Time for another rant. Almost a month after the end of summer and yesterday was 35 degrees and today 38 degrees in Gosford. And that was outside, it must be another 10 degrees warmer on the boat. If anyone doubts that climate change is happening, start building a boat. You will soon agree. In just the 5 summers since I started building I have noticed the really hot days start earlier in the year, last longer in stretches and still occur 4 days out from April. I am also thinking of hiring myself out to influence whatever it is you want influenced because whenever I declare something the opposite happens. I note at the start of this months blog that as if set to the calendar the temperature dropped dramatically and that I could now look forward to a few months of productive work due to the cooler weather. Wrong! As a result although I managed 8 hours yesterday I could only manage 6 today and both at half pace because of the relentless heat. I heard on the radio that the humidity had tipped into the 90’s and I defy anyone to get anything done in such conditions. The irony of it is that despite slowing because of the heat, you must work faster because resin goes off so much faster, so the remedy is to make smaller pots but that means making more of them in order to get the same work done, which takes longer. I barely got some of the tapes onto the job before they were hot and going off today. And all because the petrochem industry acted much like the tobacco industry for the past 30 years and stifled development of alternative technologies. Pretty soon we are going to have to redefine the tropical lines from 23 degrees to 33 degrees! Ok rant over, for now.
I have got most of the shelves into the starboard hull cupboards under the seats. There is one I have deliberately left out for now, as I am undecided if the space would be more useful without the additional shelf, I will ask Jo. I have just one more shelf to glass in (I would have had it in if not for the heat, dont get me started again!) and then the bottom shelf/kickboard set up. Then I will clean them up inside and give them a coat of white epoxy to finish them, in one section I have a couple of drawers to make and of course for the entire cabinet I still have the doors to make and hang, but that is true of all the cupboards so far. I will make all of the doors in one door making session (that may last a couple of weeks or more if it falls in summer, now there I go again…) and hang them all toward the end of the fit out, after they are finished, not sure yet whether that will be paint or laminate.
I will also be finally putting the side decks on very soon. Probably in the next few weeks. That is a milestone I am looking forward to very much. Essentially closing up the boat. So in preparation for that I have bogged the inside of the curved strip planked side decks over the area that will be the shower in each hull, so aft of bulkhead 6 on the port hull for about 1200mm (about the half the way to BH7) for the main bathroom shower (although the rest of the bathroom is in front of BH6) and between bulkhead 3 and 4 in the starboard hull over the ensuite. The reason for this is that I am not sure if I can have linings inside the showers, for if fairing and painting wont be the best finish for these wet areas. I intend to line the rest of the boat so fairing is not necessary and I may still be able to line the showers, but if I cannot I would rather that I fair the curved insides of these side decks off the boat rather than finding out later and having to do them upside down inside the boat. Life is so much easier right way up and off the boat. At least 5 degrees cooler for a start….yes I am still on this rant. So yesterday I marked out the bulkhead positions and from there bogged them leaving about 100mm all around so that I can still tape the panel to the boat without there being bog in the way, and today I managed a few minutes of fairing before my body quit and politely asked me to wait for a day at least in the high 20’s.
There is no easy way to fair a concave curve. The bogging is easy enough, my method of bogging was to key the glass underneath, in the case of the port deck I added a thin layer of surf board cloth (200gsm plain weave glass) because I had a number of bubbles in the glass that sanding out left unglassed sections, on the starboard hull I did not have such bubbles so I simply keyed it then brushed a coat of resin on, then bogged both when they had tacked off using sweeps with a trowel from one side to the other keeping the blade as square to the panel as I could so as to get an even layer of bog, then repeat until you have bogged enough of the panel trying to keep the bog layer thin. You cannot trowel along the panel for obvious reason. When sanding you must use a curved long board, in my case it is just a swimming pool noodle with hookit glued to it to hold the sandpaper. So with a long curved board you push in zig zags across and along the curved section until it is fair. The zig zag motion is important, without which you could end up with a series of parallel troughs require rebogging and resanding. The zig zag ensures you dont dig holes. It still may, like most fairing require a couple of runs with bog. But even with only 10 minutes manual fairing in each section the tops are knocked off the highs and the panel is almost fair. Hopefully if I do a few minutes each day I will get it done soon.
I managed to get 57 hours done this month, not bad considering I missed a weekend which is 14 hours so if I had not I would have got into the 70’s which for me is a good effort. I was also striving to get to the 3000 hour mark before the end of the month. According to Schionning it takes about 4000 hours to build this boat and I pretty much agree with that. I think I have about 1000 hours to go. It has taken me 4.5 years to get 3000 hours done and my goal is to get the final 1000 hours done in 18 months tops. A big ask, considering I have averaged only 700 hour or so a year, but the way I intend to achieve this feat is to hire some man hours to help me finish especially the fairing and with that help I am now getting confident the boat is going to be finished and in the water next year. Only a little over time budget.
