Another Puddle Duck Update

Is it still spring?  Well, we'll see.

We decided it was time to build my sail.  Sail number one, is being made of lightweight polytarp. 

Here, Dan is helping spread out the tarp so we can mark it for cutting.  

My sail is triagular, 16' tall, 8' deep.  So we cut out the sail blank with around an extra few inches on each side so we could form this thing.  Just as we finished drawing lines, it started to sprinkle.

Polysail, recommends using carpet tape for assembling sails.  And running a line in the seams to take some of the stresses.  Here, we've finished cutting out the sail, and are laying down reinforced carpet tape.  

The tape was placed centered on the line for the shape of the sail.  Then the line is laid down in the tape. 

Since nobody ever takes pictures of me while boat-building, here's some more of dan helping doing the seam forming on the sail.

So.. the whole sail was completed in one night.  I think it took us three hours start to finish.  We could do another in two hours, especially if we  had a nicer place to do sail layout.  Here's hoping it works.

Moving forward, we started fairing the hull as well.  Here all of the edges have been taped.  And we're about to attack the hull with some mostly microbaloon epoxy to hide all the tape ridges and fill the weave of the tape.

The deck and sides were sanded to knock off the biggest epoxy runs, and to reduce the thickness of the needed skim coat.  This.. is about where we decided these boats were no longer going to be 2-3 year boats, and have turned into 5-10 year boats. 

... quality creep.  Going the wrong way.

The shop is unbelievably dirty, and fiberglass dust doesn't make for good bonding. 

It's really hard to take pictures while buttering up the hull.  Epoxy and cameras just don't get along.  If you look closely, you can see the sheen of the wet ballons and epoxy on the hull.  This was after the first batch of the evening.  The skim coating goes really rather fast, so we can do more than one batch a night.

The second batch covered the sides and bow.  As a side note, that's Dan's boat up on the shelf.  It comes down the next week.

Next week?  Next picture?  same difference.  We flipped my hull over, and while I was out, Dan coated most of the bottom of my hull.  We also got his boat down from the top of the pallet racks. 

That night, we started coating some of Dan's hull too.  More updates soon.