Fitting the sole panels

Four hours today to fit the ill-sized sole panels...

This is a real pain in the a** because we trusted plans and instructions but the dimensions proved wrong. We should have checked on the hull before cutting plywood. Here's a view that shows the real error in length (the tape measure is metric) in the forward panel, which we had previoulsy cut according to the plans)

This photo shows another issue. See that resin fairing below the butt block? The instructions suggest to leave that space empty so that you can insert the corner of the panels there. but there's no way to persuade 10 mm thick plywood to do that thing, so we decided to fill those spaces with thickened resin and then cut recesses in the corners of the sole panels. In this specific case we also have to glue a butt block under the sole and then add an extension to reach the bulkhead.
The last pic shows the central sole panel, whose length was almost there while the width was way off at the bulkheads. Same as above regarding the recesses at the corners.
This panel is important because it will be the cockpit floor through which the daggerboard goes: its trunk stays between sole and floor.

We started to work also on the aft sole panel, which is both too long (by about 2 cm) and too wide at the bulkhead. Will finish next time.

Total work time to date: 265 hours

Quick update

I went to the shop to check if the resin had set correctly overnight, which it did. Again, I'm quite proud of how symmetric and straight the hull turned up. Here's another pic taken standing on a stool which shows the internal structure and framing.

Glueing the vaka (2)

Five hours of work today to glue the transom to the vaka sides and to do the fillets at the bulkheads.
We also removed all temporary screws from stem and bulkheads (for some of them we had to use the soldering iron trick). The fillets have not yet been done at the transom in order to be able to remove the screws after the resin sets.

Here's a view of the whole hull. I'm pretty happy of how good the alignment proved to be. The resin freezes the shape now so we'd better have a straight hull at this time.

Total work time to date: 261 hours

Glueing the vaka (1)

This week end we managed to devote a couple of hours to the boat. This morning we started to glue up the main hull (vaka) but run out of time so we didn't glue the transom, which we'll do next time.

We first inserted some spreaders at the bulkheads to keep the hull shape when the bulkheads are removed

Then we glued the bulkheads to the cleats using the usual microfiber thickened resin and sheetrock screws

and we did the same with the stem 

And here's a final view from the bow

Total work time to date: 256 hours