Tomorrow!

Tomorrow is launch day!  This morning I trailered BELLE over to the boatyard, put the mast up (no problem for one person to do), and got her ready to launch on tomorrow's afternoon tide.  High tide  is about 6:30PM, but there should be enough water in the inlet where the launch will take place by 4:30PM or so.  Here are a couple of final "dry land" photos of the boat:

A coat of bottom paint ("Shark White") and a bunch of rigging details taken care of for launch.

With the mainsail laced to the mast (no mast hoops), I decided to leave the end of the boom down for the night and securely bundle the sail to the spars.  It's quite blustery today, with more wind expected overnight, so I thought it would be safer to do it that way.  Plus I don't have the topping lift in place yet...soon! 

I realize I've been remiss in reporting on the various final details of rigging, bottom paint, etc. I'll make up for it,  there will be photos, etc., of various aspects of the final work on the boat to come soon.  Stay tuned!

In the meantime, though, I'm hoping to have some nice photos of launch day here within a few days.  Wish me luck!

Paint and epoxy

A quick update to show the paint/epoxy done yesterday...

That's two coats of epoxy in the bilge and white two-part epoxy primer forward of the main bulkhead and under the seats. More coming soon.

I would have painted more but I ran out of paint, on a weekend no less, oops!  Next will be sanding/painting under the foredeck (so I can start installing the deck) plus putting in deck support knees around the edge of the cockpit area.  Once those are in, I'll prime the rest of the interior.  I'll be using two-part epoxy primer throughout, except the bilge which gets two coats of clear-coat epoxy plus paint.

Completion of keel/skeg...and rollover!

This is a fun update, because for the first time I can actually show a picture of the boat right-side-up!  But first a couple of photos of finishing off the keel/skeg:

Here's the completed keel/skeg assembly, epoxy-coated and ready for paint.

Paint going on.  I decided to prime the bottom rather than add another coat of epoxy.  One more sanding and she'll be ready for bottom paint, but I'll wait until much closer to completion for that.  It's easier to bottom paint the boat now...but I confess I'm anxious to get going on the interior!

With a little beer-powered help from my friends, she's now right-side-up!  This is a red-letter day, for sure.   After thinking about various ways to do it, I ended up rolling her over (carefully) right on the floor, with the middle mold still in place for support (not shown).  A thick piece of cardboard on the floor (shown) cushioned the turnover.  Note that the gunwales are temporarily screwed in place to support the sheer for the turnover.  The final gunwales will be a bit smaller and will go on after the deck is in place.

Now it's on to inwales, deckbeams, and bulkheads. I'll have some more photos of the interior once that is underway...and I've had a chance to do some epoxy cleanup. After months on the hull,  I must say I'm looking forward to the change of pace.  While there's still lots and lots of work to go, today somehow I feel like I can say the "end is in sight" for the first time!

Stem, transom knee, and a bit more paint

With planking and puttying done, it's on to the stem, transom knee, and skeg/keel.  Actually, I haven't gotten to the skeg/keel quite yet so this update will cover just the stem and knee.

A few #10 screws hold the outer stem in place, but mostly the epoxy does the work.  Here the rough-cut outer stem is drilled off and ready for final shaping.

I then cut the front edge of the stem down to a little under 3/4"...later I will add a 5/8" brass half-oval to the stem and keel.  Once the boat is flipped over, I'll cut down the stem to the final profile.

Here's the transom knee getting glued up.  I first made a patter from scrap ply, then glued two pieces of Doug fir at the correct angle (that is, the angle between the transom and the bottom).  Then, as shown here, I glued four plies of 1/8" Doug fir along the edge to add strength to the knee.  In theory I could have laminated the entire knee--which would have taken at least 10 plies--but that seemed to be overkill in this case.  In addition to this knee, the transom will be supported by the edge of the aft well and, near the top, by the side decks (see Sketches and Plans).  That should be plenty for a trolling motor or perhaps a 2hp outboard.

It's hard to see from this photo, but I tweaked the color a bit and primed a couple of strakes on the other side.  I found the original color a bit "minty", so I added a bit of grey to the mix to tone it down.  Again, hard to see in the photo, but I'm pretty happy with the color now.  But I might tweak it a bit more before this is all over...or maybe just revert to a classic off-white!

With the transom knee done, now I have to make the skeg/keel pieces and glue and screw and bolt those to the boat.  I'll be making up a couple of bolts to support the skeg out of 1/4" bronze rod, I'll have some photos of that soon.

Have you seen the new Harry Potter yet?  I'll catch it on DVD myself...

First paint

I've been brewing various color schemes for the last few weeks, but I'm still undecided.  So I went ahead and painted a couple of planks with my current favorite hull color just to see what it looked like on the boat.  That should give me a better idea of what the boat will look like than a couple of square inches of paint on a piece of scrap plywood.

The photos show the result, as you can see I'm leaning towards a cheerful green-gray-white for the hull.  This is just the primer coat, the final finish coat will look better.  In other words, I tinted the primer (which is white) to the color I wanted  using a super-secret formula buried in a steel vault in the back yard.   The finish coat will look the same, but I can make it glossier by starting with a glossy white or "matter" (is that a word?) if I start with a matte white.

Right now I really like the color but I might tweak it before all is said and done.

I'd better get some varnish on that transom before I dribble paint all over it.

The white putty you see on a couple of planks is 3M Marine Putty.  I'm using that putty to do final fairing on the topsides, and I think I'll thus be able to skip a coat of primer.  Usually, I'd put on two coats of primer and two of finish paint.  In this case the surface is smooth enough--and I've tinted the primer to the color I want--so I think one primer coat should be fine. The bottom has plenty of epoxy, so I'll skip the putty there.  Like everything else in boatbuilding, there's a lot of different ways of epoxying/puttying/fairing/priming/painting/varnishing a boat.  This blog will show how I did BELLE;  there are certainly other perfectly reasonable ways of going about it.

In any case, seeing some paint on the boat is a real morale booster. Back to carpentry tomorrow...