It's taken longer than I expected to get to this stage and it has been much harder to do some things than I thought it would be.
Mistake number one was not knowing how precise the 'moulds' I made for the hull bottom and cabin top really needed to be. The cabin top has taken me at least 100 hours (Shazza took me 200 hours from start to in the water finished) to get half way right because the mould I made it from was so far wrong. It's probably also the most expensive with the amount of fairing it has required. But it's looking good if I impose the 10ft rule (no one aloud closer than this and it looks great).
The "Charlene" bow sicker is everything we hoped it would be, nice and bright and a little classier than 'Shazza' was.
The cockpit area has come up pretty well but has suffered from the same lack of prep/knowledge on building a good sound mould. Unfortunately I was trying to save money and took short cuts on the amount of material in the mould. The same 10ft rule applies here as for the cabin top.
The colour is also everything we wanted it to be, we love the colour and I managed to get a pretty good gloss straight out of the gun--no polishing has or will be done. I have done over a couple of dozen paint jobs now and I've found that the better I get the finish the sooner someone comes and runs into us or we drop something of the hull and scratch it. This paint job has no runs and is pretty glossy for straight out of the gun so I will manage to damage it pretty soon somehow!
We have been overwhelmed by the lack of service from a number of retail outlets while trying to chase down rigging turnbuckles etc and deck hardware. As is usually the way, it is through referrals that we finally got onto the retailers that actually want our business.
Thanks to Muir Marine for the quick response to our quote request for our rigging needs (even if they did need a couple of reminder calls, they were professional in their service and phone manner).
Also a big thank you to Laurie for putting us onto Aaron who owns Boating & RV in Capalaba. A big thanks to Aaron who not only gave us a good price on our deck hardware order, he also delivered it to our front door! Yes he did want to have a look at the build, he's also aware that we still need communication gear, running rigging, gps, and Cat 5 safety gear. Aarons' not silly! but his competitors are.....
Next is to get the mast stepped, which will hopefully happen some time in the next couple of weeks. I still have a few fittings to get into the mast.
In the mean time I will also be fitting our pulleys and cleats to the deck as well as building our keel lifting system with our little winch donated by Jon.
The "Charlene" bow sicker is everything we hoped it would be, nice and bright and a little classier than 'Shazza' was.
The cockpit area has come up pretty well but has suffered from the same lack of prep/knowledge on building a good sound mould. Unfortunately I was trying to save money and took short cuts on the amount of material in the mould. The same 10ft rule applies here as for the cabin top.
We have been overwhelmed by the lack of service from a number of retail outlets while trying to chase down rigging turnbuckles etc and deck hardware. As is usually the way, it is through referrals that we finally got onto the retailers that actually want our business.
Thanks to Muir Marine for the quick response to our quote request for our rigging needs (even if they did need a couple of reminder calls, they were professional in their service and phone manner).
Also a big thank you to Laurie for putting us onto Aaron who owns Boating & RV in Capalaba. A big thanks to Aaron who not only gave us a good price on our deck hardware order, he also delivered it to our front door! Yes he did want to have a look at the build, he's also aware that we still need communication gear, running rigging, gps, and Cat 5 safety gear. Aarons' not silly! but his competitors are.....
Next is to get the mast stepped, which will hopefully happen some time in the next couple of weeks. I still have a few fittings to get into the mast.
In the mean time I will also be fitting our pulleys and cleats to the deck as well as building our keel lifting system with our little winch donated by Jon.
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