Friday, December 08, 2006

The skeg is on!



Yesterday I went out to the boat and to my dismay, found that the car port roof still had snow on it. The moist air condensed on its underside then rained down on the boat and everything else around it. This morning, the ceiling was dry and the boat felt dry too. To be sure, I put a heat lamp along the path of the new skeg and warmed it up. Didn't change colour nor give off any steam, so I figured I was good to go ahead.
I was very nervous about putting on the skeg as it developed a bend or two once I cut it out. I could correct for the vertical bends, but the lateral ones concern me. From underneath, I drilled through on the center-line I made when I started the project. One hole at each end of where the skeg would live. I temporarily screwed the ends down then I ran a string line along the 'top' of the skeg. I tacked little blocks to the hull to keep the skeg nice and straight. This morning, I slathered epoxy on the mating faces of the skeg and hull, placed the skeg back between the blocks and screwed it down. The stringline showed it was still straight, so I laid down some epoxy fillets in the angles between skeg and hull. When that was done, I put some mini fillets on the laps of the planks. Nearly ready for fiberglas cloth and epoxy on the bottom sections of the hull. My next nervous job!

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