Fitting and sticking

So difficult to get the right shape. One could count about 5 layers of 6mm plywood on top just to adjust the final shape of chine up front.

Just before Christmas...

..spent about 3 hours on the boat with my kid. Still sanding, fitting, glueing some extra pieces, again sanding, etc. BUT it seems the next time I get a few hours there I will be finally able to attach the front part of the port side panel! Progress pics to come soon!

3 months have passed...

..and during those 3 months I have touched the boat maybe 5 times maximum, on average 1 hour each time. Getting the front end right has turned out quite disappointing. This is the point where I understand the real value of quality plans vs. "some drawings" form a 1960's magazine that do not go into much detail at all.

Verticalizing the stem line

So here one can see what I am up to and what was described in previous post. Looks like I gonna add one more layer later on top of the three I did today. The previous plank attachment piece will be removed, of course.

Waterline

Yesterday looking at a little boat strugling against the headwind in Lielupe (coming back from the bay) and now looking at the picture I posted under the title "Planking 3" I made a decision, based on a phrase I heard from an old sea-wolf (Viktors) - the speed of your boat in knots equals to the length of the waterline in metres. Of course, that is only a saying an approximation but there is definitely some truth to it.
For the last 8 months I tried to follow the Volvo Ocean Race and one thing I could not leave unnoticed was vertical stems on all of the boats. Noticed the same feature on most race boats at the local boatyards that I had visited lately.
So, looking back at my picture, I realised that the stem turned out pretty serious and by reshaping the chines I could get the stem line close to vertical, hopefully increasing the max speed by that. Follow my posts to see the progress of this mod!

Planking 4

As simple as "planking" sounds, the associated sanding and subsequent dust-eating seems never ending. So, I am still eating wooden dust on average an hour or two every other day. Progress still slow but I am somewhat persitent.

Planking 3

I would rather rename "planking" to "fitting". Maybe working with full scale quality drawings makes the difference but in my case I am working hard to get the things fit together. In the picture - I had to "grow" back the inner part of stem that I had previoudly removed.