The Deck Build

Bob 'The Chief' Parks and Mike 'Teak' Parks sealing the vacuum bag edges.  The plastic tubing that you see snaking around the laminate are vacuum lines, to compress the Gougeon Pro-Set epoxy and Vectorply e-glass laminate together with the Gurit foam, which is in between the plies of the laminate.  As a method of compressing laminates, vacuum bagging is an awesome, simple technology.

All parts are weighed as they are built.  Here, the finished deck comes in at 92 pounds.  The dark patches interspersed throughout the laminate are Coosa's industrial strength core material, a foam that has fiberglass stranding throughout, and gives tremendous compressive strength.  In the foreground are the foam reinforcements for the forestay intersect (the forestay is load-bearing), and also the reinforcements for the spinnaker pole/sprit for the asymmetrical spinnaker.  This foam is so strong that hardware may be installed into the deck laminate with stainless self-tapping screws, not even through-bolted.  Another pair of famous scows, the two A boats built by Brad Robinson, have most of their deck hardware, cleats and fairleads, mounted in this way.  The foam in the laminate is 3/4 inch/19 millimetres thick Gurit 'M' (shorthand for 'marine').  Most scows have 3/8 inch or 1/2 inch foam, A scows other than Brad's are 5/8.  A thicker core results in a thicker laminate (1 inch in the case shown above), and the increased panel stiffness is a wonder to behold.

We live and die by the weighing scales.  The little white sticker is the certification.