Starboard ama bottom glassed

Today we moved the main hull out to swap it with one of the amas. This allowed us to use a different perspective to take photos. Here it is, structurally complete now.

So, we enter the "finishing" phase. We put the starboard ama upside down on two sawhorses and glassed the bottom like we did on the aka: two layers of 160 g/sq.m. glass gloth and about 600 grams of epoxy resin.

We soaked both layers simultaneously with a roller. Here's a close up of the glassed chine

Total work time to date: 426 hours

Vaka cockpit (2) and more

Six hours of work last saturday. With the usual sequence of power planer, rasp, surforms and sanding board, we rounded and faired the vaka deck/hull  joint as well as the cockpit opening. Finishing is a lot of work.

We then made a pattern of the amas bottom panel and cut to size three (over four) fiberglass shapes to glass those bottom as we did with the vaka. Unfortunately we run out of fiberglass so we'll have to order one more roll, together with another batch of epoxy (possibly the last).

BTW: we decided the name of the boat: it'll be GEODETICA. This is because we both work in the field of space geodesy so this looked like a good compromise...

Total work time to date: 424 hours

Working on the vaka deck

Four hours of work today, to continue finishing the vaka deck.
First, we measured and cut the whole cockpit opening. Here's yours truly cutting the 12 mm plywood deck with the jigsaw

and here is the first view of the whole cockpit.

We then continued the fairing of the deck. Here's a view of the deck "wing" and of the forward port aka mounting block.

Total work time to date: 418 hours

Deck fairing

Only one hour this morning to fair the forward deck under which we had previously glued the doublers. Here is how it looks after many fairing passes, starting with the power planer to Surforms, rasp and finally the sanding board.

Total work time to date: 414 hours

Deck doublers

We worked two hours on Monday April 25th (national holiday). We had spent the previous week in Vienna for a scientific conference, and the last week end went for other commitments. Anyway, we glued the two deck doublers under the forward deck "wings". Here are the two doublers

and here they are glued under the deck wings with the usual epoxy resin thickened with microfibers and cabosil.

Total work time to date: 413 hours