Steve,
A clarification on your message.
My M15 had the deep sail locker on the port side and the shallow one on
the starboard side.
Both sail locker areas have a vertical - about 1 foot high - bulkhead at
the forward end of the sail locker areas.
This serves to keep items in the sail locker from migrating into the
cabin if things get boisterous and the boat is doing a lot of pitching.
What I did was cut at the center of the flat area of the lip around the
sail locker. I made the radius by drilling a number of holes the
thickness of my sabersaw blade, and then carefully cut away the walls
between holes with a needle file. (I wanted nice rounded corners with
minimum slop)
The straight cuts were made with a sabersaw using a fine toothed blade.
Fiberglass is very abrasive, so you'll need several blades to do the job
easily, otherwise you'll find that you are trying to cut and the blade
has no teeth anymore!
With the shallow sail locker cut out (support it so that all the weight
isn't hanging on the last bits of fiberglass and breaking off) you can
file / sand the edges of the hole and the locker.
The next step was to build supports under the lip of the sail locker that
would support the shallow locker when it was put back in place.
This proved to be a bit tricky, since the "bottom" sides of the
fiberglass are not even, nor of constant thickness.
Here, you will have to improvise to provide good gluing surfaces for your
tray supports. I made mine out of pieces of teak from my scrap box.
They were glued in place using WEST Epoxy.
Incidentally, call or write to WEST and get their "How To" book on
fiberglassing techniques. This will make an expert out of you in short
order! An excellent, well written book with lots of drawings and
sketches showing you how it is done, and which of their products to use
for different problems. Also shows you how to solve and repair gelcoat
crack problems. Can't live without it!
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I finished the shallow sail locker tray by drilling two holes about a
hand's breadth apart in the ends. I then threaded some 1/8" line - more
or less; it was what I happened to have available in my ditty bag. To
make it easy on the hands, I threaded my line through a piece of plastic
tubing; making a nice handle on the inside of the box.
The knot was on the inside of the sail locker - i.e., not in the locker,
but on the rough surface side.
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I have found it to be a very worthwhile modification. Now I have the
best of both worlds: the shallow tray for glasses and other small items,
while if I grab the handles and lift it out, I can get at all that nice
stowage area volume, where I keep my swim ladder; extra cockpit cushions;
the bimini top and supports; my paddle / boathook.
The only draw-back is that you can't put small items down there because
they would disappear under the cockpit sole, since there is no vertical
(longitudinal) bulkhead as there is on the port side. The port side is a
complete box with the inboard and forward bulkheads. On the starboard
side you have only the forward bulkhead, unless you build yourself a
removable one to act as a longitudinal bulkhead.
Connie
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