After three seasons of dealing with ill-fitting, inward slanting, half busted up floorboards with little nail heads working their way out to gouge unsuspecting bare footers, the time has come to take some action. As one who uses my boat for cruising exclusively, often sleeping at anchor under the cuddy deck (usually not a good night's sleep but the scenery is hard to beat...) my primary goal is to create a level sleeping surface. It may be a stretch, but perhaps I could go from "floorboards" to "cabin sole" Ha! not likely, but there is definitely room for improvement. For now, my priority is the forward floorboards and if all goes well, maybe the cockpit will get the same treatment.
So the plan is to scrap the old floorboards and start from scratch. If my boat is like all the other early DS1's, then you are all aware of just how loosely the original floorboard assemblies fit. The little crosspieces that hold the boards together only vaguely fit the shape of the hull, making the whole unit pretty wobbly. My plan is to make floor frames that will lie perpendicular to the hull using some scraps of black locust I have. Those will get epoxied and fiberglassed in place and then I'll make new floorboards out of some 1/2" ash boards my neighbor milled up for me from a log saved from the firewood pile. I am thinking that the new floorboards will be attached to each other using strips of metal fastened to the undersides. This will allow them to still be removed to two sections even though the frames will be permanently attached to the hull.
Progress has been good so far. Lots of scraping away at many layers of old paint to expose raw fiberglass to glue the frames to. Then a lot of figuring with level/straightedge, etc. to determine a plane to shoot for. The boat is off the trailer for the winter and I have it blocked up mostly level on the waterline in a tarp shed. Hoping that the hull is supported roughly the shape it is while floating. I definitely notice when putting it on the trailer that the keel rollers push up, somewhat distorting the shape of the hull. I want to make sure that the frames are attached well enough to resist this deformation while on the trailer. We'll see.
Here's what I've done so far:
Frames glued in place with thickened epoxy. Hard to see in the pictures, but I cut the inside lower corners off at a 45 degree angle to allow for drainage. It wasn't till they were glued down that I realized that water will still get trapped above the stringer bump-outs. Hoping this won't be an issue. Probably not while on the water since the rolling of the boat should keep any water moving, but sitting on the trailer, I reckon little puddles will form there. Next step when the weather warms up again is to cover the frames with 4 oz glass and run it out onto the hull a couple of inches.