Accidents happen!

I have just started working on the project again after ten days of summer vacation. Yesterday I managed to sand the inside faces of the lower hullsides-it is easier now that they are still flat on the ground-and drill the holes for the rope hinges on the stern. At the same time I am trying to finish with all the bulkheads so as to coat them with epoxy before I start assembling the first hull. Unfortunately as I was demonstrating to a friend how the keel flexes to follow the curvature of the keelline the keel broke a few mm beside the joint of its two parts!

This was something that worried me(I wouldn't like something similar to happen in an assembled hull!). For the keel I had chosen a kind of red pine as I couldn't find good quality Douglas Fir in Crete. This softwood was recomended in the plans and the one I found was of good quality, smooth grained, without knots. I guess I could use harder wood for the keel but then it wouldn't be flexible enough to take the shape needed and the tension would be larger. An other cause of the keel failure probably was that when I glued its two parts together I didn't nail them as well, as I was advised by the plans. I was planing to screw them together with inox screws just before the assembly. Keeping all these in mind I decided to cut off the broken parts and reuse the same wood for the keel . Hopefully when the hull is assembled and the keel is glassed ( at least three layers of glass cloth on each side) the possibility of it cracking will be minimized.

Working on the bulkheads.

Kika is testing the opening in bulkhead No3!

Sanding the inside face of the lower hullsides.




Drilling the holes for the rope hinges at the stern.


Reassembling the keel. I glued and screwed the two parts together this time!