Bring more wood !

Friday short post August 11th 2022.

Good morning everyone, I hope you are well.

It’s an early ‘weekend short’ post today because iv’e already done my day’s work – it’s 0800 as I write and I just did an early start because it will be too warm under the shelter in a couple of hours time and my job this morning means that I can’t do anything else on the boat.

We’re having another warm/hot week (in Uk terms) so by mid morning it’s too hot under the shelter so i’m working mostly in the morning or evening.

This week I thought I would show just one job that iv’e been doing this week – there’s other stuff been going on but i’ll do a catch up main post later in the month.

So, last week my mast staves arrived and iv’e been doing some of the prep work for shaping the staves…..more on that next post – what also came was 4 pieces of Iroko to make the rubbing strakes from and a new piece for the boomkin.

Making and fitting the rubbing strakes is one of the last jobs of the main construction stage which gives me a complete hull structure but not fitted out yet and the rig not built. In the whole build iv’e only ever had to do one scarf joint and that was to join the bottom boards – so although I got a reasonable scarf joint in the 2 plywood boards it didn’t matter too much as long as it was joined and strong – it would all be covered anyway.

The rubbing strakes represent my 2nd and 3rd scarf joints ever and this time they had to be as neat as possible because those 2 strakes add a lot to the visual appearance. I’m only having a single rubbing strake each side as against what a lot of other builders do which is the double strake arrangement in John’s plans.

I just happen to like the single strake appearance although I can see where a double one would give more protection – aft certainly where there is tumblehome at the transom.

Anyway….I did the joints by stacking and then planing the Iroko in 2 pairs and then gluing together using one of the other pieces as a clamping rail to keep the long alignment all good.

As of last night we (partner and me) bonded the stbd strake on with sikaflex and the second one will go on this evening…..there’s a pause during the day while paint goes off. I haven’t plugged the counterbores yet – that will be another early morning job when it’s cool.

I haven’t downloaded the final fit photographs yet – I did some better end shaping of the rubbing strakes and gave them a couple of coats of oil btw.

The post link is to this month’s post from my main blog and it’s a piece about heaving-to, the link with my build is that one reason I wanted a Yawl rig was to make the boat easy to heave-to. The boat even has a temporary placeholder of a length of PVC pipe to help me line up all of the mizzen mast holes.

Some pictures from this weeks work.