In today’s Video of the Week, Matt and Jessica from MJ Sailing are letting in the light on their 42’ Catamaran build as they cut out the areas for the hatches and reinforce them with thickened Polyester Resin!
Matt and Jessica have been living their dream of sailing the world over the past 9 years and have been documenting it along the way on their YouTube Channel. After circumnavigating the North Atlantic in their last boat, a 1989 Sabre Targa 34, they took on a 2 year complete refit of a custom aluminum 37′ Monohull. They sailed her to the Arctic before they sold that boat and are now tackling their newest project: Building a 42ft Catamaran from the ground up!
In their last episode, Matt and Jessica spent the day getting their cabin tops brought from the side of their boat tent to fitting them in place on the boat. Once the center cabin top was in place, they put up each one of the sides in place as well. Then, Matt begins to beef up the area, adding structural beams to the opening of the cockpit. They fancy it up by adding gelcoat covers to go over the beams. Matt noticed the covers were bowed so they added a shim and adhered it with our Structural Repair Putty first to get a flush finish. And, to get the best bond possible, they attach the covers to the bulkhead beams with some thickened Polyester Resin. This simple step makes the world of a difference in the final appearance on the interior of the boat!
Matt and Jessica are then greeted with an exciting delivery; hatches! This is one of the most exciting parts of the build. Matt measures the templates for the hatches and begins to cut the openings in the front section of their cabin sides. After the openings have been cut for the new hatches, those cutouts would have to be reinforced with extra fiberglass so Matt begins to router out some of the foam core. To give the fiberglass something to stick to, the hollowed out area was first filled with thickened polyester resin. Then they took sections of the unidirectional fiberglass, rolled it up to fit it into the routed out area. It truly is illuminating the amount of light this brings into the cabin!
Be sure to like this video, and comment below what you think of MJ Sailing’s Catamaran build so far. And be sure to subscribe to their channel to see the rest of this build, and follow along as they headed to the Annapolis Boat Show last week, and we were able to get a special tour of the boat ourselves! Thanks for watching!
