Well, I have a pretty small update.
I took a week off to go to my cabin, and then another week off because, to my enormous surprise, I got sick. Don't get your hopes up: it was nothing serious. I had been speculating that with things starting to open up and my kid going to these mommy-hook-ups/sort-of-semi-daycare-hangouts that we might actually have an avenue by which we could get sick and that turned out to be shockingly prophetic. I work from home, my wife doesn't work, and covid is really rare where I am so until very recently I felt like the odds of catching anything at all were exceptionally remote...and the only real change to that was the local mom meet-up, so I had processed this kind of theoretical change to our family's risk of infection, which in a normal year wouldn't be a thing I'd think about but you know, covid etc, so this was just a thing I was thinking about.
Anyway then my kid got his first cold, which I also got. I was so surprised that there was anything circulating at all that initially I just assumed it must be covid, but I got tested, and apparently not. But I was super beat for about a week, and also had lingering concerns about a false negative so I didn't want to go grind fiberglass, even in a dust mask, and just give my lungs some whole other problem to deal with on the off chance it was indeed covid. Which, as far as I know, it wasn't, and it's been a week and I feel pretty much fine, so I got back to work on the boat on Saturday for the first time in a while.
In rough chronological order here...I started by bailing out to the cabin, so I'll cover that first.
That Costco Lifetime cooler I bought for the boat, I used for the first time because there was yet another heatwave on, so I wanted all the coolers I could get for a week at the cabin. When I bought that thing I had slight misgivings, because at whatever, I think around $160 CAD, I thought there's some obvious downsides: you're supporting junk chinese manufacturing etc. But I'm pretty tapped out at the moment, and bought it, anyway.
So then I open the thing before we head to the cabin and check this out:
It's made in the freaking USA. If I knew this, I definitely forgot. I was totally stoked. I'm not American, so I'm not patriotic for made-in-the-USA stuff per se, but would I rather support manufacturing in an ally country instead of a country I won't comment on further because not everyone wants to drink my personal brand of political kool-aid? Hell yes, I would rather my money go to America and American workers. Very happy about this.
The cooler appropriately packed, we headed off to the cabin where this familiar beach continued to enthrall my kid:
I thought this might be kind of interesting, too. This is the sound of a beach here at low tide. If you turn it up you'll hear all the tiny little animals making their weird little squeaks and creaks and clicks as they open and close shells and filter mud and crawl around. It struck me that a sand beach is really nice to walk on, but often a bit of a desert, but our beaches are the opposite: murder on the feet, but teeming with life. And our little island is so quiet, you can hear it all happening. Anyway I just thought it was kind of cool.
There are other beaches there, though. We got the kid a little floaty thing, like an inner tube but with a center floor with leg holes, so he could float around in the ocean. He's really into beaches and the ocean in general. I have to say I think he's pretty lucky to get this constant exposure to these marine environments. I'm really happy about the general experience of life he's getting so far. He has just suddenly grasped the significance of berry bushes and we have been gorging him on wild salal, blueberries, and blackberries. He's crazy about it all. It's pretty neat.
Okay, last non-boat pic:
Five days, >30c (~90f) all day every day, still 5 lbs of ice in there. That's yeti performance for coleman money.
Okay, back to work:
Just throwing a bit of light cloth on the side supports here to prevent checking etc; that's marine fir so it needs a bit of extra help in that department:
Cleaning up a little slab of maple for the outboard pad on the bracket:
Filleting in side supports:
Test fitting the...I don't even know what to call these. Full-length coaming cleats. If this was german, maybe inwalesheerclampcoamingcleat. I honestly don't know. They're going to give me a gluing surface to connect the side decks to what I would call coaming but could be considered an inwale? I have them for the top and bottom of the coaming surface, the top to give gluing surface and the bottom just to stiffen the bottom of the coaming edge.
Then I ripped a 2x3 into quarters. This will go under the side decks, in the middle, as a longitudinal stiffener. I only have 1/4" ply on hand and I think it'd be floppy between the side supports without a bit of help. I scarfed these together last night.
And finally, I went around the side supports where they interface with the sole to make really fat fillets, and stuck cleats all over the relevant surfaces of the side supports where the decks and coaming need gluing surface.
I'm going to pull a really thin coat of fairing compound over the interior, I think. I spent about an hour Saturday afternoon running over it with a sander and it's decent, but I think a skim coat could make it look noticeably better under paint, so I guess I'll do that.
Really looking forward to getting paint on the interior: once the surfaces are protected from UV I can be less careful about keeping it indoors, so I can use it more easily when I want as I finish up.