Deck seams taped on Pygmy Borealis XL

Today I removed the deck and added the fiberglass tape along all of the inside seams. Also built up the seams between the reinforcement panels as per the Pygmy manual.

This is the deck before any tape was added.

The deck is always a bit awkward to prop up and keep reasonably stable, but then today it occurred to me to simply use two foam car rack kayak carriers. I had a couple sitting around. They worked perfectly! This is the deck upside down on the two foam carriers. Why has it taken me four kayaks to think of this?!?!

Again, I'm a bit slow at times and completely forgot to take pics of the deck while it was still upside down. I'll add some later when I remove the deck again. However this is the deck taped back on the hull to dry. I waited about 2-3 hours for the epoxy to get pretty tacky and then taped the deck back on the hull to dry.

Tomorrow I'll remove the deck and sand smooth the seam tapes.

The aft cockpit deck recess plate went in super easy. I wrestled with it a bit on my last kayak but this time it pretty much just snapped into position. I think that the trick this time was that I beveled the hell out of aft underside. Much more than I did last time. This time I used my stationary sander and reeeeally beveled it. Probably way too much past 45 degrees but it fit beautifully and with all of the fiberglass backing that I'll be adding tomorrow it really doesn't matter if it's a little thin on the underside. I'm just so happy that it looks really great!

More tomorrow when I complete the underside of the deck and start to think about fiberglassing the inside of the hull.

I've only been working on this for a month now so I'm making really fast progress. Hope to have the build done by Halloween. Might not varnish it though until spring when it warms back up. Unless I can get it into my basement and varnish it there! Hmmm...

Aloha!

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