Annie Hill wrote:

At last, they're finished!  I've not bothered writing up my blog, because I've simply been laying the decks.  Well, now they are finally down and I wrote it all up and then forgot to post on here.  I think they look wonderful and are well worth the effort and expense. The deck has ended up at about 14/15 mm thick and is astonishingly more stiff than it was with the 10mm, 8 laminates of plywood.

I can well believe the extra stiffness, All good. The one thing I did want to ask though, I was reading a blog (another one) where they were painting their deck (standard glass sandwich thing). The comment was that with the grey primer, it was too hot inside (Azores) and they were happy to have the white final on for that reason. Does the thicker wood deck isolate things that much that a teak deck that is darker than primer grey is not too hot?

I ask because you are not the only one, teak decks are quite common. Looking at your deck shows why, they do look wonderful. Then again, may the complainer is just a "Wuss".

I've just posted my latest update.  I've been laying the teak deck, which is very slow and not that photogenic, so it's only a short read.

Looking very good, Annie. If Noel isn't commenting on the joints, it must be because they're perfectly acceptable. No false modesty, please, young lady, it's all going very well, this is a boat to be proud of.

I see the hinges on the forehatch on the forward side, but can't see the hinges on the galley hatch. I might have considered putting them on the aft side, so as to get a good down draught when you go to Fiji. Anyway, it's good to have both on the steeply angled part of the deck so that water won't lie on top of them.

I've finally managed to find the time to update my blog.  Starting to play with bits of teak now, which is fun!

David wrote:I could wish that you had built the deck in the way that I originally envisaged, with longitudinal deck beams and closely spaced stringers (Gougeon Brothers pp 260 - 262), not laminated deck beams, and with single layer ply, longitudinally orientated, on the planar side decks and double layer ply on the curved centre of the deck. You would have found it much quicker and easier to build, and just as strong. But it's all done now, and the final result will  be very serviceable.

You decided against the extended "eyebrow" above the companionway, and that's fine, but it will still be good to incorporate some form of drip rail here, so that water doesn't migrate along the underside of the deck. Look at the underside of a windowsill on a house, and you will generally find one or two grooves, to disrupt that migration path.

I did actually more or less follow the Gougeon Bros advice and they do use beams as well as stringers, ie a grid pattern.  The reason for the thickness of the material was to assist in attaching the deck liner.  The plans that you gave me - you may have revised the deck structure since designing the smaller Sib-Lim only gave me two large stringers.  This wouldn't have given me sufficient wood to fasten the plywood to, or for the panels to achieve the desired shape.  I added extra stringers, if you recall, but even so, I had to add another couple for the deck between the bilgeboard cases, because the plywood naturally created a hollow.  I also like that fact that the way my deck has turned out looks like one constant camber rather than two flats and a curve.

Surprisingly, it was very difficult to bend the 6mm ply in the bilgeboard area - it was much easier to get it to sit nicely using the longer sheets, hence the extra, extra stringers mentioned above.

I am probably going to finish both the forward and after ends of the deck as we did on Badger.  At the companionway there will be a small timber for the acrylic to rest against and I suspect that will make an effective drip rail  However, the water can only go as far as the little fore and aft bulkheads because of the deck beam. Don't know nuffink about houses and window sills, but I do know about leaky companionways!!

By the way - the Gougeon Bros do not use butt blocks, they scarf on their dainty beams.  I felt quite happy to butt on my wider beams.  The second layer of ply makes for a good butt block!