It has been a weird couple of weeks. I must apologise for the delay in posting, all the more confusing when combined to the weird things the website has been doing. For those that missed it or still don’t know what was happening, I use a real budget ISP, I only pay US$1 per month so I never complain much if the site is down for a while. Well it seems the ISP has a back up server so when the main one is down for whatever reason they switch to the back up. Great, the only problem was that the cached version of my site they had on the back up server was not only 2 years old but had some kind of pop up virus attached to it. And all the time it was down I could not update the site. Anyway that is fixed.

The weather has eased, in fact it almost started to feel cold! It has rained for nearly a week no so I am back to getting some work done. I have managed 25 hours in the last 10 days. Still not quite enough (I need to get 3 hours a day average) but after the heat I can at least start to make some progress again. For those of you that read this from overseas and may not have heard, last weekend we had the worst bushfires in our nations history and tragically over 200 will have perished once the fire fighters finish putting the fires out that still burn a week later. These fires were in another state but we also had 2 massive fires here on the central coast about 10kms from us and we had a lot of smoke around, fortunately they were put out quickly without loss of life or property, and they have arrested a man for deliberately lighting them.

I had a massive clean up on the weekend, so whilst I worked for nearly 15 hours, I spent 10 of them cleaning up the shed. It was way overdue. I had not had a clean up for nearly 6 months. I still have a little work to go, I need to dismantle the roof jig under the boat and finally dismantle the strongback. I will then have a heap of room under the boat again.

The cabin roof is now completely taped on, inside and out. The only small piece of work left is to add a piece I cut out of the bulkhead on the starboard side but over did it. Once the piece is added back in (and easy job) and is taped I am done with the cabin and roof. I have started closing the deck along side the cockpit so that all that is left to do is the rear steps and duckboard to close the shell. Easier said than done though. the back of the hull curves down so I have to figure a way to close the deck up over just a meter and a half. I think it will be ok to use a kerfed panel to close these gaps up rather than trying to strip plank such a small area.

I have found something I did not realise I had. Super wide deck where the cockpit seat backs meet the side deck. They are wide and will make excellent winching places. With just 2 winches 1 each side in this spot they can handle all functions, halyards run straight down the sides of the cabin to the winch each side, sheets will also run to them, they can be use to raise the daggers, raise the outboards and raise the dingy if needed with all lines in straight runs and out neatly of the way.

I am so happy with these areas I am wondering if I should lose some of it by adding the cabin side extensions that provide some shelter to the helm. I may compromise between having them and not but having a cut down version of them.

I will also start to work out the angles and logistics of the rear steps. This is a difficult area to design and my mind does not work well with such calculations. But hopefully I will get a start soon.