I went ahead and ordered the 3/8″ fiberglass tube that Jay recommended and it should be here early next week. I also ordered some 6″ screw-in inspection hatches, midget cowel vents for the rear of the float, and 10×13″ access hatches. Am thinking about taking some of the many off-cuts of fiberglass cloth and making the backing plates for float pad-eye and deck eyes instead of using aluminum or purchasing a ready-made fiberglass tapping block.

While the chainplate laminating was drying, we took a drive out to the marina to check on our 19′ leaner. Lake levels have risen some, but it’s still very low. The drive there and back (about 45 min each way, plus walking the docks admiring other boats) gave us time to discuss various things about fit-out, options, and such. I’ll put more of what we decide later (maybe it just gave us more questions then answers anyway!

For the past month or so now, I kept having this nagging fear. Most likely it’s because we had gotten a pretty good ways into the floats and turning back now would, quite frankly, really really suck. Or maybe it’s because the next thing we have to do involves using heavier fabric. Either way… In the back of my head, I keep worrying that I accidentally unwrapped the 18oz fabric instead of the 12oz fabric and had been using something too heavy all this time and would use the lighter fabric on the wrong parts.

The laminating job from yesterday was just about all the way cured when we measured the chainplate location and marked where they needed to go. Since the laminate for these are supposed to lap up the deck-flange, I decided to put some tape over the hole in the hopes of not making too much of a mess forming a fillet against the deck flange and then laminating it. Then bedded in place with a mixture of epoxy and cabosil and formed a massive fillet for the fiberglass to adhere to

There are a few areas that we’re not too pleased with in regards to the keel join on the starboard float – a few areas that have some bubbles that we’ll need to fix. Because of this, the port float will get the keel taped when it is positioned upright. At that point we’ll also put another layer of epoxy in the bilge area of the floats. Once this is complete, the floats will be placed upside-down to make the flanges and fair the keel and such.

Had a few hours this morning, so we shaped the chainplate pads and bedded them down with epoxy/cabosil Cut out the two layers of 45-45 to laminate over them And put everything in its place Current view of the workshop has both floats resting on their inside (relative to main hull) to allow easy lamination of chainplates. Still need to install actual carbon fiber portion of chainplate and laminate into place.

I took some better pictures of the starboard float this weekend. They are in the photo gallery spread out between 01-26-07 and 01-27-07.

Today was a pretty big day – first we had to take the starboard float outside in order to make room for the joining Looks pretty big next to something else that it can be compared to. Also seems to have come out better than we expected. A few rough areas to clean up and some excess that still needs to be trimmed away, but building method seems to be very efficient from what I’ve read on other types of building

Spent a quick amount of time trimming for the keel foam, bogged into place and sanded the interior of the float half After cleaning everything up, we rolled out the main layer of fabric Added extra layers were specified and laminated Once complete we also glued the stringer into place and laminated it Still need to add the chainplate before taking this half out of the mold (better to work with gravity on your side).

Ok – I took five pictures the other night and decided to go ahead and post them. The quality isn’t very good, but it will have to suffice until I go to down with the camera for better pictures.