At long last a boat

Yesterday was the most gratifying build day yet, we can finally see the shape of one of the hulls! We have put so many hours into the pieces and prep work and it is finally starting to come together. We wanted to stitch the bulkheads into both hulls but ran out of both time and copper wire so this is all for now.

The shape is surprisingly sophisticated for a v-bottomed canoe. The flat edge of the hull panel transforms into a nice sheer line with a sharp entry and curved aft sections.

The last bulkhead was the most difficult to fit. There is a lot of curve in the plywood hulls and a lot of tension getting the bulkhead into place. The stitching holes in the bulkheads are offset ~1/2" above the hull stitching holes which pulls the bulkhead down into the hull as the stitches are tightened.

Here is a view from the stern. The clamp is distorting the shape of the sheer a bit but we'll fix that when the stern stem stitches are in.

Now it finally looks like a boat!

Stitching took longer than we though (like everything else so far on this boat!) so the second hull will have to wait for another day.

With no real work left to do we held up one of the unfinished beams so we could stand in the right spots and imagined laying out on the deck, sails set cruising the Boston harbor islands, the Cape and beyond.