More paint plus progress on the rudder

It's funny how progress seems to be slow slow slow...until you start putting paint on things and the project seems to speed up!  I was going to start on the coamings this week, but I'm expecting to take a look at some nice white oak this Monday so I decided to put it off and keep painting and working on the rudder/tiller/centerboard/etc.

First coat of finish paint on the interior and deck.  It looks awfully green right now!   Once the floorboards, seats, and coamings are in place, actually not much paint will really be visible.  Still, a nice grey/green IMHO.  Notice that the centerboard top is not in place yet.  I'm hoping to have an offcut from making the coamings for that.  That way they'll match nicely.

Another view.  The deck paint is a semi-gloss white with just a smidgeon (OK, an ounce) of the grey-green mixed in.

Here's the aft well...only needs the drain holes now.  See previous post for why there are holes in the bottom cleats...

The rudder hardware is a mix of Dyer gudgeons and upper hanger and a shop-made lower hanger.  I'm about to clean up the lower hanger (which has just been fabricated) and fit it to the end of the skeg.   

I used a router (with a pattern) to inset the upper hanger into the transom.   Here I'm doing a test fit.  I'll have another photo of the final rudder and hardware in place later.  You can see the grain of the Western Red Cedar in this photo.  A couple of more coats of varnish and a couple of summers in the sun and this should "deepen" further into a nice glow.  At least that's what happened on the W.R.C. seats of my previous daysailer.

A quick test-fit of the roughed-out rudder.  I've got it covered in Dynel below the W.L.(actually 1" above the W.L.)  and I"ll be epoxy-coating it above the W.L.  Still to come are the cheeks and tiller.  (The white circle near the bottom is a hole that I'll fill with lead and epoxy to keep the rudder from floating too much.)  Note that I've gone with a simple one-piece rudder rather than the more usual kick-up rudder...I'll discuss this more later.

OK that's it for now, so long!