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And thus the work proceeds;
the two tackles hoisting and lowering simultaneously;
both whale and windlass heaving, the heavers singing,
the blubber-room gentlemen coiling, the mates scarfing,
the ship straining, and all hands swearing occasionally,
by way of assuaging the general friction. —Herman Melville

Ahoy,

We worked on our athwartship floor. For those of us somewhat unfamiliar with nautical terms, a floor is a beam that runs across or athwartship of a ship or a boat. It all sounds much more important, though, if you simply call it an athwartship floor. I suppose since a floor must necessarily be athwartship, you could just as easily call the floor a floor, but I like the sound of athwartship. Athwartship floor just sounds important, and when you want to impress your friends, you need to sound important.

But I digress. (I'm not even sure I have friends I can impress.) Here is a photo of the cockpit, the juncture of cockpit sole and cabin bulkhead. A bolt embedded in epoxy runs completely though the keel and sole (some 34 inches, I suppose). The purpose of the bolt is to attach keel, sole, and floor to one another. The purpose is structural—



At first we thought about using hardwood. Indeed, Paul Riccelli had suggested such, but we used pine, primarily because pine was readily available and because pine is quite light weight. The floor would need to be at least 6 feet long. We ripped our stock and cut everything to length.



You may have noticed the metal brackets in the first photo. Craig Gleason had mentioned the tendency of the Stevenson Vacationer to separate from the cabin bulkhead. As a result, we reinforced the juncture of cabin bulkhead and sole. Since we wanted to keep the metal brackets, we decided simply to bury the brackets in our stock—



We made our cuts with a router, following a line we had drawn. Everything was by hand without a guide. As you can see, our cuts came out OK, much better, in fact, than I had expected. Our next step was to laminate our stock, to make the stock into a 4 x 4 beam. Our bolt would be embedded in epoxy, just as it had been in the keel.



In this last photo, the athwartship floor finally comes into its own. Indeed, we carefully cut a large radius (3/8 radius) along the outside edge. After all, you don't want your athwartship floor to look unfinished. People could laugh your athwartship floor to scorn for something like that. Hopefully, the large radius will make our floor look less hefty.

Yes, you are right. It does seem a bit strange to laminate stock into a hefty beam and then try to make that same beam look less hefty, but that is what we did and why we did what we did. Tomorrow, we will finish by filling any minute gaps and edges with epoxy. Everything needs to be water-tight. This is a boat, you know.



Once we have finished with the epoxy fill, we will paint our athwartship floor a nautical white. The floor, of course, will be hidden in a bridgedeck, along with our famous (and almost despised) bilge pump.

I sleep better at night, knowing that our boat now has a genuine floor. Well, maybe that is going a bit far, but I can tell you that having the keel reinforced and bolted to a floor running arthwartship simply makes a lot of sense. No need to fear a renegade dolphin running into your boat by accident. I can hear it now, "Eight bells and all is well!" We are ready for any eventuality— well almost.

I've always had difficulty with athwartship. A ship is too big for a thwart or is it to mean a container vessel, with a boat load of ship seats, I'm not sure. The piece of which Jim is referring, is generally known as a structural floor or just plan old floor, which of course you don't walk on, but sometimes can have the boards you do walk on, resting on top of them. These things you walk on are not floors, but are soles. If the soles have removable boards these, interestingly enough, are floor boards, rather then the seemly more obvious sole board. I'm sure some bar, long ago housed a booth with two gentlemen, one being a well respected sailor and builder, the other a writer looking to pen an assemblage of nautical terminology, for posterity. Sailors being what they are when not sailing, downed several glasses of rum, waiting for the writer to return from the restroom and the results have been proudly handed down ever since. These nautical terms can be quite confusing at times, particularly if your teacher has a substantial lisp, but can be remedied if both the student and practitioner, of the nautical speeksmanship have had a few glasses of rum.