A Cabin (for Hobbits)

The boat starts to look a lot more complete when you start to put the decking on!  The cabin now has a roof, and sides and it IS possible to sit up (ish) inside. :). There is certainly room enough to lay!

An Itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny, shorty-porty cabin

Working on the cabin now and wondering if the boat mightn't be better off without it.  Still, if it's pouring rain, two people could conceivably shimmy their way in and get out of the rain.  

And I guess we will need a place for beer. :)

Getting the Lead In

I think the Postal Service might have been a teensy bit dismayed when ten of their small flat-rate boxes were filled with 50 pounds of LEAD each. Ballast. :)

Putting the ballast in the boat required a little... Are you ready for this, my former physics students???  CALCULATIONS!  Of moments (torque)!  Omg, it has a use!

Putting the ballast in the boat was interesting... Mixing the pellets up with epoxy made it seem like a very heavy, toxic form of caviar. But then, I've never been much for caviar anyway. 

Getting prettier!

It's been slow going, but we're starting to realize that it really is turning into a boat. :)  We're finishing up putting 3 layers of epoxy on pretty much everything, cutting parts out of the bulkheads that need to go and cutting floorboards.  I am so grateful for Dad (of course you know it's Dan writing this!)... while I'm at school working, he is here also working hard on so many things, but among them is figuring out all the little details - where will the battery go?  How will the rudder attach?  Where do we put the anchor and how do we strengthen the bow?  He's very smart, and he always knows what's next to do.

Putting Holes in the Hull. Again.

Once you've spent time ensuring that the hull is smooth, the fiberglass cloth is even, and the primer is perfect, you put more holes in it to attach the keel. Yup. 

We finished the sheer clamps, which run along the hull to help it hold its shape and strengthen it, and then glued and screwed on the keel pieces. 

While Jay put the screws in from inside the boat, I bent the long keel piece into place. 

Sheer Joy? Sheer Clamps, Anyway

Finally, a day arrived in which we:

1.  Made no thickened epoxy; and
2.  Laid no fiberglass tape

Hurray!  But never fear - those days will return.  What we did instead was attach the first piece of the keel at the bow and glued the major piece of the starboard sheer clamp.  A sheer clamp is a piece of wood that runs along the hull where the decking will meet the hull.  It helps keep the hull's shape and reinforces the boat against bumps and the constant pull of the sail.

After we laid epoxy on the wood and the hull, Dad started the clamping.

LOTS of clamps needed, since we had to bend the wood along the curve of the hull

One piece down, and no more clamps so we must wait until the epoxy dries before starting on the port side.

Another Day in Epoxy Paradise

They say it's a wooden boat.  It is a wooden boat. But pound for pound, I think it will be mostly glue!  This is some of the inside work that got done over the last few months.

You see floor timbers and longitudinal pieces in the cockpit.  Floorboards will go down in the center, and the sides will be benches will storage compartments underneath.

This is in the cabin.  "Cabin" I should say, for reasons that are becoming increasingly obvious.  Remember when little Ralphie (the Simpsons) exclaimed, "I sleep in a drawer!"  It'll be like that.  And yes, there's a big box in the middle.  That's where the centerboard pulls up into.