Yesterday I did precisely nothing on the boat. Actually that is not entirely true. I dropped into the warehouse to take a look at the hull, that’s it. Today I did only a little more than that. I removed the skirt. Yep that’s it. I did try to do a little more but I couldn’t for a number of reasons. Firstly the resin is still not set. Maybe the copper powder being a metal retards the curing process, I am not sure but it IS correctly mixed and is fairly hard but not entirely. I certainly couldn’t sand it though. My hand print is left in it if I lean against it (which I did a number of times when removing the skirt).

I removed the skirt and learnt that masking tape is not all its cracked up to be. It tears easily when removed leaving small pieces I had to remove. Not a big problem as you can get a fingernail under it and start the process again so it is just annoying more than a problem. It also left a small residue of gum (glue) near the edge but I think some metholated spirit will remove that easily. So it is much better than clear packing tape but not the ideal. I have also tried cheap duct tape (with emphasis on the cheap which may have been the problem) that was less than ideal as it was too well stuck to itself and would stretch as removed from the roll ruining the straight edge. So the search for the perfect masking tape continues.

After removing the skirt I spent about 10 minutes admiring my work. I am very pleased in case you didn’t know. One thing that the dark anti foul copper epoxy coat does do is that it really highlights any faults in the fairing. I am glad the boat will be white! I didn’t do as terrific job on the underwater areas as I would have hoped for (but then I did follow the plan advise and not be too fussy on unseen areas) and that did make me wonder if I had done a good enough job on the above water areas. I think most first time builders go through similar self doubt at almost every stage of the build. It is probably because we are so keen to get a fantastic result. I reassured myself that I can always do more fairing to the above water outboard area if I want (I wont worry too much about the under bridgedeck areas). And the painter will soon tell me (in about 4 of years!) if he doesn’t think the boat is faired well enough. We want to paint our boat with an auto paint called mica pearl white and mica pearl is a very difficult paint to apply so I will definitely be having it professionally painted. It is a 3 coat paint process, a base color coat, a semi color clear coat which has the pearlesence in it and then a number of final clear coats. The result is an off white that also changes color slightly depending on the angle the light hits it and has a depth to it that standard paint doesn’t have.

As I said the copper epoxy wasn’t set fully. No matter I am in no hurry now. So that pretty much put an end to any work I was planning for today. Planning is too strong a word as I just thought about what I could do momentarily and then shrugged and said nahhh.

The other thing I did attempt today was to make the cradles for the hull turnover on the weekend (weather permitting). The cradles come with the kit (or at least the main parts do) and are pre cut from mdf in the same way that the temporary bulkheads are only the shape is inverted. There are 2 parts to each cradle and 2 cradles for each hull. The 2 parts for each cradle have a slightly different profile to match the changing shape of the hull. One of the pairs are marked bulkhead 7 aft and the other in the pair marked bulkhead 7 fwd, so I placed one of the parts on the hull to check the distance apart that the 2 parts need to be fixed to each other and found that it didn’t fit the hull profile around bulkhead 7 or anywhere near bulkhead 7. They are too small. I didn’t search for where if anywhere they do fit, nor did I check if the parts marked bulkhead 5 aft and bulkhead 5 fwd fit because the mdf parts were scratching the copper epoxy fairly deeply because it has not yet set. So I will wait until the resin is fully set and then try. If they don’t fit I will re-cut them. I will make stencils with cardboard then transfer the shape to the mdf and re cut the opening to the correct size.

I am not concerned about the cradles being the wrong size although I confess to a momentary concern that the cradles were correct and that the hull was the wrong size. That quickly passed.

So after all that, I couldn’t even log the time spent as it was so insignificant. I figure on less than half an hour yesterday and today. Its tough being a boat builder.