Flip-Flopper

Well, yesterday was the big day and everything went off without a hitch. I invited a few of my work colleagues and my sailmaker over for a little light manual labor and a BBQ. We started by lifting the boat off of the cradle and setting it on a couple of pieces of styrofoam. I then quickly mounted a couple of crosspieces on the cradle. With a couple of lines tied to the chainplates, we vey easily got her up on her side and then lifted finished rolling her.

As easy as it was to roll the boat, I have a hard time imagining she will weigh in at 800lbs when all is said and done. Time will tell! Next up, you guessed it: more fairing and sanding. :)

Prime Time

Wow. It's really starting to come together now. Today I got a coat of primer (Interlux Pre-Kote) on the decks. A while back I thought it would be cool to keep a portion of the boat bright finished---that's varnished wood rather than painted wood for you boatbuilding neophytes :) . So before I primed the decks I masked off the cabin sides. Due to the presence of fiberglass tape and filler at the corners I had to leave 2" on the top and 4" on the bottom edge painted.

I'm still not sure I'm sold on it. What say you? Leave me a comment and let me know what you think---bright cabin sides or painted?

Well enough about paint. Tomorrow we flip to boat! First thing in the morning I'll need to get the chainplates installed (to secure lines to) and screw together a few 2x4s to attach to the cradle before the gang arrives to flip this little sucker.

Stay tuned!!
Jeff

Meet my maker

Sailmaker, that is.

I met up with Ryan Malmgren at MadSails this afternoon to have a look at the draft sailplan for the boat. Ryan has a ton of experience building small boat sails and we (Kevin and I) are really stoked to have him working on our project. Truth be told, I think Ryan is pretty stoked to be involved as well.

The main is going to be square-topper with about 160sqft of area. That should give us ample horsepower in the light stuff, and the sqaure top should auto-depower nicely in the puffs.

OK, time to go finish fairing the decks so I can flip the little beast on Sunday.

Jeff

Dead Sexy

Things are really starting to get cooking now. Over the last two weekends Traci and I got the glass laid on the decks. Unfortuately time did not permait us to do the whole job in one go so their was a bot of sanding and fairing required between glassing sessions. I think it looks pretty good though. Of course, the longboard will tell me the truth...

Going to try to get everything sanded this week and maybe get a coat of primer on the deck before we flip it next weekend.