Psychologically I crossed a major barrier today. I cut the first hole in one of my until now pristine hulls. It takes a bit of courage. You painstakingly make the hulls as strong and watertight as you can so cutting a hole in it is quite daunting. I had the case position marked for the last week.

During the week I finished the second case by applying the 3 layers of uni and a layer of double bi to the bottom rear half and 2 layers of uni and double bi to the top front half and ran a bead of resin in the inside back of the case. That took me about 4 hours over 3 nights.

Last weekend I marked the position the case will need to be glued in but I didn’t yet have the nerve to cut the first hole. It took me a few goes to get the mark in the correct position. I used the molds I used to make the case to mark the cut-out on the hull. It will be roughly the correct shape but undersize because of the angle that the hull panel is on, and the fact the case needs to be square to the centreline. But because it took me a few goes to get the case hole marked in correctly I didn’t have the nerve to cut the hole out just in case I had the mark in the wrong place. I thought about it all week and rechecked the plans a number of times and remeasured my marks just as many times and finally I accepted that I had them marked out correctly and determined that I would cut it today.

So I arrived at about 10.30am and by 12.00 I had cleaned the floor of half the shed! As I usually do with jobs I am a bit nervous about I can find many other non urgent tasks that don’t particularly need to be done there and then but become far more important as a consequence of the procrastination. No matter, it needed doing as it was getting very messy. I also had a visitor, a builder of an Easy 37 cat about 5kms from me. I will go and visit his build next weekend and help him turn his first hull.

So after the visitors left I got a drill out and drilled a hole in the hull. Once I had the hole drilled it was like it was too late now so I could proceed. Its reminded me of when I was a boy and I got a brand new pair of puma runners. I would be so careful not to get them dirty until I got the first scuff or mud on them and then it didn’t matter anymore. So I immediately got the jigsaw and started cutting. I cut to the original marks which I knew to be undersize. I then made the hole bigger each side a little at a time.

In the end I ran out of time today. It took me all afternoon to trim the hole to size, ages before I could even push the case through the hull. As it stands I have it binding in a few places when I try to plumb the case to square. I cant quite get it to 90 degrees but tomorrow I will trim out the last few places that it binds, mostly at the front of the case in the rope trough bulges on each side. I have the case hole cut fairly tightly at the front, not so tight at the back so once I make it a bit looser at the front the case should be able to be righted. I wont be gluing it in right away, I have to de-core the hull panel and cut the case to the angle of the panel, which I will do after marking it and taking it back out. I will also make a grey water tank that will fit between the case and the hull sides so that will go in first then the case will be glued and glassed to it. But I have passed yet another milestone today.