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| ARRRRRG |
Debbie made a sign out of a paddle for me to put over my flag.
I made a boat cover out of a tarp so that water will not drop into the cockpit. When I'm done building, I figure I can use it to make an extra set of sails. I like stuff that is multipurpose.
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| Boat Cover |
I was surprised that Debbie didn't say anything when I told her I'm gonna use the tarp for sails. I didn't know to leave well enough alone. I pushed the envelope the other day when I mentioned to her that I'm going to make a trolling motor out of a gas weedeater. The kind with the bend in the shaft. I figure I can mount it on the transom and attach a propeller to the end. It should push the boat along pretty good when the wind dies and a gallon of gas should be more than enough to keep me going all day. She couldn't keep quiet about that idea. I thought that telling her that I decided against the electric weedeater and a battery would show her that I really thought this through. You didn't hear it from me, but Debbie knows more "sailor" words than I realized.
On to the boat build. I put the seat braces in and I did pretty good with five of them. Unfortunately, there are six total.
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| Seat Braces |
As you can see, I had a little problem with the front port brace.
My first attempt ended up too far inboard.
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| This doesn't look like the plans. |
I'm going to blame it on the fumes from the glue because I know that the beer couldn't have had anything to do with it. After all, I've been drinking beer for years and it's never made me glue a seat brace in the wrong place. I start using this fancy epoxy glue and the next thing I know, I'm putting a seat brace in the wrong place. That's my story and I'm stickin to it.
I decided that before gluing the seat bottoms down I wanted to fiberglass the bottom of the cockpit. I've never fiberglassed anything before so I figured that starting on a nice horizontal surface would be a good idea. Also, if I screw it up I can always put carpet or a wooden sole over it.
The first thing I did was fair out the deck using a piece of 1/4" plywood with an 18" belt from my sander stapled to it. The plywood flexes to the shape of the wood. I was going to put handles on it but it works just fine without them. I might add the handles when I start working vertically against the outside of the hull.
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| Faired Cockpit Sole |
Then I put the fiberglass down. I spent some time smoothing it all out. It's pretty easy to cut and lays down flat nicely.
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| Fiberglass |
The next step is to mix up some unthickened epoxy. I poured some out and used a piece of plastic to squeegee the epoxy into the fabric to wet it out. As the fabric becomes saturated it becomes transparent. I didn't worry about filling the weave at this point. The main thing is to make sure the fabric is down against the surface because you don't want to have air bubbles between the fabric and the wood. Here is what it looked like after it's all wetted out.
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| Wetted Fiberglass |
I went around with a razor knife and trimmed off the excess fiberglass. After about 24 hours, I'm ready to put down more epoxy to start filling in the weave. It took a couple of coats to get it all filled in so that I can't feel the weave. I ends up looking and feeling like it's coated in plastic. After doing a little fairing it should give me a nice smooth surface to paint. Here is what it looks like. The seat bottoms are dry fit on the braces but you can still see how it looks.
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| Fiberglassed Cockpit |
If love bugs ever become extinct, I have their DNA preserved in my boat. The little suckers just dive bombed right into the wet goo. It sounds kind of gross, but I will sand out whatever parts of them that are sticking above the surface before painting.
The fiberglassing went just the way that all the manuals and forum posts said it would. I feel much more confident about doing the rest of the boat now.
Before attaching the seat bottoms I wanted to paint the undersides.
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| Underside of Seat Bottoms |
While all of the the coats of epoxy and paint were drying I decided I wanted to test out having the boat on the trailer. I ate my wheates, plus some spinach for good measure, and just picked it up and slid it right on. It sat pretty well but I still want to do some adjustments.
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| Trailer Test |
Actually, that little crank on the front comes in pretty handy. And the rollers did what rollers do. The trailer tilts down so that the back end was on the ground. I just cranked it right up onto the trailer.
I took the time to cut out the hole in the transom for the tiller. Then I attached the block that the rudder will attach to.
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| Rudder Block |
Finally, here are the seats all glued, screwed down and the screw holes filled in with thickened epoxy. The pieces at the front are bumpers that will get attached to the front ends of the seats. They are made out of cedar which is a nice soft wood. I laminated three layers together and then cut them out and sanded them. These will be much better to bang into than the pointy corners of the seat bottoms.
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| Seats Attached |
