Portlights Installation continued...

     Sunday, May 22, I continued working on the installation of the non-opening cabin portlights.  Since these ports were not original to the Sea Sprite, and since they are built for a cored or just thicker cabin wall, I was forced to do some "creative fitting" work.  There is no coring anywhere on the Sea Sprite 23s - well the later editions ('70s) had some coring in the cockpit sole - and because of this it was necessary to build up the interior cabin wall for the ports' interior finish plate to fit snugly against.  Because of the slope in the interior cabin wall to cabin overhead transition, the ports' finish plates fit snugly against the cabin wall when mounted, but just on the sides and upper portion.  The bottom of the portlights, however, contained roughly a 1/4" gap that needed to be filled.  Filling this gap would ensure that when the finish plate was mounted to the port, the port would be pulled in tight and the port and finish plate would essentially sandwich the cabin sides.  

     The picture below is of the port side portlight without finish plate mounted.  The next step was to sand the paint down to bare fiberglass just below the portlight and halfway up the sides.  The width of the finish plate that overlaps the port itself - the portion that would rest on the cabin wall surface when mounted - is about 1/2".  This 1/2" width across the bottom of the portlight rough opening, and halfway up the sides, is what was sanded.  

With the sanding complete, it was time to solvent wash the sanding dust and begin to tape the surfaces to protect against epoxy adhesion.  The cabin wall surface around what was to be worked with epoxy was taped and protected.  The portlight itself was taped - the portions that protruded through to the interior of the cabin space; and the finish plate was protected with tape as well.  Here is a picture showing all surfaces protected with tape and reinstallation of the portlight.  Ready for epoxy.

...here is a shot of the void just below the finish plate that was to be filled with thickened epoxy.

     The final product:  West System epoxy thickened with a mixture of 407 low-density filler and 406 colloidal silica forced into the void between the finish plate and the cabin wall, around the bottom half of the portlight.  Later, I will remove the portlights, clean, and bed them in polysulfide to complete the installation.