I had a great day today working on the boat. The fun I have building is hard to put into words. I could work much faster at times but why rush when I get so much enjoyment from it. I worked all day, well 10am to 6pm, and managed to fillet and glass the bow section before attaching and gluing the chamfer panel.

This panel took by far the longest but I was surprised I could finish it in a day. The rest of the panels took around an hour, the chamfer took me about 6 hours.

I had thought that I would attach the rear half of the panel and glue it down and let it set overnight before attempting the bow, which has all of the stress and twist in it. But after screwing down the rear section I continued on and started with all of the clamping, ratcheting and generally cajoling the panel into place. Some of the bulkheads needed to have a notch taken out of them (and out of the panel where it meets an mdf temp bulkhead) as the panel meets the bulkhead at the top and is up tight against the panel above but is a touch too wide and meets the bridgedeck return so the 3 or 4mm notch allows it to meet the bulkhead perfectly.

One other difference with the chamfer is that on all the other panels you ratchet the panel up into place, but with the bow section of the chamfer it actually sits up over the panel above and needs to be pulled down into place.

Once I had the chamfer in place I set about unscrewing the rear section, gluing it and re screwing it down. I initially decided I would leave the panel in place overnight then unscrew and glue it tomorrow as the panel retains some memory of the shape and re attaches more easily after being in place overnight. But I had time so I decided to continue on and get the whole panel glued today. It took a while and a number of clamps and ratchet straps but I managed to get the panel glued and screwed back down by the end of the day.

Is it just me or do all builders of this kind of hull stand back in amazement at the shape of the hull that emerges when the chamfer is attached? It is amazing the twists and curves that a large, fairly rigid panel is able to achieve and on both hulls I couldn’t help wasting 15 minutes just admiring the beauty of the hull lines created by the chamfer. It is truly brilliant and a credit to both the designers and the materials makers that this curved shape is possible from essentially a flat panel.

So tomorrow I have earned a sleep in, then I will start on the tabbing to lift or pull the panels into line with each other before I start on the filling/gluing of the panels to each other.