Thanks Mike, it’s taken twenty us years and an unbelievable amount of money to get here. The picture you refer to shows the door open and the one before it shows the door closed.
The four items above the stbd. Pilot berth are probably the lee cloth cleats with small protective blocks. If you zoom in they are clearer.
As far as the dodger pictures I take it you’re looking at:
https://picasaweb.google.com/111834525627890796788/Dodger?authuser=0&feat=directlink
I actually didn’t make the dodger Picasa dodger album specifically for Westsailors but for people asking questions. One guy drove from the bay area, 75 miles just to see it and talk to me. I know captions would have been nice but it is more effort than I wanted to do. More than a dozen people wanted to see pictures after talking about how we did it.
The process is actually easier said than done. I use to build street rods and did body/paint work on the side. It did push my skill level. We used ¼” (should have been 3/8”) core cell and wrapped it around the dodger frame tying it together with wire ties. We then returned home, assembled it with the wire ties and then started glassing it. We took it to the boat 3-4 times for fitting. To mold it to the boat we put down clear shipping tape and glassed it to the hull. The tape acted as a release. It took a lot of fairing to get it right. The windows were installed with 3M UV4000. The windows need to be installed on the boat, if not they may hold the dodger slightly distorted. A problem we discovered as ours is an exact fit. It was about 1” or less out square and wouldn’t go on. The slit in the top is a track for the Bimini and the speakers were actually to listen to audio books over the house stereo with an IPOD. Something we really enjoy when cruising. The lights are red/white LED.
The idea came from our friends Ed & Fran on the vessel AKA, a Morgan one design they built thirty years ago and have been mostly cruising since then. Currently they are in the south pacific. We fell in love with their dodger the first time we saw it and vowed to build one if we got the chance.
Jim
