2169Hrs – Patience

Over the past couple of days I’ve continued to clean up the barn and thanks to the breeze that’s sprung up recently everything has at last begun to dry out. I moved loads of crap and timber around to give myself more working space down the outside of the starboard hull and also between the hulls where I’ll soon be picking up where I left off with the crossbeam construction.

Today the first really cold weather arrived, I was scraping ice off the windscreen and it was only 1 degree above when I got to the barn with a windchill making it feel somewhat colder. Not ideal conditions for painting even with a cold weather additive and neither for mixing up large quantities of epoxy for the beams.

Actually this turned out to be a bit of a blessing as it caused me to stop before charging in with the paint, something I’m impatient to get started. I took some time to wander round the hulls checking everything was actually ready and what do you know I found two jobs that needed doing. First I decided to add an additional layer of glass biax to the outboard edges of the beam troughs where they meet the hullsides, just to add a bit more strength and wear resistance. That’s what I’ve done today. Secondly I realised that the rudder mounting holes on each stern need some tidying up as I overlapped them with the sheathing slightly, I’ll have a look at that tomorrow.

The forecast is for things to warm up a little from tomorrow so I just need to be patient for a little longer but with luck I’ll be able to start painting on Monday.