Adverse Weather - the Ark continues...

I had a day off work on Friday, hoping to make some more inroads on the hull construction. As it turned out the day was spent shoring up flood defences and bailing out my neighbours house. With a months rainfall falling in a matter of hours, this is a view of the junction at the end of my road.

My neighbour had visited me the other day to look at progress on the boat. He commented at that time:

"You have two dogs, I have two cats and the neighbour has two rabbits. That boat looks very much like an Ark - your name isn't Noah, is it?"

Sunday was a warm and pleasant day, so after a bit of a clean up after the flood, I managed to build a mock up of the mast foot, the cabin soles, and vent trunk panels. Not as much as I would have liked, but at least another couple of ticks off the todo list.

Slow progress

I've not been idle, but there's not a lot of progress to report. The baffle cleat on the transom is installed after a lot of head scratching as to the best way to cut and bevel it. All cleat bevels are now complete and the entire hull has been temporarily assembled using screws. All the holes have been drilled for the ring nails and ready for final glue up.

At the weekend I built a trolley to keep the boat on. This uses four heavy duty swivel castors which allows me to move the boat around easily in the confines of my boat shed. It also allows me to bring the boat outside to work on when the weather is agreeable.

Work on the vent trunk continues; when that's complete I'll be in a position to wet assembly.

Taking shape

The chine and sheer strakes are now all complete. This weekend I made a start at assembly and sorting out the cleat bevels. Things are coming along nicely, but progress is quite slow. "Johanna" now starts to look a bit like a boat and it's pleasing to see some subtle curves which were never apparent up till now.