Welp... I'm back from my week at the beach... I can't say I didn't think a lot about working on the boat while away, but was definitely nice to unwind and spend time with the family.
Now that I've been back a few days, I had too much to do around the house since we were gone for a week that I didn't really get to do anything until today...
I had to bite the bullet, and muster up some courage to CUT A HOLE IN MY NEW FLOOR! OH THE HUMANITY!
After I sucked it up, I layed out where I was going to cut. I went from just in front of the rear seat to the first bulkhead and 1 inch in from the centerline of each stringer. I got it cut out, and cut some cedar wood and soaked em in resin. I'm going to screw those into the sides of the stringers with lots of 5200 on the screws and the cleats.
For the flex in the floor beyond that first bulkhead, I realized I'm fine since thats right where the ski locker cover is going to go.
So how did I go about stiffening the panel that I cut out? Well, a bit of an experiment. Its actually something I considered doing for my floor back in the planning stages, but decided it was more work then it was worth and I didn't want to mess something up. I think it turned out really well though, so I'll keep it in my back pocket.
I had a bunch of left over foil faced foam insulation (aka polyisocyanurate foam). I took a scrap piece back to my table saw and ripped a bunch of 2" wide strips with a bevel on both sides to make a trapezoid cross-section. Then I took them back to the panel and made up a layout with one leg going down the center and 3 legs going perpendicular to make sort of a grid. I PB'ed them in place and gave a nice fillet where it squeezed out. Then ran 6" wide 1708 tape over each leg and glassed it on. All in all, I think it turned out pretty awesome and I'm going to keep it in my mental tool box for the future. Would be a great way to make a nice light-weight rigid panel.
Just an FYI, from my research, it looks like you HAVE to use either polyisocyanurate or urethane foam, as the styrene in polyester resin will eat thru the other types of rigid foam.
Heres the finished goods.