At each of the four corners are penetrations thought the bulkhead for wiring and plumbing in the forepeak/ anchor locker. I used some wonderful though-bulkhead fittings from Ronco Plastics that have various NPT pipe threads.

The hatch through the bulkhead require careful marking. I actually cut the Sb panel from the plywood, then held it in place while Helen marked the opening from the forward side.

The  hatch opening will be trimmed with wood and have an inner hinged cover to hide the actual door.

The plywood was coated front and back with Smiths CPES epoxy and screwed to the cleats with flathead stainless sheetmetal screws. I like sheet metal screws, either pan or flat head because the threads are deeper than wood screws and they are fully threaded. The center joint and the forestay chainplate will be boxed and covered.

The overhead under the side deck and the coach roof sides were templated withe the hot glued doorskins as well. proper planning of the cleat placement makes this complicated looking task  quite straightforward. Unfortunately, our Po and Sb sides are just enough different to preclude using the same template for both. At least now I know why the coach roof is 3/8 different from side to side: the Frame E is slightly twisted. If you’ve been following this blog from early days you will remember that i wrestled with a discrepancy  while installing the cabin sides, eventually working that annoying 3/8” off the back of the boat. or so  thought. Now, here it is again, but I’m ready for it. Wood is much easier to coax than metal.

The trickiest part of this installation was the front  panel of the coach roof. There are 4 angles converging here. The tool I relied on the make small trim cuts is the Bosch MultiX vibrating plunge cutter. One can trim fractions with it, very safe and fast.

The other thing we had to do before permanently fastening the panels was to think about electrical wiring and lights. we decided to make the ceiling permanent, as our rule of no through bolted deck fittings precludes there ever being any need to access the underside of the deck. So wiring for overhead lights was run in split loom and secured  with epoxied cable mounts and ties. Behind the walls run various pvc conduits with strategic access panels and boxes for future wiring runs.

Above one can see the cleats attached to the deck stringers. Provision for the Bomar deck hatch had to be made. This will be the same type of installation as the one in the head. The two round pipes are dorade vents.

I must say it is very gratifying when a panel fits with only a modicum of sanding on one corner. The corner joints will be trimmed with some simple molding. All of this will be painted as well. The plan is for the solid wood “ furniture” to be bright finished and the structure and walls to be painted. The dark English library look for a boat interior, while romantic, is impractical  both psychologically and expediently. But, as well, we don’t like the Herreschoff style interior with white panels edged in thin strips of solid wood; this looks too busy to our eyes. So our interior will be a blend between the two extremes. At least it’s not all plastic.