J/30 Class Association Forums J/30 Forum The Boat, Sails and Equipment Cockpit Bulkhead Upgrade

My boat has some nice wood on the cockpit bulkhead, but in the interest of making a fast boat, pretty and fast I'm upgrading the coverage size and adding a new Ritchie compass. So I made some 1/2" thick panels that I will attach to the bulkhead to mount the existing electronics and this new compass. The compass requires a vertical bulkhead mounting or a tapered piece to make the mount be vertical. Well that means I have just made two of these tapered blocks. The wood is Bubinga and will need to be carefully sealed up to last, but if someone wants the offcut piece I will gladly mail it to you for just the cost of postage. If you are interested in the original wood panels we can discuss that too.

I had a Ritchie compass installed at one time but found it took a beating from crew in the cockpit. I went with Nexus/Silva that didn't stick out so far.

I suppose that is an important tradeoff. I wanted a compass that was easy to read and this one for sure fits that bill. Somebody starts abusing my compass and fancy bulkhead there may have to a keel hauling.

Here are the new covers for the front of the cockpit. This is bubinga and is 1/2 thick. I have covered both sides with 4 oz. glass using epoxy resin and have multiple coats now of spar varnish on them. The reason I glassed them was to give them a fighting chance in the weather, so they are sealed and hopefully the glass will help control thermal expansion, we will see. They are ready for installation as soon as it dries out here, probably about the 4th of July.

It dried out today and it has been warm too. So the new covers got installed. When it gets even warmer I will work on the trim around the companion way. I think I can make it match the bubinga better, or I will have to figure out another solution.





Now the only thing left on this project is tracking down one of the tiny slip on connectors that went missing for the wind instrument.