. It's a bit dirty in this pic, but you can see that it came out pretty good nonetheless. Not bad for an old Cetol hand.