Volga Hydrofoils Messageboard

What for?

First I had to climb in the bow to find a suitable place for a cut-out. (The photo here is not rotated properly. What you see on the left is actually the top.)

Then we cut-out the piece in the front. What you can see on the sides is hard polyuretan foam, with which we glued on the deck of the boat. It still looks awful here unsanded and without protective epoxy resin coat. The box is having a 2 mm inner part whereas the collar was used with 3 mm stainless steel. It will be firmly bolted into the hulls structure also to avoid any structural and statical disadvantages.

I think by now this reveals what this box is good for. The bow of our boats is unfortunately not very high and can hardly be used for storages. Anybody who has climbed in there before knows, how tight this coffin is. It is also disturbing to carry everytime towage and anchor to the bow.

Here you can see the front with the hardfoam being coverd with epoxy resin layers and fibre. This hardfoam sheets were glued and later rounded with sandpaper. Although the material was easy to sand it took some time to check whether the shapes were equally rounded and we had to measure and control with a long aluminium square profile uneven places and either sand them or fill them lateron with epoxy layers. Afterall we had to sand them again. We had to swallow a lot of this dust and created a huge dirty mess, but my Volga had bumps on the deck we could not mend properly and taking too much mastic whould probably not have been suitable either. The result of this 20 mm sanded layer however is really strikingly beautiful. The slight rounding of the deck now gives the Volga a gentler line.

The chrome box is being placed inline with the deck's intermediate line. It will receive a wooden frame and a wooden hatchcover. More will follow soon...

Here is the anchor for it.

Here is another photo with the interior and the anchor fitted. Having come so far, I have to make some modifications with the box and to change the geometry as the box proved to be
too deep and the anchor was touching a girder in the bow. Besides this there still has to be a plastic bucket with a drain
below the anchor to avoid dirt in this place.

looks very nice with the anchor in it!

Unlike other wood covered boats' anchor stowage, this one is in line with the main girder. The mission was to hide the anchor as far as possible.

Looks like so far successful having the anchor hatch in-line with the middle beam.

Wow Georg, did you hire the same guys as Robert for doing your wooden deck? Looks promising!

Maurits

Yes, Maurits! I sacrificed the money in my porcelain pig (Sparschwein) and invested in the round top wooden deck.
I made a lot of photos of this job and will describe it in a new chapter ''round top wooden deck''.

I also invested some time and money for the chrome elements in the bow: The white part (still card paper) will be added in chrome to protect the wood against chain impacts. Above part still needs some round-shaping to get ridd-off the edges and to cover the wood properly.

The retractable threats have been enlarged by adding an oval chrom steel plate.

I love your eye for details. Everything made with the same high standards for design and quality... brilliant!