Back to building, bottom almost done

Back in Greece! I've been here a couple of weeks. It took me a few days to settle in before I started back on the boat. Before I jumped into the filleting, sanding, epoxy coating and painting, I tried to design the pivoting rudder. I wasted a little time trying to figure it out until I thought, I should look at this blog to see what I did last time (duh!). It was easy after that, and here are the three pieces, top, pivoting bottom and pivot cheek. There are more layers to glue together but that can wait. I also cut one layer out of three of the centerboard, fitted it and drilled the pivot bolt hole. I tried it and it works fine for now. Both CB and rudder bottom will have holes cut into them, to be filled with molten lead for ballast and to stay submerged. Later.

Now it was time to plane and start filleting the seams, including the ends of the strakes at the stem, with epoxy compound. It is smelly and messy work, and I had to mix small batches to avoid a runaway reaction. Fortunately the weather has been pretty cool. I noticed sloppy epoxy work from putting the strakes together, and I added more with the fillets.

Then I sanded the imperfect scarf joints of the strakes, which I leveled with more epoxy, sanded and smoothed with wood putty. Then I set the nails as best I could (at the laps it is hard to sink them), puttied, sanded, sanded again. Sanding hardened epoxy is tough and I used the hardest sanding pads I could find.  In the end, and because I didn't want to damage the plywood, I had to accept that there would be plenty of bumps and imperfections, since I am not fond of sanding, and I figured my boat does not have to look as if it came off a boatyard, fresh from fiberglass molding.

There are two photos of the boat after the first coat of epoxy. It brought out the beauty of the wood, but that was short lived.  After a second coat and more sanding, I started on the painting. Once again I opted for standard exterior oil-based enamel for ease and economy. I don't expect to keep the boat in the water unless I'm out sailing or fishing, so no anti-fouling paint is needed. The epoxy took the paint like a charm, and the last photo shows the boat after the first coat. I wonder if it will even need a third coat of paint.

The next step is to screw and glue on strips of tropical hardwood  called iroko along the keel. Two narrower strips will go on the bottom of the centerboard trunk. Since I don't have a table saw her, I asked a carpenter friend to cut them for me. Then I will flip the boat to work on benches and decking. I am almost done bulding a two-piece cradle for it to sit on.