Catching up....

Haven't blogged in quite a while. Progress was less dramatic, and very busy. One thing we learned is that no matter how easy the step in the book looks, every step has plenty of opportunities for frustration. In the end, everything came together. The biggest frustration by far is working cleanly with the epoxy. It drips, sags, gets little air-pockets,etc. I spent hours and hours scraping and sanding drips and sags while the epoxy was a little green. Matthew was kind of disappointed because the finish (even with sags and drips) is very pretty, but not after scraping and sanding. I promise him that in the end, the final varnish will make it all beautiful again.

Steps to catch up to date:

Glueing the deck seams, and then glueing the deck to the hull. I was worried about this because the hull had flexed a bunch as weeks passed and the center of the hull was a couple of inches wider than the perfect fit, and this also meant the tips were 1/4 inch or so short. But, with gentle pressure and about 10 wires, we got the hull and deck to fit pretty well. Glueing the inside seams required building an extension pole with a syringe on the end, and then sort of blindly running glue in the seams. Did that, and taped the inside seams as far as can reach, and it all seems fine. Had to file the tips a little but in the end it looks great - no problems.

Glassing the deck. More sanding prep work, then draping fiberglass over the deck and wetting it out. I thought this would be harder to get the glass to lay well, but this actually was not bad. But, we put the epoxy on way to heavy. Looked great as we feathered it out, but next morning, huge drips and sags. This resulted in many hours of scraping green epoxy. Biggest advice I could ever give - when applying fiberglass, block out 3 or 4 days when you can do it, and put on THIN coats successively. It will look a lot better and save huge amounts of sanding.

Cockpit coaming. This was actually fairly fun to do. Kit comes with some prefab half-ovals, but since the deck flexes to fit the hull, you have to measure and cut, with bevelled edges to fit right. Glue on lower coaming pieces one night, and the top those with upper thin pieces another night. Glassing the coaming was difficult because it required overlapping pieces in several sections, but it all worked out.

Install seat. This required cutting some planks to glass and glue in as hip braces first. Sounds simple in the book, but trying to glass and fillet the back side of the braces (between the brace and the hull) was impossible. Did it totally blind and have little faith it is well constructed. But front went well and hopefully will hold it. Then holes are drilled in the hip braces, and the seat is bolted into the braces. A strap eye is also screwed under the coaming at the back. The book gave no clue how to drill a pilot hole when drill won't fit in the boat to do it. In the end drilled as best as could a hole at an angle and was able to attach it. The back of the seat is attached to the eye with some thin cable. Thermarest pad glued to the bottom. All good.

Mount foot pedals. Finally something that really was easy. Drill two holes on each side of boat (scary), seal the hole edges with a little epoxy, and then screw a runner on the inside of the hull that foot pedals attach to. All good.

Now all caught up.