Merry Xmas, Happy New Year blah blah blah.... Thankfully my xmas was pretty fun this year, despite my sister yelling at her children in my ear repeatedly. Does it mean I'm getting old when I cringe at the sound of loud noises? Ok, I don't cringe at the sound of loud noises, just my sister. Perhaps that is a separate issue. But X-mas was good, I played with the little princess and enjoyed myself immensely. The food and the beer/wine were also good. A very special shout out to my brother-in-law for placing a shot of JD in front of me without having to ask for it. He knew I needed it. He's a smart man.
So, onto the boat... my apologies for the lack of updates. It has been a busy end of the year with traveling, skiing, working, and general shenanigans. The cold also seriously hampers my ability to work efficiently as epoxy is supposed to have temperatures near 50 to cure properly. I have a mini shop set up in my study to apply epoxy clear coats and since that room gets to about 98 degrees, the epoxy cures in just a couple of hours. Of course, I can't exactly bring the whole boat it, so any structural work has to have lamps set up with plastic draped over to hold the heat in. Surprisingly, a 60 watt light bulb will heat a small area to well over 60 degrees inside a sheet of plastic.
That being said, the interior floorboards have all cut, routed, and varnished and look pretty good in my opinion. The downside is that brass screws suck. They strip repeatedly, and often snap off in the middle making it damn near impossible to get the lower half out of the wood without ripping it apart. However, they don't rust either. I ruined more than a few, which sucks because brass screws cost about 4x as much as regular screws. But you can see how good the floorboards look now that they are installed. I'm not sure it'll be that comfortable to sleep on, but a good foam pad or air mattress should do the trick. Another reason for the length of time between updates is due to how long the floorboards took. I began cutting them around Thanksgiving, but didn't get the final coat of varnish on them until just before X-mas. Of course, they have 3 coats of varnish on top and two on the bottom.
The next step was to cut out the seats, and footwell pieces. If I had been designing this boat I probably would have made the footwell about 6 inches wider and the seats each 3 inches narrower, but I guess my feet are doomed to spend the life of my boat wedged in that footwell while I'm under sail. Oh well. The other notable accomplishment of late was to install the centerboard pendant sheave and shims. I will include a picture of this soon, but basically it is the little roller that the rope which lowers and raises the centerboard slides on. The shims are epoxied around the sheave to keep the rope from jumping off. It seems pretty effective actually. I also purchased some removable access hatches to cover the gaping holes in the centerboard trunk. Again, I will take a picture once they are installed in the next few days.
Tomorrow, I will be applying a final coat of paint to the footwell sides and bottom and hopefully epoxying them in place. Here's a few pics of the seats resting in place (they aren't glued down yet) but you can see how nice the floorboards turned out. I also modified the original layout of the floorboards. The lacewood at my local store was pretty warped and not available in good widths for making 3" wide boards, so I trimmed mine to 2.5". I had to use an extra board on either side but I thought it gave my boat a touch of originality.
Finally, I am working on some boat names now that it is 2010. I am still hoping to have the christening sometime in May, but it may be June or July in reality. Comments or suggestions for boat names are welcome... Right now I'm thinking about:
Ataraxia
Preferably in Greek:
Ἀταραξία
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