A Whole Boat!

At lot has been done since our last post. The boat is now fully planked. And just today Drew finished attaching the outer stem, so the hull of our boat is now complete! This is excellent progress. It looks like we will in fact have the boat ready to be able to move by May.

Before the boat will be ready we are going to put some fiberglass sheathing on the bottom of the boat to guard against abrasion during our beach landings. The fiberglass will just cover the bottom, ie the oval shaped plywood piece that is more or less parallel to the water. There will be a little overlap, and the cloth should come up an inch or two all the way around. This will help protect the base of the stem and the garboard seam, and hopefully prevent the glass from peeling off to easily.

In this picture, the starboard sheer strake (the plank closest to the basement floor) is not actually glued on. Since this shot was taken, Drew and I glued this plank on, and Drew spiled and cut out a matching plank for the port side. Brant (whose name i'm not 100% sure on how to spell) came down to help drew glue that one on. In drew's opinion, the boat looks pretty darn good. I'm excited to see it.

In D.M.'s post of March 25th, he voiced the larger goal of having the boat movable by May. It now looks like that will be totally feasable. In order to be ready to turn the boat over, which will essentially make it available to move, we just need to glass and paint the bottom. Of course, after that there will plenty of work to do before the boat is actually "done." (seats, decks, oars, oarlocks/tholepins, a name, etc).

Look for more action here in the next few days. I'll be up in Olympia for the coming weekend, and we should have access to a camera, fingers crossed.