: Nice looking boat - interesting rib/frame configuration. I've
: thought of doing a similar thing - mixing ribs and frames - but
: never got around to it. And now you've saved me the effort :)

I fooled around with a sea rider last year, and the floorboards were the part that I was never quite satisfied with.
I tried just sitting on the skin at first, but then put some in later. Two things I don't like about the usual floorboard
design were that it seemed to require fairly heavy boards to be able to run across the cockpit without having the
problem of them flexing a little in the middle and pressing down towards the skin. And also, when the boards
run across the whole cockpit, you can't get a pump all the way to the skin, so you can never quite pump the last
bit of water out. Putting some ribs in the cockpit made it possible to use very light floorboards, and still have
access for the pump to get all the water out when necessary. So far, I'm pretty happy with the way they have
worked out. And I wanted the practice bending ribs anyway:) Hat tip to Brian Nystrom for the adjustable rib bending
jig, steam-bent masik and float bag lines. Jeff Horton's videos and advice for help with sewing polyester and the laminated
cockpit coaming. And David Mills for directing me to Target 9600 water-based polyurethane varnish. Really nice stuff
to work with.

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Ogata, eric