Monday 26 September

The Queen’s birthday holiday in WA today but the shed was open for business as usual. Not that there were many takers. JP and I were it, Mark was playing safe with Covid like symptoms. The day started with drilling holes in boat 1 for the bungs. JP made a trip over to Thorntons for a hole cutter and came back with a cabinet hinge recess 35mm drill bit. The outside diameter of the bung base plate is 38mm. We marked out where it would sit without interfering with the next plank or the twist in the garboard at the stern then we drilled a pilot hole. We tackled the larger hole from the outside of the boat and we learnt the hard way we should have also drilled a part of it from the inside to prevent splintering. The second hole was much neater. I then sanded the hole out to fit the bung base and later epoxy resin coated the edges of the holes.

It’s not a good feeling to be drilling holes into our precious boat.
The moment of break through on the second hole.

JP then drilled out the plugged rowlock pin hole that I had filled. The resulting hole was totally different and much more where we wanted it to be. We decided to push ahead and create the tapered holes in the rowlock holders by covering our tapered pins in glad wrap which luckily Harry was around to help with. JP then liberally coated both the inside of the drilled rowlock holders and the sealed pins in epoxy glue and pushed them into place. The theory is we will be able to tap the pins out again tomorrow leaving a tapered hole which we can clean up.

Glueing the tapered pin into the hole, hopefully a temporary measure to produce a tapered hole.

JP’s daughter Michaela and her partner Rhys popped in with their dog Gringo, to say farewell as they were off back up to Perth.

Farewell delegation.
Gringo having the first ride in boat 2.

With the left over glue from the tapered hole job JP was able to fillet the frame joints in boat 2 and I was able to stick the yoke on the rudder for boat 1. JP left me to the job I had been wanting to get to all day, painting a second coat of opal white inside boat 1.

Second coat finished at about 4.30pm.

We need to get two coats of deck paint on the bottom boards this week and then we can turn it over and paint the outside of hull. There are now only 14 official work days to launch day and I’m thinking we should up the 3 days a week to 5 days a week to get boat 2 in a state we would be able to at least show off at the launch if not complete.

Hope to see you tomorrow.

Cheers Dave