The Greenland Bug Cont. (Pt. 7)

Once again two weeks has gone by and I can't say there has been a lot to report in progress. Although the progress that has been made is exciting! Here is what is happening...

Two weeks ago, I was still dealing with days hot enough to make the epoxy harden faster than expected. We were still in our record stretch of 34 days without rain in Washington D.C. Then just like the weather around here, we go from dry to 5 days straight of rain. Everything was wet, and I chose not to even try to work in the humidity. After the rain stopped, we started to get days in the 50's and 60's. Now my epoxy takes longer to harden than expected.

Before the deluge, I had just managed to practice laying out the twelve pieces that would make up the cockpit rim and then finally epoxied them in place when I was finally satisfied that they were trimmed enough and fit together well.

A gell sandwich with 3 layers of wood for the coaming riser.

Lots of clamps are needed to get all 12 pieces to stay in place.

Coaming rim temporarily clamped in place.

It was certainly exciting to see the coaming come together. I was so excited, that I started asking people where to buy neoprene and started working on a spray skirt and a tuilik design. I read every article that I could find about making a spray skirt or tuilik. I read about the Cunningham design to make them out of nylon/gortex. I found the Qajaq USA article by Shawn Baker, as well as the Qajak USA tuilik pattern. And I found a design created by Sweet Composites (Davey H. perhaps?).

I read these and regurgitated an idea for starting on a spray skirt. After talking to Nelson L. about my design, he very coily said that he had already gone through all these same ideas and made the skirt too. Wow! He has loaned me the skirt and his pattern. So I took what he had accomplished and progressed from there.

Nelson's spray skirt taking a test fitting.

Meanwhile the weather cleared up enough a couple of days ago to finally epoxy the cockpit coaming in place. Now I will need to start sanding again to prepare for the last of the fiberglass which will go onto the bottom and sides of the hull.

Final sheer height...to-be.

It was also a good time to look again at the dimensions of the boat. Notice that the dimensions are pretty close to what I started out saying I would do. And then compare them to my next smallest Greenland-like boat, the Outer Island. The new boat is at least two inches less all around. I do not know if this is absolutely as small as I would ideally like, but it should be fun!

Final deck height...to-be.

Outer Island sheer height.

Outer Island deck height.

Finishing up work on the coaming rim.

Patterns for a tuilik and a spray skirt.

One half of my modified greeland spray skirt.

From the one sheet of neoprene that Nelson was so kind to have sold me, it is plain to see that I will not be able to cut both a skirt and a tuilik. So I will make the tuilik from the black N2S 3mm neoprene, and add some N1S for the coaming rim edge as well as some Neoprene tape for the seams. Then I will buy a colored sheet of Neoprene to do the tuilik. Somehow I am resisting the black color for the tuilik. So many people are doing black as their style; Dubside, Freya, ... I think I will go for something more absurd. Maybe I can get some red N2S. I can tip my paddle in red epoxy and be matching.

The work comtinues.