Bit and pieces

Lately time to work on the boat has been scarce with the holidays upon us and other commitments. Nevertheless a little progress has been made, lately. In an effort to stiffen up the largely flat sections in the aft two compartments, I glassed in some structural members half way between the chine and the rail. Between f124 and f169.5 I tried encasing half of a piece of foam pipe insulation in two layers of biaxial. It ended up looking good, but only stiffened the panel a little bit. Not enough surface perpendicular to the hull panel, I think. Based on that result I glassed in a ~2" wide strip of plywood into the aft-most section---rock solid. I may go back and grind out the foam half-round, but there is a lot more to do in the short term. We'll see...

I also glassed in a sort of sheer clamp along the transom. The 3/4"x3/4" poplar ripped in the diagonal will provide a little more than an inch of surface to glue the deck down which will be good since I won't be able to tape back there.

My main focus is working on the keel. The handheld electric planner I bought has worked a treat thus far. I just requires the patience to only take off a little at a time. Get too aggressive and you will have many evening alternating between filling and fairing! I also got a 30" longboard that has been great to fine tune the shape. I bought a flexible longboard which will come in handy for fairing the hull, but modified to to make it rigid for fairing the keel. At $50 ea. for the rigid and flexible longboards, the modification was a good solution. I will post a pic when I can.