Continued on from www.mahnamahna.com.au

Welcome to the new blog. I have been holding this site back for a while because Yikes is the name that our boat will launch as but we were not going to spring that new name until launch. It was going to be mahnamahna for a long time and stayed so long after we tired of the name because people knew the build as it was, but we now think its too hard to say, too hard to spell, try the phonetics mike alpha hotel……you get the idea. Too hard now so imagine in any type of emergency over the radio. Yikes is short, sharp, has more sentimental value to us (we made up mahnamahna when we decided to build a boat, Yikes has been with Jo since childhood) and is much easier to say, spell or radio call. Yankee India Kilo Echo Sierra.

But it became pretty clear to me that I could not continue to create the blog the way I used to. It just became too time consuming. And you know how when you let something get behind, each time you go to do it, it becomes too daunting so you leave it a little longer and in the meantime add to the daunt. Well thats what was happening with the photos of the work I continued to do, the more I did and not upload the harder it got to actually get around to do it. All the time Jo is telling me to switch to wordpress (and Yikes), it is so much easier.

I had been figuring that I am so close to finishing the blog (well not really but if I admit I have a lot of blog to go, then I admit I have a lot of boat to build, which I do but dont want to admit that as I have already been going 6 years and was hoping to finish in 5, nuff said on that). Surely, surely this boat will launch next year some time, even if its December 30, I can live with it launching, completely finished, any time next year. But still aiming for May (starting to feel we wont make that but you never say never). So here we are at the start of the new blog, it should result in more frequent updates and eventually we hope to migrate all of the old blog over to this new site.

So the work has continued at about the same pace as usual for the past 3 months since my last update. Various tasks have been completed or near completed. So lets jump in and update.

I left off on the old blog at the end of June at the start of the nose shaping and the end of the bathroom main cabinet and just starting the toilet cabinet side of the bathroom.

With the nose cones, to refresh your memories, I had held off attaching them because they make the boat just a tad too long to turn inside the shed so we were trying to find a cheap way to turn the boat first. Finding wheels strong enough to support the boat for a reasonable price is very hard. I baulk at spending $1000 on wheels to move the boat then never use them again nor get any other value from them. Then Dean (he is the boatbuilder that shares my shed and is helping me finish) suggested that turning it would make it harder for him to fair the boat so dont worry about turning it, we will just remove more of the shed side wall when its time to get it out. It might cost a little more but no more than buying wheels to make dollies that wont ever be needed again. (When we remove the boat from the shed we wont need 360° wheels just straight line wheels, much cheaper and easier to make the dolly/s. The boat cannot be faired until the noses are on, and the rear steps are in. So first things first, the noses went on.

I had originally wanted square bows, that is not angled forward like a power boat nor angled back in the new style of racing cat that Schionning seems to favour now, just straight up and down. However, because of the highly curved side decks and sharp entry at the waterline the width of the nose at the top makes the nose look fat with a radius as round as a basketball which I didnt like the look of. (Remember this is all aesthetic, it makes no difference to performance) So in order to slim down the nose at the top whilst maintaining the lines along the hull sides, we added a little more foam to the top of the noses and angled the noses just a little. I left it to Dean to shape as I just couldnt get my head around the various converging lines. He did something I did not expect. He left the very front flattened with a small radius curve around it. Not what I originally wanted and he said if I wanted a fully curved front edge, no problem, we just add a little more foam to keep the front slim and he would complete the rounded curve. But, the more I looked at the flat front the more I liked them. I asked Jo to take a look. She liked them too so we kept the flat fronts.

With the bow shapes decided we could glass them. Which we have done. Each took about about 2 hours. 2 layers of glass, one uni one double bias and a layer of peel ply so that the bog has a surface it can adhere to. Dean did a fantastic job of the shaping.