EDIT – 01/23/07 – Added picture from camera phone Dad’s been busy the past week in his spare time. I showed up last night to an almost-planked float half – which left me time to Dremel out the gaps between the planks and bog them together while he planked the last two sheets. Spent maybe an hour doing this, which included talking and still occasionally admiring the joined stbd. float.

EDIT – 01/23/07 – Added pictures from camera phone Although I wasn’t able to do any work on the boat last weekend, dad was able to finish taping the keel joins on the stbd. float, rough-cut the transom off, and rough-fair the float after removing it from the frames. Must admit, looks a lot better than we were expecting. Not sure what we WERE expecting, but nothing looking this “good” for two people that have never built a fiberglass boat before 🙂

A very exciting day, though not *quite* as complete as I really wanted (what can I say – tired, sore and hungry… it was quittin’ time) Started today off with the surprise of a third float half that had the keel foam cut and sanded and the deck flange trimmed This meant we could go straight to work getting the half suspended above into place and start marking areas that needed to be trimmed for a proper fit.

Moved things around in the photo gallery. Now that it’s January, things get sorted out of order. Made folders for the year, then inside that are folders by month/day. Am also going to go through the old galleries and put descriptions for each day.

Well, the third float half is now completed. Dad sanded the bog down during the week So after double-checking a few things, we laid out the fabric and extra layers There are some extra layers that aren’t supposed to be there, but some parts of the main fabric bunched up while we were measuring/cutting and I didn’t like the way the fibers were laying, so I added an extra layer on top of it (from the off-cuts of the main piece) just to “be certain” the structure was good.

Today went by quicker than I had hoped, but accomplished a lot. Planked all the foam for the third float half Added keel foam and trimmed for deck-flange mold Bogged and glued all foam and the deck-flange triangles into place Not much to write for a full day’s worth of work. All that’s needed now is a quick-sand once cured and then laminate the inner skin, and we’ll be ready to join the two halves together.

Ian sent out some updates for the plans today. Nothing changes, per se, but more makes sense now that I can see a diagram of how the beams attach to the floats. The main part of the update is for the centerboard and centerboard case, which I’m not concerned about since we’re doing a daggerboard. Part of the update included the plans for construction of the daggerboard, but we haven’t decided what to do about that yet.

I was being a little unrealistic in my goals over the Christmas holiday. Well, my goal was to get exactly where we got, but I was secretly hoping for a little more 🙂 Very productive weekend, however. Today started out with the removal of all screws holding the float half to the battens This half removed SO much easier than the previous, thanks to putting tape in places that I originally didn’t think epoxy/bog would reach (on deck batten and better on deck-flange mold).

The second float half is complete and ready to be released from the mold with the exception of the chainplate installation, which I sent an email to Ian Farrier about earlier today to try and clear up a few questions that I have to make sure I follow the intended instructions properly. This can be done without the float half in the mold, however, and I plan on doing this portion after the halves have been joined since there will still be other work to do after joining – I don’t want to hinder process in de-molding and reversing the frames to make the last two halves.

I said I was going to look for air leaks first, but after mulling it over for a few minutes, I decided the time would be better spent just doing it by hand and progressing. I was able to bribe Teresa into helping with some Starbucks. Dad’s back is injured right now, but he made for a great epoxy-mixer. Still having a little energy, I glued the stringer into place and we put the two layers on top of it and called it an evening.