it's in use!

Behind my 26' cat "Hokuspokus".
First repairs allready necessary - due to bad plywood ??
First time to water - not named yet.

ready now! (no paint yet...)

Gunwales

Just stiffened the gunwales by glueing 14X45 mm timber on inside and outside all around. Doing this alone was the most difficult work so far - with the timber being quite sturdy. Two more hand had been so good, but around everyone was asleep, had gone to work or was drunk.
If it stays warm like it is at the moment I should finish the boat next week. The weekend is for the family, but on workdays I never can spend more than 3 hours in the shed...
Want to know the story of the squated place? Well, when friends of mine discovered that the site was without an owner they just went in... German civil law knows that you can give up property (see § 928 BGB!). In our case there was too much mortgage on the property, so a former state owned (well they called it peoples owned) company got rid of it after privatization at the beginning of the 90's...

Sniff some glue

Glueing the stitched boat was a quick job. As it has about 10 degrees Celsius at the present in Berlin, it was easy to heat my workplace to temperature above 10 degrees. Hope the warm weather will stay a few more days, as the boat is in an non-insulated shed on a squatted industrial area...

Next step was to build the rear buoyancy box or bank. That took a bit longer already, as I first had to cut my timber on a circular saw bench to several meters of 25x25 mm battens.

By the way, epoxi doesn't smell.

First steps

The plywood I got has the size 250x170 cm instead the normal 144x122 cm, so 2 sheets will be enough.
Took me about 2 hours to cut everything out, problem was the sheets where to big to get them in the room where I did the work... had to make the first cut outside under plain air.
After stitching it all together I was hardly able to move around – so far all this happened inside an truck trailer... no, not an empty one!

To do the epoxi work I moved over to a friends workshop...that was on monday.

Choosing a design

I need a new dinghy. Playwood, not rubber or so. And besides, I want to gain in experience working with epoxi and plywood and stitch and glue boatbuilding. As there is bigger projects to come. Soon soon.
So what design should I take?
First I thout about a free plan from the german magazin PALSTEK wich can be found on there webside. 8' long, it is a pretty heavy construction, about 50 KG/100 lbs. - too much to lift it on board or carry it over a beach alone.
So my focus came on the CRAYFISH designed by Richard Woods sailingcatamarans.com.
Looks a bit like an optimist dinghy, the one Richard build was only 30 lbs.!
Got the plans - should be a fast thing to do. Needs anly 2 ½ sheets of 4mm BWP plywood (the german equivalet for BWP is AW100), some timber, epoxi and glass tape.
I found a good epoxi dealer about 20 Km from home, bootsservice-behnke.de, who sells everything necessary for a very resonabe price (forget West System, but buy their book THE GOUGEON BROTHERS ON BOAT CONSTRUCTION - the best book on the marked).
Today I'll get the wood.

Ich brauche ein neues Beiboot. Und habe noch keine Erfahrungen in der Verarbeitung mit Epoxidharzen. Was liegt also näher, als ein kleines Ruderboot selber zu bauen?
Nachdem ich mir den kostenlosen Plan von der Zeitschrift PALSTEK angeschaut hatte, schied der schon mal aus. Sicher kein schlechtes Boot, aber so eine Art Panzerkreuzer, wiegt vermutlich 50 Kg. Viel Spaß dabei, das Ding (äh Dinghy) mal alleine an Bord einer Segelyacht zu heben...
Daher habe ich nun einen Plan von R. Woods Sailingcatamarans genommen:
Crayfish, 2,40 m lang und von der Form sieht es aus wie eine Optimist-Jolle.
Epoxid ist günstig über Bootsservice-Behnke zu beziehen, die sind gleich bei mir um die Ecke.
Jetzt nur noch Sperrholz besorgen – und es kann los gehen!