Seats complete

Seat are complete, and the fore deck is about to be fitted. It is all taking shape - between showers!

Seats taking shape

A let up in the recent rain has brought the dinghy out of the shed to make it easier for me to fit the vertical sections of the centre thwart. The rear seat is already in place.

Proper stitching

I managed to stitch the dinghy up properly today and pull it into shape ready for filleting the joints with epoxy resin. It looks like a dinghy now!

Stitching the Tender

A fiddly time was had when I roughly stitched the bottom, sides, bow and stern sections of the tender together. Hopefully it will all come together with more ties and a bit of gentle persuasion!

The TENDER

Every yacht needs a tender (dinghy) to get ashore in, so rather than get a dreadful inflatable, I thought I'd make one. The plans were courtesy of Richard Woods, free in his design book. I was going to make this indoors, but decided I might not be able to get it out of the house once built, so it will be a shed job. The bottom, sides, bow and stern are all cut out of 4mm ply. If feels very thin, but I know from experience of building canoes that once joined together, it will become very strong. Next stage - stitching it all together with cable ties.

Cuddy roof

At long last the cuddy is complete - as a shell at least. The roof is on - a fiddly operation, but it is now ready to take whatever a winter can throw at it. There is more to do inside it - but this will not be weather dependent. Just one more job if I get a few days of fine weather in October is to sheath the cuddy with glass cloth and epoxy. Next step - the hulls!

Roof sides

The roof panels are a bit more fiddly than the rest of the cuddy, but the roof sides are now in place. Just the roof raisers and the central roof section to go and the cuddy should be watertight for the winter. The weather has broken, so I need to be patient and wait for a slot of good weather to complete this construction. It would be a bonus if I could also get the cuddy sheathed in glass and epoxy before the winter, but this will need a few days of fine weather.