This is really a very big little boat.

I have an idea why it is taking me so long to get this little Spindrift in the water. This ten foot boat has a rudder, a centerboard, a centerboard case, a mast, boom, tiller, everything that a much bigger sail boat has. True each piece is a little smaller, but that does not really save that much time.

The interior of the boat is nearly finished so I flipped the boat and rolled it outside to begin finishing the exterior. Along the chine you can see the tabs that help key the side and bottom panels together. This area needs to be smoothed and rounded over.

The hand plane and long board do the job fairly easily. I just have to be careful to  keep the chine smooth and even.

Once the chine is smooth and fair it is ready for fiberglass tape.

The hull has two openings one for the dagger board and one for the bailer. Holes drilled from the inside allow me to locate and cut out the openings from the outside.

 I use a router with a round over bit to shape the edges of the dagger board case.

Here I am applying fiberglass tape to the rounded chine. You can see some tape reinforcing the joint between the dagger board case and hull.

 

 

I wet out the fiberglass tape before unrolling the tape onto the chine, then I went over the tape with a brush to make sure the tape was fully wet out. I am being careful to not apply excess epoxy because that will run down and harden in globs.

 

After fiber glass tape was applied on the chines and down the centerline I coated the entire hull with two coats of epoxy. Thin as possible to minimize runs.

 The edges of the tape need to be smoothed down and faired into the rest of the hull. Graham does not recommend putting any more glass on the exterior of the hull, but I decided to cover the hull with a layer of very light fiberglass cloth.

A squeegee works well to spread the epoxy and work it into the weave on flat surfaces.

On vertical surfaces you have to apply a thin even layer of epoxy. The roller is best for this.

The roller leaves lot of little air bubbles so I go over the entire surface lightly with a foam brush. Epoxy does not like to lay smoothly but the smoother you can get it the less sanding latter.

 

 

 

 

 

The thin cloth becomes transparent when wet out and you can see through to the plywood. You can also see the purple. Phenolic microballons makes the fairing mixture easier to sand.