I have still been working on getting the forward cabin ready for component and floor board installation. I've made good progress on this. All the cabinetry has been refinished, the floor boards (underside) painted with bilge paint and the bilge area cleaned up and repainted. Everything is basically ready for the next phase which is installing the underfloor stuff (hoses and bilge wiring). I want to wait however for two weeks to give the bilge paint plenty of time too cure. Last time I only waited a week and had issues with the floor board paint sticking to the underfloor support paint.
In the meantime, that means I can start back on the aft cabin construction. Unfortunately, it must be the week for setbacks. Leo at Sampson Boat Building (on You Tube) had to remake a bunch of deck beams because of bad oak. Stephen at Acorn to Arabella (also on You Tube) is having to strip off some cedar planking and replace it with oak because the cedar isn't strong enough. And I am going to have to redo my aft floor boards (partially) because I wasn't paying enough attention when mocking up the helm.
What happened is that the helm is already space constrained fore and aft making it difficult to fit the helm and seat into the space available. I allowed 36" for this when I was mocking up which was just enough. This allows for the seat to be far enough back from the helm to give me knee room and still allows the helm to be deep enough to contain the equipment planned for inside. 36 inches aft of the front cabin floor ends just past frame 2. My mock up of the helm platform allowed for this and was even cut out to clear the gusset at the frame.
However, the design required the aft floor boards to be cut into two pieces so that the floor board aft of the helm platform could be opened without having to remove the helm. This is where the problem occurred. I measured back 36" from the forward edge of the floor board and noticed that they conveniently ended on frame 2. So I thought, All I have to do is add some end braces to the aft side of frame 2 and cut the floor boards.
What I forgot about is that the platform doesn't go all the way to the forward edge of the floor board, it's set back about 2 1/2". This allows the forward side of the helm cabinet to line up with the aft roof line. What this meant however (since I had already cut the boards and added the bracing) was that the helm platform overlapped the cut in the floor board by 2 1/2" inches.
Of course, this is a bummer. I stared at this for several hours trying to consider alternatives.
Shortening the length of the platform was no go because of the disappearance of adequate knee room from having to mount the helm seat farther forward.
The helm cabinet could potentially loose 2 inches in depth, but I had planned on mounting the electrical panel in there and it would have made things more cramped than they already would have been.
I thought about trimming the aft roof line but I could gain no more than 3/4" there.
Taking a bit off the length of the helm platform and the depth of the cabinet and some other small tweaks would have possibly gained me back the 2 1/2" but it would have still been cramped in the electrical compartment.
So after going through the denial phase for awhile, I decided that redoing the floor boards was the easiest fix. If you look at the first picture where the unpainted wood is clamped in position, on that side of the frame, I need the aft floor board to end about an inch aft of that point. What I am going to do is add a cross beam to the underside of the fore and aft floor joists in the area where I need the new supports. Then add filler blocks up to the level of the floor board. Then I will trim the aft floor board to match up to the new support. I will have to make a new forward floor board , but that shouldn't be too bad except that I will have to re-fiberglass and epoxy it afterwards.
Doing the floor boards allows me to leave all the other planning for the helm in place without compromising on space and seat location.
Sorry for the long winded post, but writing this helps me better see what I have to do.