Canadian Gothic

Trevor has been working on the gaffs in his shop.

More cabin top progress

December 16... my new favourite day! We do not yet have the top of the cabin, but we do have the starboard, port, fore and aft pieces dry-fit, and the holes for deadlights cut.

It looks absolutely amazing. Even without the top, we can get a real sense of what the chart room will be like. It may not be obvious from the pictures, but this boat is definitely getting closer to the tropics every day.

Glass templates screwed in place for marking. We confirmed the glass size with the templates -- BudgetGlass did a great job. The deadlights are perfect.

Looking aft, with the holes cut. The channel in front of the cabin top is the beam trough.

Starboard side

Looking aft. No windows in the aft end of the cabin top, since the cockpit sits right behind and there would be something blocking the view. Of feet. Since the cockpit's there anyway.

Cabin top

The cabin top is well underway. Today Robbie and Trevor cut and dry-fit the forward and aft panels. Yesterday I went to Budget Glass and ordered the seven deadlights (Okay, I call them windows. But I do know what they are really called.)  They are laminated glass, the kind used for cars.

Astute observers will realize that somewhere as we crossed the wasteland of undone blog posts, Robbie and Trevor glued the decks on, including the tiny side decks. Here's proof!

Rudders

The rudders are laminated plywood, with purpleheart rudder cheeks. They went together tremendously quickly. Trevor is working on them in his shop, where it is warm, instead of in our boat shop, where this time of year it distinctly is not.

The pieces

The sophisticated clamping system

With the cheeks, attached with Sikaflex and bolted

Primed. We chose to paint the rudder cheeks. We'll leave the purpleheart lashing strakes as is, or oil them.

Ramp

What can you say about the ramp that goes at the stern, between hulls? It will make it easy to get on and off the boat, of course, and it will be absolutely wonderful for going swimming in the ocean. The warm ocean. On warm days. And now we have a ramp, more or less, though not yet the ladder and netting that goes between the sections.

We are missing the warm ocean and warm days.

Something to tie to

Any Anne of Green Gables fans out there? One of the characters in one of the books had a lovely expression -- if you could really rely on something, she'd explain it and add, "And that's something you can tie to!"

We now have something to tie to, in the shape of two purpleheart lashing strakes.  

What's a lashing strake? Well, we're using the Tiki upgrades to make this Narai, and that means the beams and the two hulls will ultimately be lashed together. The beams are lashed to blocks on the side of the hull, and the lashing strake is a single long piece of wood that connects the blocks. The astute observer will realize immediately that this means the ropes don't actually go around the lashing strake. Instead, it's what keeps the ropes from popping off the blocks. So technically it isn't something you could tie to. We will be able to tie dinghies, ladders or whatever to the lashing strake itself, though, so it seems to be within the meaning. 

Here it is, on the port side, with our beam mock-up and bit of string in position to show how it all works. (You can see two of the real beams in the picture too -- they're the white pieces at the bottom of the hull.) At this point it's just dry fit and bolted into place. It won't be finally attached until we've painted the hull, and we won't be painting the hull until the weather warms up.

Pre-strake, there was some work to be done on the workshop. We bought lovely purpleheart for this project, once again from West Wind, and it came in 17 foot lengths. Lovely! Except that the shop is 20 feet long, and it just wasn't going to go through the bandsaw. Lots of discussion ensued, and finally a customized solution was achieved.

The shop now has three new windows -- one strategically placed to allow sawing of long pieces on the band saw, and two to allow the same pieces to work their way through the jointer/planer. It all works beautifully. And the tools, from Grizzly, did a wonderful job on the purpleheart. 

An additional benefit -- should they so choose, Ziggy and his friends will now be able to look in the workshop from their meadow.