Like the starboard wall, and for the same reasons, the back wall of the front cockpit was doubled. However we used 16mm Duflex rather than 10mm for this doubler. The reason was that it will form the door “rebate” with which we felt more comfortable being thicker. In addition to the door, this wall will have two portlights and a custom hatch to provide access to the engine end of the genset.
It would have been better to trench the hatch from the other side of the wall, so that there would not be a need to replace the removed laminate, however the space was too tight for the router.
To avoid the bulk created by regular tape joins, Tom used his custom joins to create the 1880mmx1460m doubler from a single sheet of 2400x1200mm of Duflex.
The steps to reinforce the cut-outs in this doubler have been described in earlier posts, so I won’t repeat them here. There were a few extra things however: a third unidirectional rope was placed in the hinge edge of both the door and door frame (in the doubler panel only); there was additional glass reinforcement in the door and door frame for the pull-bolt; and we had to keep reminding ourselves that the rebate for the door faced the exterior, whilst the rebate for the genset hatch faced the interior of the boat.
In the following picture, Tom is covering the wall face with glue, having already covered the face of the doubler sitting behind him in the cockpit.
Filleting and taping together the new doubled walls…
The Scrumble Project 