Dreaming

I managed only a little progress today.  The lashing pads I cut out last night are shaped and matched, a process made vastly easier by the belt sander.  There are 12 lashing pads, and I'm not great at assembly line work, so I had 12 slightly different rectangles when I set the saw down.  No worries - clamp them tightly together and run the belt sander over the edges until they're all identical(ish).

I put the first coat of epoxy on the lashing pads this evening.  While I was spreading epoxy, I coated the last little bit of the stem & stern post tapers, and did the flip side of the deck beams I started on yesterday.  Here's the night's work, all layed out and curing.

Life is about to get a little busy again - some wet weather is headed our way, which forces me to stow my panels indoors and keeps me from using little scraps of time here and there for small boat tasks.  And I don't expect any significant time to work on the boat out of the next five days. 

So I've started dreaming a bit, which is dangerous.  (cue dream sequence sound effects...) One of my dreams for this boat is to take it on some coastal expeditions.  I'd start out with something mild and forgiving, like Padre Island, Texas, but I'd love to someday sail California's Channel Islands in it, like Tim Anderson did in his slightly larger outrigger canoe.

And, don't forget, there are also the WaterTribe races, the "best known" example being the Everglades Challenge.  All of their races are designed to test small craft and their skippers for versatility, seaworthiness, endurance and portability.  Entrants frequently use sea kayaks or similarly minimalist boats, sometimes rigging a sail for the downwind portions.  But there are also classes for small mono- and multi-hull sailboats. The Melanesia would fit the Class 5 definition, I believe, provided something were done about reefing the crab claw sail and building positive flotation into the hull.  Personally, I'm not big on swamps, gators or mosquito clouds, so I might give Florida a pass.  But the North Carolina Challenge?  That sounds fun. 

Whoah, there, did I just say out loud that I'd like to enter my as-yet-unbuilt outrigger canoe in a 100-mile endurance race, or sail it offshore in Southern California?  That's crazy talk.  Get the boat built, learn to sail it, try a little local camping expedition with it, maybe.  That's lofty enough for the time being. 

But it's definitely true that these crazy visions keep me motivated.  There's not much glamour in mass-producing lashing pads, so every little bit helps.

Sweating the Small Stuff

Here's a tip for any aspiring Melanesia builders out there: finish shaping all of your parts before epoxy coating them.  Otherwise, you'll end up having to do tiny-batch coating on things like the stem- and stern-post tapers, which is where I am now.  It's frustrating because it's keeping me from stitching the panels together and moving forward.

Since I'm using pumps with my epoxy, the smallest batch I can mix is way too big for the tiny spots I'm coating, so I've been looking around for other small parts to work on.  Oh, yeah, the deck beams and lashing pads!  Completely forgot about those....  So I put a first coat on the deck beams and cut out a bunch of lashing pads last night.  I'll finish the last of the stem/stern post touch up today, and coat the pads & beams while I'm at it.  Once that's done, it will be stitching time.