Finally got the boat launched. We are usually in the water early May, but the ports project took forever and so we were pretty late getting there this year.
A few photos here of our VC Offshore bottom paint. We went with a lanolin based coating for the prop. Pretty …
Lots more glass work, finished glassing hull bottom, transom, and gunwales.
Started epoxy coating the foot brances and oar locks.
Added fairing to smooth bottom glass into hull. This allows much thicker glass on the bottom of the hull to smoothly transition to only 6oz glass on the sides of …
Helped a friend deliver a Benetau 31 from Bath to Toronto. Really nice boat, and first sail of the year for 2024.
Almost 24 hours exactly from port to port, pretty light winds, but we were able to sail most of the night. Ended up having to replace an impeller …
Lots of work glassing the top of the gunwale, and edges of the bulkheads.
Routered out the daggerboard trunk, and installed the re-enforcement strips.
Put the hull together and did a fair bit of sanding to fair the hull down. Rounded over the chines, and the aft transom edges. Finally …
Added the fillet to the foredeck and installed the breasthook.
Sanding and gloss coated the foils. You can see a little wrinkle in the glass as it's sanded, and then what it looks like when it gets gloss coated (pretty much invisible).
Glassed the skeg.
Glassed the edges on the …
Lots of sanding work on the foils to get the edges all fixed up and ready for glassing the other side.
Added screws to the gunnels to prevent possible failure at that spot.
Glued on the re-enforcement strip to the skeg.
And the big job has been getting the foredeck …
Got the bulkhead faces all sanded and preped and laid up the glass on these. This involves sanding them on end, and then wetting out the glass while standing on the table.
Also started glassing and filling the rudder and daggerboard, as well as the rudder trunk.
Started work on hardening the edges of the boat. This involves sanding a bevel on the edge that gets filled with epoxy with a tape dam as shown. Lots of sanding next.
I also glassed the edges of the seats, and then sanded and filleted around the seats. These seats …
Installed the mast step tube. It looks well centered and very secure.
Coated the inside of seats (these will be water tight for floatation), and glued on the seat tops.
Cut the mast step hole in the foredeck and did the last coat of epoxy on the underside of the …
Shown here are the blind fillets for the aft seats. These are done by taping the lid in place with some plastic tape along the edge, and then filleting around the edge. Once the fillet has cured the seat top is removed and you have this fillet bonded into place …
Finished sanding and re-coating the gussets, and installed the connective hardware in the main bulkheads.
After that it was a matter of cutting the boat in two. This took a good long time (hours). I didn't have the best saw for this, but it worked out for the most part …
Glassed the upper gussets, one of the more tricky glassing parts thus far. Hard to conform area so was tricky to get right.
Also glassed the daggerboard trunk, and the glassed in the tow eye at the bow of the boat.
Lot of work sanding the chines down. Days of sanding at my pace.
Did the shaping of the upper gussets, looking nice and smooth now. Very satisfying.
Drilled the hole for the tow eye in the stern. Rather scary hitting that with a hole saw after all the delicate crafting …
This seems like a small step, but took me forever. Cutting all the glass strips and peel ply, prepping, and making the time to do the whole layup was daunting. Got it all done though and it worked out pretty well in the end.
Glassed the foredeck, a rather painful sliver, filleted the newly install gussets, and clamped and installed the foredeck hatch.
Decided to tackle installing new engine mounts this winter, and it turns out it's probably a good thing I did. The old ones were obviously pretty worn, but I hadn't noticed that one of them was actually not even attached. It turns out the bold (hidden inside the attachment bracket …
Another weeks worth of work... Removed all the wires and injected the hold with epoxy. Sanded down the hull.
More work on the danggerboard trunk assembly, and glassed the bulkheads.
Installed the spacers and attached the two bulkheads together (these will be cut apart later).
Installed the main bulkheads. This …
Few days of work. Glassed the seat panels. Shaped the steam, which was a fun step got to make some good use of my new block plane, and filleted the chines.
Also started work on the bulkheads and daggerboard trunk.
Installed the steam at the front of the boat and the top aft member.
Injecting epoxy into the seams along the stitched together panels.
Attaching the gunnels, this is a challenging step to glue up and a lot of screws! Lots of prep work but nice to have them on there finally.
started work stitching the hull together
Glassing the panels
Started work on PT11 Dingy!
I've been lusting after this dingy for a few years, and finally pulled the trigger and actually ordered it. Now the challenging part of actually assembling it.
Very first step of gluing the puzzle joints together for the long panels.
Removed the old port lights. This is a scary step, but refreshing as they were leaking and extremely crazed.