It rained nonstop until almost noon today. Yesterday, there was just enough rain to annoy me and halt progress every hour or so. Today, I couldn't even resume work on the cockpit enclosure until half of the day was gone. Luckily, things seem to move faster when you do them a second time. I avoided several time-consuming mistakes from yesterday and was able to get the port side pieces fitted in about three hours. I then made a short trip to Gatewood Marine (more about that in a different post later today).
The late afternoon was spend fabricating the two main beams for the roof. I want a slight angle, or an arch, to the roof. The peak should be directly under the boom, and should be about two inches higher than the outboard edges. The only way to do this, since it is HDPE, is to superheat the plastic across a fairly large area (about 15 square inches), then bend it until it is close to where you want it. This process takes time and patience, since you can't heat the entire area all at once and you also need to get the inner core as hot as possible. You have to do this without burning it. Tricky, very tricky. Plus, since it is such a large area to heat, you have to work the same area a few diferent times while heating both sides. If I had two heat guns it probably would have gone a lot faster, since one side would not have been cooling while I was heating the opposite side.
It took about two hours to heat, shape, cool, and cut to size both of the beams. Then it started to rain. So, the day ended with the finish line in sight. I should be able to finish fitting the sides tomorrow. When that is completed I will make some new measurements for the front of the enclosure (the windshield pieces).