Making windows

The starboard cabin is coming along well now with the side window and entry cut out.

An obvious process here but a lot of care is needed.

Cabin shape

Here we go with the starboard cabin. It took a lot of care to match up the cabin curve. I levelled the hull and used the laser level to mark the dimensions and sand to shape.

Then on with the first sheet of the roof .

Then the second layer which I propped up from inside and added some weight to make sure the bond is good.

Once again I'm back to putting on sheets of ply, which is probably the most enjoyable job during the build as the boat quickly takes on a new shape.

Duplication

Time to start on the cabin. Here you can see the panel which will become the inside of the starboard cabin. This piece was cut at the same time as the port cabin with the two pieces of ply screwed together.
You can just make out the pencil lines of the grid drawn to get the cabin top curve so I hopefully will end up with a duplicate of the port cabin shape.

Here are the first stringers to go on the aft part of the cabin.

And here the inside of the cabin is glued in place and the shape of the roof will be matched to this curve.

Tricky bits

Mostly this boat is quick to build. Mostly.
What isn't so quick is the beam reinforcing areas.

In the picture below you can see part of what forms the structure for taking the aft beam loads.
This is very similar to the port hull except that on the port hull I have made the cross structure much larger and higher using a big piece of Mahogany which will double as a mounting point for the outboard motor.

Also I have restocked some consumables. I have used almost 400 of these disposable gloves so far.

More Gudgeon's

Here is the second set of gudgeon's going on. The picture shows a test dry fitting lined up with the laser before fixing with bolts and epoxy.

I am slowly getting to use all the extra parts I bought during construction of hull 1. Buying two sets of everything early on means not much money has been spent during the second hull build.

Bow closed

I've been working on the bow and front deck. The small raised portion of the deck is made in many small stages and takes a bit longer.
In this picture is a small batch of epoxy ready to be brushed onto the gluing surfaces.

Next the panel is on and I'm ready for the next job.

Quite happy with how things are coming along. It's hard to say at what point a pile of wood becomes a boat, but it feels like it is happening now. Obviously lots still to do but it is definitely more boat than wood pile. :)

Foredeck number 2

As the deck goes on it is starting to look like I have a catamaran in my garage.

It's over

The starboard hull is finally the right way up. I had the help of a friend today to do it and it was a fairly easy two person job. Have not weighed it yet but feels light. The port hull was 88Kg at this stage.

I also took the opportunity to remove and dismantle the bulkhead supporting frame. No more hulls to build! This will help a lot keeping the floor clear and working around the boat easier especially now as there is not so much room.

It is so cool now having the hulls up and side by side.

Just enough

I had just enough 2 part primer left over from the last round of painting to do the bottom paint. I had to scrape the last out of the tin but got there in the end. Then over that with some top coat.

In this photo you can see the back of the filled hole where the rigging bolt is in the bow.

Pretty much ready for turning over now.

Dusty

Dusty, is what my garage has become building this boat.

Here it is glassed, filled and faired, almost ready for paint on the bottom.

More Glass

Time to layer on the cloth again.
I had to buy some more cloth. But should have enough now to finish the boat.

I am getting better at this than when I started for sure. Again finding it is so important to lay out and press the cloth into it's location before applying resin. This time around I am actually enjoying doing the fibreglass because I have learned what not to do.

Another trick this time around can be seen below. I tilted the hull over when doing this side to make applying the resin easier.

Long panel

I have made the long piece which forms the bottom of the inner wing. It is about 6 metres long using scarph joins and kind of looks like a big wooden banana.
Here you can see it upside down to get an idea of the curve involved.

This is actually an earlier photo which shows that I glued the scarph joins with it in place to get the curve just right and used some plastic film to stop it sticking to the hull so I could later remove it to fair the edge where it meets the hull.

And here is the final result. The board has been glued in place. Then the big fillet join added.
Also all the screw holes have been filled and the hull routed and faired, ready for fibreglass.

As you can see the port hull caught a hail of wood chips from the fairing of the hull. Looking forward to getting this hull up the right way to see them side by side.

Inner panels

I have the inner panels on now.

You can see in these photos that the panels are oversize, it is a quick job to sort this out later. You can also see a bit of the glue squished out. I like to see this as it means I used enough!

One thing which you can see in the next photo is that my garage is getting very messy. Time for a clean up maybe.

The build is going slow and steady. Each panel was done in a separate session, each one probably took about 3 hours to measure, cut and glue. My time is still very limited but I feel this build method works well for me because I can divide the building jobs up into very short time periods. Sometimes I only get a 1/2 hour work session but I can still do something useful in that time like cut out a panel or make some measurements.

First starboard panels on

Slowly the second hull is taking shape.

Here are the latest pics showing one side (the easy side) done. It is a good thing I pre coated these plywood panels with epoxy back in summer, the weather has been very cold and damp lately.

The only thing I'm doing a bit different this time around is doing a more tidy job with the glue and also I am epoxy coating the stringers at this point also as it is easier to get to some of them and there is no dust collecting on them at this point which helps.

Making a Hole

I would like to have a depth sounder on my boat, but where I could put one? Transom mount would be easiest but I expect the transoms would be out of the water some of the time especially at rest, a through hull would get squashed and be draggy, so I decided that in in-hull transducer would be best. However ultrasonic signals can't punch through wood, so what to do?... Drill a big hole!

It felt a bit wrong drilling a massive hole in the bottom of the boat but this small piece of the hull will be solid GRP so that the transducer signals can get through. This is another advantage of the flat bottom of the hull which makes this process quite easy.

Here is the first stage where I have wet out glass cloth on a piece of plastic film and pressed it against the inside.

Once cured I filled the hole with thickened epoxy.

Here is the finished result looking from inside the hull.

As you can see, light gets through. Hopefully the signals should get through also.

First Starboard Plank

The bottom is on.

In this photo I have put the plank on to check for size and mark out where the glue will be going. You can also see here the cuts made in the stringer to get the tighter curve of the rocker at the stern.

As with all the plywood panel gluing I sand and recoat with epoxy where the glued surfaces are including the stringers. All plywood I use I have pre coated with epoxy on the interior side twice, with a light sanding between coats. I prepared quite a few sheets back in Summer when it was an easy job, which should get me through the winter.

Here the bottom is glued in place. Notice I have also installed the inspection ports already.

At this point I am ready to start fairing the stringers prior to putting the hull panels on.

Building efficiency

Now that I have started on the second hull I have come to realise that building the two hulls separately has not been such a bad thing after all. Not that I have made any big mistakes on the first hull, but I have developed more skill building the first one so I have learned how to do things more efficiently this time around and seeing what the finished hull looks like, I can see what parts of the construction are more important.

Anyway here is some more progress to report. Hopefully I can give some other insights this time around.

First stringer on here. This was chosen as it is the straightest stringer in the hull so has the least tendency to push the frames around (which is bad). The framing I set up for the bulkheads does not hold them in place very securely so need to balance these pushing forces as I go and keep using the laser level mounted above the hull, shining down the centre line. To keep it perfectly straight until all the stringers are on.

In the pic below you can see where a stringer joins to another one with a scarph type joint. It is this bow area which is very hard to visualise until you see it like this.

Here is a pic of the bow locker floor being glued in place. I did this the same way on hull 1 and it worked out well. Once the sides of the hull are on it is very time consuming to cut a panel to size, such as is the case with bunk panels. This way it is quick, as it is cut over size and faired when the stringers are faired.

Temperatures have got low again here so it is good to have the fibreglassing and painting done for now. This wood working and glueing is quite a nice change.

Let's do that again

Time for some Deja vu.

It was good to dust off the second set of bulkheads which I made about 18 months ago. And clear some space to set them up.

In this pic you can see I had to shift the base just a little bit to give me enough room to work beside the finished hull.

Then it was a case of "How did I do this last time?". Oh yeah. That's right.

Laser level and being careful, measuring twice and all that.
It is a nice feeling to be working on the second half of the boat. :)

Rudder Housings

While I still have some room in the garage I decided to make a start on the rudder housings.

The first stage is to use each rudder as a mold for creating the sleeve of the housing out of fibreglass.
In this picture you can see the first one still wet with many layers of cloth and epoxy wrapped around it.

Once cured the sleeves are removed from the mold and cut to shape.

That is part 1 done. Next step for these will be the addition of some ply and carbon fibre.

Hull 1 done

Well, done enough, for now.

When I started building I was not sure where I would put the first hull while I built the second one, I thought I might have to keep it outside. Recently I realised I had just enough room in my garage to store it in there while I build hull 2 which also meant I could get away with not completely finishing it with regards to fittings, windows, hatches etc. So I have moved it aside to set up for the starboard hull.

I managed to do the move by myself with a little help from a skateboard and some tie downs.

It was quite easy to shift it around, but I took my time. I was worried about it falling over.

Using a tie down here to stop it falling over while the wing support was removed.

And here it is in it's new spot. While it waits for it's twin. :)

Non Skid

Non slip surfaces on boats are essential. There are a few ways you can achieve this, I have chosen to use this painted method. Basically it is just very thick paint and using a rough roller the idea is to create a rough lumpy paint finish, which is a nice change to normal painting where you want the opposite.

I am very happy with how much grip the finished surface has and how easy it was to apply. It should be fairly easy to maintain also.

Painting Topsides

After changing my mind about a colour scheme more times than I can remember, you can now see what I settled on.

It took some planning to have time available for re coating and masking within the recommended time frames. It is a two part paint system which I applied with a roller and brush tip off. I have not put top coat on areas of the deck which are yet to have non skid paint applied. Overall the job of painting is quite rewarding as after all the hours of prep, a short time spent painting and the hull suddenly looks almost finished!

Finding the waterline

It doesn't take long before one gets sick of sanding so that's when you realise you're not building a super yacht, so just start painting already. I guess I should choose a colour.

Here is a shot showing the laser level lighting up where the water line is.

Here is the bottle jack being used to lift the bow so I can place more wood under the forward support to level it up.

Then mask along waterline and apply primer.
What colour will it be? Not long now.