I have to admit that now that the weather is warm there has been a rally of frenetic activity to complete my boat. Granted I'm still a ways off, but I'd like to think I'm still on track to get her in the water for at least a couple weekends before the end of summer. Granted I have acquiesced to the reality that it will be a bare bones sailboat. I very much doubt electronics and a radio, much less a solar panel will be installed any time soon. Whatever. A stereo, a 2-way radio, and a cooler packed with good drinks will accomplish my needs for the summer.
As you will see below, the hull is essentially complete along with a few extras. The next major milestones are to finish glassing the hull (although I completed this today) then sand the entire thing down which will likely take a week!
This is a shot right after the top of the cabin was epoxied down. Notice all the plywood square pads. These are to help spread the pressure of the screws as the epoxy cures as well as protect the actual cabin roof from any excess damage of the screws being cranked down nice and tight. These plywood pads have been invaluable in both roof and being reused on the mahogany rub rails later on.
The perspective kinda sucks but here is a shot of the cabin once it cured and the edges were all sanded down. I have to admit I was a big fan of this step.
I decided to get a little creative with building my tiller. I used lacewood for the interior cabin of the boat and I have obviously been using a lot of sitka spruce for the important areas such as the mast/bowsprit/etc. So I decided it would be fun to utilize that theme to create my tiller. I sliced 1/4" pieces of lacewood and spruce on my table saw and subsequently used epoxy and a plywood form with the curve I wanted to achieve and anchored the layers down to cure. Sure enough, after using the power planer (awesome tool by the way) the next day I had the above beautiful piece of laminate to subsequently cut out the tiller you'll see in the picture below. Pretty.
Here's a quick shot of the bowsprit, it's actually two pieces of spruce laminated together with epoxy. Apparently, this is actually now a stronger piece of wood that just a single baulk. Unfortunately my garage isn't long enough to lay the sprit out to it's full extension. Bummer, cause it would have been very satisfying.
Yeah, I'm just tossing this photo in to brag at how awesome my seats were at Fenway a couple weeks ago. You're jealous. Oh, and I didn't pay for them.
Ok, here is the second of three layers of the rubrail going on the starboard side. This is mainly to bounce of docks and to step on as (or others) push off. I've been given a lot of shit for choosing some very nice khaya mahogany for the rubrails but what I think people fail to realize is that they will be coated in epoxy and varnish too. I think most of m blogreaders fail to understand how tough that shit really is. To give you an idea, an unsanded piece of epoxy with an edge can quite easily slice your finger wide open. Don't believe me? Want to see the scar?
Here is a group of my friends helping me roll the boat over for the first time! It was surprisingly easy to get out of the garage, into the driveway, and rolled over utilizing some tires and carried back into the garage. I would like to thank my friend Raych for taking these pics as I was obviously directing my minions. (That's right Paul, you're my minion!)
On her side! And the rails didn't move a millimeter despite being anchored down earlier that day. (Damn epoxy is cool)
Nice butt Mags. So here she is upside down and back in the garage. Considering I had quite a few friends over that day to help me roll her, we all went up to the roof deck to consume large quantities of beer/wine/whiskey. It turned out to be quite the raucous occasion. I had cleaned up the garage prior to my friends coming over by using my shop vac to clean up all the sawdust and epoxy dust as well as discard lots of wood scraps. Unfortunately, I did not count of my friend Presley tossing a still burning cigarette into said trashcan in the wee hours of the morning by accident as we went to bed. Needless to say, being awakened by the Fire Department at 5:30 am and being interrogated as to the cause of a trashcan fire while still in a state not even remotely resembling sobriety = not fun. Stupid Prez. However, once we realized we had dodged a serious bullet with no major damage... my friend Jeff brought out the 21 year old Scotch to celebrate as the sun rose. 
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