Well, it's rather amusing that the last post I wrote had to do with skiing and here we are 6 weeks later and it feels like mid-summer in New England. I don't exactly pretend this weather will hold out and I'm sure we'll get at least another week or two of crappy New England late winter weather. But here's hoping!
I have gotten quite a bit done since the last post, including installing the seatbacks and the remaining flotation foam. The bow is pretty much complete, fiberglassed and the upper breasthook is in. Over the last week or so I cut out the pieces that will create the cabin hood and put the final coat of epoxy on them today. I also installed a few pieces of wood in the seatbacks to anchor the spinnaker hardware and a mooring cleat near the stern. Lastly, I put the final touches on the fillets completing the installation of the dorade boxes. All in all, the boat is really starting to look good. I'm hoping I can get her flipped by the end of April so I can begin the daunting task of epoxying the entire hull and eventually getting her into a trailer to finish off the final month or so of work and hardware installation!
Here's a few pics of the current progress:
I decided to use a few bits of scrap plywood to create the seatbacks. It's probably not quite as professional looking as a solid piece of plywood would have been but I was happy that I saved myself $80. I have a ton of scrap plywood laying around now anyway. This is right after the seatbacks were installed, I have since filleted and sanded all the joints and the entire cockpit area is pretty much just waiting to be fiberglassed.
Despite what the plans dictate, I chose to cut out the hole for the tiller prior to installing the transom skirt. Mainly b/c I wanted to have room to fit the router on the interior and I wouldn't have had room with the transom skirt in place.
See... if the transom skirt had been in the previous picture the router wouldn't have fit on the interior side of the cockpit.
Here is the upper breasthook after installation. You can also see the pieces that make up the dorade boxes in the foreground. They have since been epoxied on the interior side and filleted in place.
They aren't actually filleted in yet in this picture but it gives you an idea of what the dorades look like.
The weather forecast looks pretty nice for the remainder of the week too so hopefully I can fit in some serious work each night. Now that summer is coming I'm definitely getting antsy to get her done and in the water. I really don't want to spend my summer finishing her!
Up next this week is to install all the support pieces for the cabin roof which involves cutting out curved pieces of wood and epoxying them along the curved areas wherever the cabin roof will rest. Then all that needs to be sanded perfectly smooth and anchoring the roof down hopefully later this week. This weekend will involve the beginning of the mast construction (and hopefully correctly the awful cut I made while ripping a 16' piece of sitka spruce) and hopefully a lot of progress toward completing the companionway hood and finishing the fiberglassing of the rudder. Perhaps I'll get started on the tiller as well... We'll see if any good plans come up (read: cute blondes)
Here is a pic of the starboard inspection port on the centerboard trunk. The plastic piece unscrews so you can access the centerboard and either shove it down into the water if it's jammed or some other type of service. It's also kinda cool looking if you ask me. I'm also installing one on the bow inspection port with a nice looking varnished flange that I made. Pics to come soon...
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