The Bulkhead Curve
By Nick Champion

     I started my Weekender in January 2000, with the full expectation that I might be in the water by the 4th of July. HA! It hasn't been cold weather or family obligations which slowed me down. It has been the insufferable Louisiana heat, my own inertia and a few mistakes which have held up the show.
     When I went 3–D (about early April) I discovered that the cabin bulkhead didn't land in the designated place described in the plans. The floor stringer it was supposed to anchor onto put the bulkhead at an absurdly low pitch. Also, the measurement from the bulkhead to the transom was off by about inches. I went back to the plans, trying to figure out how the Stevenson's got it so wrong. For the moment, I decided that the measurement was supposed to be taken from the front of the floor panel joiner instead of the rear. That seemed to account for most of the discrepancy, but still...
     I decided to tackle some of the other small jobs to keep the project moving while I pondered solution. I cut out and fabricated the ship's wheel, rudder, bow chocks and several other pieces, but I was stuck on the cabin bulkhead placement. I laid out a possible remedy, dry fitting a 4+ inch spacer shim to the forward edge of the floor/bulkhead stringer. This put the bulkhead at an acceptable angle, but the cabin was that much smaller and the cockpit that much larger. However inelegant, this seemed to be a solution I would have to live with. Then in a rare moment of insight and clarity, I realized that I had misread the plans. When lofting the deck panels, I had placed the bulkhead curve 9 inches aft of station 10 instead of 9 inches forward of station 11. This accounts for the misplaced bulkhead. Now what to do? On at least four occasions, I decided to move ahead with my spacer remedy, but each time I vacillated when I looked at the front step I was going to leave in the cockpit. It was something I would see each time I boarded or looked at or even thought about my Weekender.
     This became a bottleneck. I couldn't proceed with the sides until I committed to the placement of the cabin bulkhead. Since I had discovered the error of the deck curve placement, I toyed with the idea of somehow moving this curve 5 inched to the rear. I played with this idea, weighing the feasibility of a curve replacement v. the front step idea and decided to try moving the curve.
     Once I decided to try this, it all fell into place. I copied the curve onto a piece of 3/8 ply, repeating the curve five inches aft on the same piece of wood. I cut out and dry fitted this in place, and sistered this small piece onto a longer piece of 3/8 to glue and screw in place. I back filled the seam with thickened epoxy and PRESTO: it worked! I repeated the process for the other side and I had a solution, which brought me back to specs.
     The lesson I learned is this: don't get hung up on small mistakes. I think I would have been OK with my makeshift remedy, but I wasted a lot of time fretting and worrying about it. The actual solution took less than two hours to employ, but almost two months to think about. I'm glad I took the time to finally get it right, but now my launch date will be in the late fall instead of summer. That is if I don't get hung up on any more Stevenson mistakes.