We have paint.
(ta-dah!)

We now have some primer on the cabin. It looks much better than I had thought, now that the fairing compound is all covered up. Lots of little pinholes, a few areas where it isn't very fair, but overall I'm quite pleased. It also decreases the "visual bulkiness" of the cabin to have it painted.

Today I was sanding the primer. Nice high build epoxy, but it's hard stuff. I'm using 150 grit and it eats discs pretty fast. But it's very smooooth when you do sand it. Very nice tactile feel on the rounded corners. Thank god I don't have to sand the whole cabin top (which will be non skid) because it's half the surface area of the whole cabin.

The cockpit shot here has the battery box/see over the cabin step/bench seat shown.

Finally the adjoining boat is out of its slip and I got this good shot of the boat with windows in place. Fairing is coming along well and I hope to paint in about 1 month... (famous last words)

Windows, windows, windows...

The view...

So how should we paint her? Stylized waves running down the hull? Something more abstract? It is never too early to think about painting - especially if you have an extreme negative reation to the thought of living on a blue and white boat. In searching for inspiration Ev found me some boat owners who think like me. Go to their photos page and click on May's "Pimp My Ride."

ONE YEAR LATER

It’s been a year since we hauled out and chopped up the boat. Progress has been steady and expensive (but thanks to ebay we're still below budget.)

Ev is taking the week off to work on the boat and I gave up the glamour of the writing life for a few days and got dusty and dirty too.

We decided that our goal of being sailable by September was stupid. The boat may be ready to go out by then, but the amount of work needed to clean her up and drag all of our belongings out of the lockers and bilges makes the idea very unappealing. I would rather go hiking - and save unpacking and cleaning the boat until it is completely finished.

We are also rapidly moving into detail work. There are very few large holes left to chop in the boat - so after the hatches are in it is time to work on the finishing details. Ev’s been fairing for weeks and looks forward to painting the cabin. I want to make curtains but I think installing the scuba compressor (yay! Ev came up with an ideal place), hooking up the engine, redoing the rigging, building a table, ripping out the galley etc need to come first. Ev suggested the fun home project of building an 18' sea anchor to ward off writer's block though...

Windows Windows!

We have windows. And hatches. After agonizing over the shape we drew them on yesterday and made the cut. It sure changes her appearance. Ev and I will attach the windows this weekend. The view from the forward salon seats is awesome.

More GV10 dinghy progress. Glassed inside hull and frame seams last night. Another 4-1/2 hours of work. It was really hard on my back - because the hull is on the floor and I have to bend over to get at the inside seams. This is the hardest part of stitch and glue boat building for me.

Total time spent: 11-1/4 hours. Going fast so far.

GV 10 dinghy progress - moved from my long suffering friend Cheryl's basement to her garage to build the dinghy. Stitched the hull together tonight. 1-3/4 hours.

Time to date: 6-3/4 hours.

Progress on the big boat continues as well. I have got the carbon chainplates all glassed in and hopefully watertight. And I've started work on what has to be one of the few carbon / nomex outboard motor brackets around.

One of the few times I've had to say that "stupid previous owner". He liked to fasten down hardware with through bolts that are embedded in epoxy. This cam cleat has machine screws about 2" long epoxied into a solid mahogany backing block. Heating them doesn't really help because if they get too hot they melt the cleat. Boiling wasn't hot enough. So I'm drilling down around the cleat through the remnants of the deck and backing block and will have to chisel the piece off. A nice hour long job.

I've started building my GV10 dinghy - the tender for the big boat. I sell plans for it here:
http://boatplans-online.com/proddetail.php?prod=GV10

Tonight's progress:

- mark out all the panels and frames
- cut them out
- glass 3 of 4 of the hull panels and 1 of the 2 frames. Just didn't have enough epoxy. It's all on the big boat where I have gallons of the stuff.

5 hours to date

Chainplates under way

For the past year the rig has been held in position with short lengths of rope to the rigging wires turbuckles. This has been because we raised the mast so the boom would clear the new cabin. But the mast is rather "loose" and bounces around a lot when a big wake hits the boat.

But now, finally, the chainplates are going in. This will be nice as summer (and the jetskiers and wakeboarders) approaches so I can properly tension all the rigging.

You first start with about 30m of carbon fiber unidirectional fabric 300mm wide.


Laminate this over a stainless steel pipe that is suspended in mid air. When hard, cut into individual chainplates. This is hard work - the thick walled s.s. pipe was way overkill (but it's i.d. happened to match the clevis pin diameter). Note to self - next time use just a thin s.s. bushing.

It took 2 hours to cut 3 slices and form the four chainplates into these: