Yesterday's crew taped and sealed the inside seams of the boat. Today's crew secured the bulkheads in place and taped and epoxied them in. Think of the outside of the boat as its' skin and the bulkheads as its' skeleton. Today the skeleton was secured. All the work we have done so far making sure the boat was perfectly aligned, straight and level has paid off. The structure and shape of the boat is now pretty much permanent. We will really see some big progress in the days ahead as one of the next big steps is adding the decks. Not as many photo's today as the blog photographer (Me!) had his hands full helping out. Great work everyone... you are now official "fibre-glassers" ! 54 days to launch!!!

For those of you who spent all that time and effort sewing the boat together with bits of copper wire, you will be happy to hear that today we cut and pulled it all out! Last week we epoxied the seams together and they held together nicely...well done! We were able to pull out all the wire and started to tape the inside seams together with fibreglass tape and epoxy. This was a great opportunity for everyone to do some fibreglass work. While the tape and epoxy was drying we had a chance to sand the tiller and centre-board case and apply a second coat of epoxy. Good work today everyone!

This weekends building activities ended on a sticky note as we applied our first bit of epoxy to the seams of the boat as well as a few key pieces like the centre-board case that was assembled yesterday. Once again we had to spend a fair bit of time getting all the pieces of the boat perfectly aligned, but now that the boat is being stuck together we will start to see some real progress. The builders today had a number of good questions about the epoxy we used. I have included a link on the home page titled "sticky-stuff" in case you wanted to learn a little bit more about it. Good job to everyone this weekend...  61 days till launch.

If last weekend was all about drilling holes and sewing with copper wire, today was all about glue, clamps, and patience, patience, patience. We had lots of glue....and Mr Alp has a lot of clamps....like A LOT of clamps... we need to work on our patience. Only 62 days to launch day!

Day two and our first weekend of building is behind us. We have accomplished a great deal in our first two sessions. At the end of the weekend the bottom panels, side panels, bow and stern are all wired together and the forward bulkheads are ready to be installed. A great job by everyone that helped out.

The next steps will include installing the bulkheads, and to begin the process of getting the boat held together and watertight....don't worry the boat is not held together with a million little pieces of copper!

68 days to launch ! Keep up the good work!

Well our first day of boat building is behind us! Kinyara, Jacob P., Sam, Nathan and Riley did a great job by gluing the bottom and side panels together and stitching the bottom panels together. Although this may not sound like a lot of work it took a lot of measuring, drilling, stitching and patience...boat building is NOT a speed event.

Here it is! The box that contains the boat. Think of the boat as something you might buy from Ikea ! Looking forward to starting the boat build this weekend.

None of this would have been possible without the very generous support of Mr Lorne Bellamy and Mr John McCullough of Mirror Sailing Development who have donated this kit to the Scouts. This type of support is in keeping with their philosophy of fostering an interest in sailing among young people.