Day 2

We started today with 3 sheets of plywood. But by the time Hannah and I got back from a quick trip to the hardware store, Bryan and Meira had achieved this:

We spent several hours working near this welder and it was great to see how many of his co-workers took sudden interest in his work and hung out sneaking surreptitious peeks at our project.

By lunchtime, we’d cut and assembled all the panels. We drilled small holes all along the edges of the panels and used tiny zip ties to stitch the boat together.

Without sawhorses to build on, this part of the project required someone to get under the boat to drill holes and feed zip ties back up. Thankfully, we had a couple of volunteers.

The marina employee who helped us find the spot and the marina manager stopped by just before lunch. They couldn’t believe how much we’d accomplished in one morning. We couldn’t either!

After an afternoon dip in the pool,  and a run to the store for the fiberglass, we went back to work. It got dark in a hurry, so we pulled out our headlamps and soldiered on.

By bedtime, we finished joining the seams with epoxy and fiberglass tape. It took one person dedicated to mixing epoxy to keep up with the rest of us. We got into a pretty good rhythm, filling the seams with epoxy thickened with wood flour, then sealing them well with fiberglass tape. It’s a messy job, but we made it!

Then we celebrated with gelato!

If everything cures overnight as it should, we could theoretically float the boat in the morning. But there’s still a lot of work to do to get it seaworthy.