The weather has been lousy today, very heavy cloud and regular heavy rain. The temperature was high though and very humid with it. I put in a seven hour session and I think I’m going to pay for it later! Seven hours of climbing up and down step ladders, clambering around, in and on the hulls, handling heavy power tools and general lifting definitely constitutes a good workout. I was dripping!
My hard labour has been worth it though as I have finished the two inboard edges of cabin roof/tumblehome joint. I deliberately chose the inboard edges as they will be virtually hidden when the decks are fitted so I was free to master the finishing techniques without stressing too much about final appearance. that said they’ve turned out OK.
The building plans show this edge made fair with an epoxy fillet on the underside of the overhanging cabin roof. I didn’t like that idea for two reasons. 1. I wasn’t confident I could achieve a really nice finish just using epoxy 2. My overhangs turned out a little small in places. What I decided to do instead was glue a small softwood half round section along the joint to even out the inconsistencies and give something to work to for the final epoxy finish. First job I had to do though was to cut out the cabin roof sections over the two mastbeam troughs. My Fein Multimaster made relatively easy work of that job. next it was out with the plane and the sander so that I could blend in the line of the cabin roof edges to those of the tumblehomes and then out with the router to round off the top edges of the cabin roof. All very satisfying. After sanding and preparing the joint edges I was able to glue on the half round strips, adjusting them to a fair curve by eye and then temporarily holding them in place with small screws.
Day of rest tomorrow, I need it!

Port Inboard Edge View 1

Port Inboard Edge View 2

Starboard Hull Edge Finished

Other commitments kept me from the build over the weekend but I got a good session in today and finally got the tumblehomes glued in place on the port hull. Enough said about them! I also sanded and second coated the cabin roof section so that’ll be ready to lift into place next time. My session today bought the total hour count up to a nice round 1700 against the designers build estimate of 3000 and other builders estimates of 3500 +. This gives a sense of the scale of the project and whilst on the subject of scale Eric Dobson commented last week that it was difficult to gauge the size of  ‘Gleda’ from the photos I’d posted recently so here are a few that I hope will help Eric and others who are interested. (I’m about 5′ 6″)

Me In The Starboard Double Berth

Me In The Navigation Area (Starboard Hull)

Me & Starboard Hull (By Nav Area)

Me & Stern Cross Tube

By The Starboard Bow

Unbelievably its been over a year since I originally started on construction of the tumblehomes, talk about dragging a job out! Today though I re-cut and re-fitted the ones on the port hull and they are now ready to glue. It was all relatively painless and if I knew then what I know now I wouldn’t have wasted so much time. But there’s no point moaning, they’re nearly done now and I can move on to more exciting things. Despite being on my own today I managed to manhandle the completed cabin deck section down onto the floor so that I could sand it and get the first coat of epoxy on. If I can keep this pace up I should have both deck sections glued in place next week and I can make a start on the raised doghouse sides.

Starboard Hull View

Both Hulls Growing

Deck Section Halfway Down

I put in a 7 hour day today and feel like I  made some really good progress but I’m worn out tonight, as is my belt sander which finally gave up the ghost today after many many hours of use. It’s an indication of the scale of work involved with a project like this that you wear out decent power tools before it’s finished. It has to be excepted though and I’ll be shopping for a new one tonight.

Nice Sanded Tumblehomes

Before the belt sander gave up I managed to get most of the glued tumblehomes on the starboard hull sanded smooth and I was able to finish the rest with the orbital sander so I now have a nice set of well fitted smooth tumblehomes to admire. They’re much appreciated after all the trouble they caused. I then carried on with the orbital sander and got the cabin roof sanded back before applying the second coat of epoxy. As my mind wandered whilst rollering it on I wondered how many nights I’ll spend lying in the bunk looking up at it!

Cabin Roof Second Coated

Portside Cabin Roof In Position

Once this was out of the way I turned my attention to the port hull, and, having learned my lesson on the starboard hull, the first thing I did was to remove the tumblehomes so that I could concentrate on getting the cabin roof sections perfectly in position. As I discovered before, it’s far easier to fit the tumblehomes when you have something to fit to! After a little bit of trimming to get the forward and aft sections sitting nicely onto the bulkheads I set about using scrap timber to support the sections in the right positions to allow me to construct the connecting sides in situ. I took my time, checking with the levels and am now happy I’m ready to go with the side decks next time.

It’s happened again, a little over two weeks just disappeared without a tap being done on the boat. I can look back and say it was unavoidable because we went down to Cornwall for a few days, I was busy working on my business etc. etc. and it’s all true but the reality is that it keeps happening and if it keeps happening then my launch date will keep getting pushed further and further away….. I’m not going to let that happen. To be honest this time management issue affected everything, I have 5 important areas of my life I need to keep making progress with and Gleda is just one of them. I’ve written more on my Dream To Sail blog and I’ll be expanding more in future blog posts but all I’ll say here is that I’ve made some serious changes and from now on I’ve scheduled at least 2 full days a week on Gleda with some extra flexible time available as well. This means I should be able to make some steady progress from here on in.

Decent dry fit at last!

Cabin Roof down safe

Today I spent some time getting reacquainted with the tumblehomes. I confess I’ll be very very glad to see the back of them, for me they’ve been the most frustrating part of the build so far. As I said before, when I dropped the cabin roof into place I could see that the second set of tumblehomes I’d cut months ago still didn’t fit so today I’ve re-cut two of them and made two new ones and I now have a full set of properly fitting tumblehomes on the starboard hull. After dry fitting them I manhandled the cabin roof back down onto the floor and turned it upside down so that I can sand and epoxy the inside before it’s fitted. It’s a big section to handle on your own and I was scared silly I’d drop it but with a bit of care and a lot of sweat I got it down OK.

Polystyrene Sandwich Material Glued In

Once again the income generating part of the Gleda Project is demanding the greater part of my time hence the lack of update yesterday. I squeezed in a couple of hours today though and got the final upper layers of ply glued to the side decks of the starboard hull. I also took off the tumblehomes ready to  re-cut and re-fit. Workload and a long weekend trip to Falmouth mean that it’ll be next week before I do any more building now but a visit to Falmouth is always a great boost as it’s without doubt one of the finest harbours in the world and I shall be looking for lots of bluewater cruisers to photograph. It’s also the place highest on the list of possible launch locations so I’ll be keeping a weather eye out for prospective sites as well!

Getting There

Beam Trough Will Be Cut Out Later

Ok not strictly true…. more a rectangular hole in a slightly oval hole but either way it describes what I’ve been trying to do today, namely join up the large curved main cabin roof with the small curved cabin roof. Done correctly this leaves a perfectly rectangular opening sitting within side decks that match the curvature of the hull. Sounds complicated but actually it’s fairly simple although I confess to making a bit of a meal out of it today. I blame the heat (27′C today), I’m never going to complain too much about it given how little we get in this country but when you’re dripping with sweat, holding onto a pot of rapidly heating epoxy and struggling to get things in the right position it’s tempting!

Side Decks 1st Stage Glued

One thing I have realised today is that despite the long hours I spent last year trying to get the tumblehomes right, I still failed. For anyone following in my footsteps (Adrian), make a big note somewhere – Make the curved cabin sections first and then cut the tumblehomes, not the other way round. I will have to re-cut at least some of them and that will be the third attempt, wasted ply and wasted time but no point beating myself up about it, these things will happen on a build of this scale.

Anyway I eventually got the first stage of the side decks glued up in the right place and, as always, now I know what I’m doing, the other hull will be easier.

Solid Timber Fillet Faired In

I squeezed in a short session today, another holiday weekend just past, a 10 day break to Portugal starting next week and my own business to look after mean that time is short right now. No point stressing though I know that things will pick up pace by the end of June and I’m still on target. So today I concentrated on more sanding and fairing of the forward cabin decks, all pretty simple stuff really but quite satisfying. I also shaped in the Douglas Fir blocks that I’d glued in at the forward ends of the tumble homes. The plans suggest cutting small pieces of ply to cover the gap (the tumble homes are cut from standard 2.44m (8ft) sheets of ply but the decks are a bit over 2.5m long so they stop short of the forward beam troughs). I decided to glue solid pieces of timber in there instead and then shape them afterwards. Better job all round methinks.

No photo today not much to see, but I have worked hard getting the decks and tumblehomes ready for the glass tape reinforcing stage. I’ve planed, sanded and filled and rounded off all the edges. Hard dusty work but very satisfying to see it all coming together.

Starboard Side Tumblehome Glued

Another heavy session today but I wanted to keep up the momentum and get the four tumblehomes in place. Before I started on them though I took a bit of time to finish and clean up the deck section themselves. A little bit of planing was needed to get the forward and aft edges nice and flush with the beam troughs and there were a few blobs of stray epoxy to get rid of. After that it was simply a case of working methodically, one section at a time, prepping, gluing, temporarily screwing and then cleaning up each tumblehome until I had all four glued in place. Now I’ve done that I can have some fun rounding off edges and strengthening the edges with glass tape. I’m going to leave all the interior fillets and strengthening for now as I want to concentrate on the outside of the hull during the Summer. My aim is to get the hulls fully enclosed and hopefully sheathed before the Winter weather returns (I know, but you have to think about these things!). My reasoning is that I will then be able to work inside the hulls, with heating if necessary, and not be slowed by poor weather.