Tuesday 26 April
When JP and I turned up admittedly late this morning there was a gathering outside the shed in the sunshine of Adrian, Nick and Stuart. A little later on Ed turned up and then Veronica so we had quite a full house. We started by having a look at the Off Centre Harbor video of Geoff Kerr fixing the keel and outer stems on the Caledonian Yawl he was building. Lots to learn from his videos that can be applied to the St Ayles Skiff build.
This was Ed’s first time working on the skiff and he and Stuart set to with the sandpaper to clean up the glue on plank 6. Adrian got on with fitting the aft stem while Nick climbed onto the top of the boat to plane the keel land to fit the keel.
Meanwhile JP and Veronica got stuck into mixing epoxy to glue the two laminates of the keel together.
To overcome the bow in the keel timbers we glued and clamped them up so that the bends went in opposing directions and lined them up with the edge of the bench. We are hoping the glue will help to keep them straight once the are released.
We had a good break for morning tea of carrot cake and chocolate digestives shortly after which Veronica and Stuart were called away by St John to man an ambulance. The St John volunteers do a fantastic job in Denmark.
Stuart and Ed had finished their work and had moved on to cleaning up the plank clamps and wedges of niggly bits of epoxy they inevitably collect in the glueing process. When that was done they made the first step to building boat 2, they cut out the planks from the CNC cut plywood kit with Japanese pull saws.
It felt good to have made so much progress today after having been in the doldrums yesterday worrying about the keel timbers. This marks day 1 of St Ayles Skiff number 2 which we will build in parallel with fitting out boat 1. We are hoping to get the keel glued on boat 1 on Thursday. See you then.
Cheers Dave