Slow progress and water ingress

Hi,  It's been a while since I had anything much to say.  Progress has been painfully slow.  The rudder is now back on the boat although I still have to seat it in sikaflex and bolt it through with suitable fasteners. My neighbour has one half of the tiller attaching block which he is going to modify for me and I have managed to remove the broken bolts from from the other half.  I will use studs and nuts when it goes back together. Should make future disassembly somewhat easier.

It's also nice to have been able to fill in the hole in my lawn :~).  I have also made a start on the cabin sole boards.  I am using 9mm Mahongany marine ply. It's expensive but it does live in the worst part of the boat and I want it to last.  The originals are 9mm ply with strengthening around the edges.  I was going to use pine and encapsulate with epoxy but then I remembered I had an old Mahogany hand rail lying at the side of the house.  I arranged to borrow Dads table saw and got to work cutting it into useable strips. 

I was able to get two 20mm x 20mm strips out of the profile. The rail was about 4m long which would give me most of what I want but not quite.  I have now put a wanted ad on Freecycle for old hard wood bannisters, door or window frames... true recycling.. Dame Ellen would be chuffed.

I then routed a 10mm rebate into the strips to let the edge of the ply into.  This would give me enough wood proud of the ply to sand to a decent finish.

They were then mitred and PVA glued to the edge of the ply and held in place with a miriad of clamps. I was going to pin them as well but my panel pins wouldn't go into the mahogany without bending so I will have to buy some brass screws and screw them before coating with epoxy.

I have also been struggling to find the source of rain water ingress into the bilges.  I think I am going to have to remove most of the deck fittings and reseat on sikaflex... I wondering if it would be worth building a boat entirely out of sikaflex ? :~)  I am unable to replace the rotten floor support until I can keep the inside dry so this is a priority. Better get myself of to TR Fasteners for some gloop and new fasteners.