Old Man Takes Up Rowing

Late last night, very early this morning, I did a BOTE calculation (appropriate, eh?). The forward deck takes the form of an isosceles triangle with a 2 foot base and a 9 foot height; the aft deck has a similar shape and base but a height of about 6 feet. A single layer of the…

I flipped the boat and allowed barely thickened epoxy (the consistency of melted vanilla ice cream on an 80 degree day, not a 90 degree day) to seep into whatever gaps remain between the deck and the hull. The oversized, upside-down deck panels form funnels and guides to put the goop where I want it.…

Last night, I finished painting the sculls and spent some time prepping for today’s deck work. I got one actual task accomplished — I marked the spots for deck screws on the fore deck — and then got prematurely concerned with aesthetics. In particular, the screws already installed in the aft deck caught my attention.…

One scull is structurally finished. It’s not aesthetically finished, but all the parts are drilled, cut, epoxied and assembled. It is curing, and that won’t take long since I used all fast hardener (15g + 30g resin) in the interests of seeing how this works out tonight. I’d earlier cut the sleeves into identical lengths…

The last pieces are here for the sculls, but I wasn’t expecting them (Labor Day…), so I plunged ahead on a different project: I put the afterdeck on the boat. The kit directions seemed a little sparse, and many otherwise helpful YouTube videos give short shrift to this step. It’s a busy little while, and…