Annie Holmes from San Diego sent this. She says that if she can't play in sailboats anymore she can at least paint them. That sounds like me, I'm getting so I'm not nearly as agile in small sailboats as I once was. I can't paint so what'll I do. That's why I decided to sell my Core Sound 17 to a good home. I gave it away for the same thing I paid Dr Jose and I interviewed the prospective buyers to make sure they'd love and use it. It went to a wild couple who'll sail the hell out of it. The better half of the couple is a doctor; I can see her heeling it way over and yelling at the wind just like you use to do Jose.

Here it is just before it headed out to Pine Island.

I'll make a few comments about boat building for those of you who may want to jump in and do one. Some parts are fun and some parts suck and no parts are easy. I know, I've always made it sound like there's nothing to it, the thing just jumps together. I won't even get into Traditional building where they don't use grinders and filler and everything has to actually fit together. That stuff is so far above my level of patience that I know I'd never get the first board in place. The one over riding activity you'll find yourself doing more than anything else is sanding. You saw the start of this one last time where I made the forms and bent the plywood around to fit. I did a little grinding but it was all pretty good. Then I started glassing, this is really a glass boat with a plywood core. I put one piece of 25 ounce cloth down the middle of the bottom and sanded the edges smooth the next day. Then I wrapped the same heavy cloth across the boat from gunnel to gunnel with a 12 inch overlap on each 4 foot wide piece of cloth to act sort of like frames. Then I had to sand the seams till they were smooth for the next layer. If you've never sanded fiberglass you're in for some fun. The tiny little glass dust gets all over you and itches (yes, fiberglass if real glass). It doesn't matter what you do it still gets you. It was still looking pretty good so I put the next layer on, this time the heavy cloth front to back overlapping a foot on the keel. After this layer was hard the next day and edges sanded I figured it was time to try to fix the bad places with filler. This brown looking stuff is filler using micro balloons and epoxy. It works pretty good and is easy to sand (easy being a relative term, how long can your arms and back hold out). Notice how pictures really distort some of the shapes.

One layer of filler is never enough, after you sand it you find all of the places you missed. Once I had it pretty good it was time for the big guns. So far the cloth schedule is the heavy 25 ounce regular weave with lots of over laps to make it really strong. For the final layer I used something even stronger, tri axial stitched cloth. It's fiber glass cloth made with three layers of strands each running in different directions and then stitched together with fiber glass thread. This layer of cloth ran front to back over lapping on the keel and at the bow. So far the bow has 7 layers of this glass cloth and the rest anywhere from 3 to 6 layers. Now I had to sand the whole thing and fill and sand and fill and sand and finally roll on a coat of epoxy. So far I've used about 10 gallons of epoxy. Now what? As you can see it still doesn't look smooth. It feels smooth so I decided to paint it all white so I could see how much more I had to do.

Low and behold, it's nice and smooth, thank goodness. I don't know if the boat will end up being white but for now this will do. I decided to roll some bottom paint on while I was at it, more will go on when it's on it's trailer but I wanted to see what it looks like. this is the Pettit water based bottom paint, it's fantastic, easier to apply than water. I know, the sheer is wonky, I'll cut it to shape later.

Now it's time to roll her over. This can be a complicated and scary operation for most hulls. You can lose control and they fall and crack or fall and squash you. That wasn't a problem with this one. Since it's so strong and overbuilt I just hooked a couple of straps on the strong back, clipped them to an electric winch up in the rafters and pushed the up button. I didn't tell the guys I was doing this, they were doing their on things and I'd rather screw up all by myself anyway, you know our one and only rule "don't even think about helping me", it you can't figure out how to do it by yourself you need to go back to school. Howard and Wally walked over as the hull was going up and when it got to the top tipping point Howard ask how I was going to keep it from crashing down and I yelled "I'm not" as I ran for my life out the end of the shop. The whole thing came crashing down with lots of crunching sounds as the molds and strong back ripped themselves apart. Steve was down on the beach with Red and heard the loud sound and busted out laughing, he knew exactly what was happening. Wally and I got a big sledge hammer and crow bar and bashed all of the internal structures out. There was no damage to the hull.

This thing looks just like a giant Core Sound, maybe I should put a big sail on it. All of this glassing and grinding and filling and sanding and sanding was a lot of work but as you know I actually like to sand if I can use power tools. All of this from start to finish took me just a week to do. I like to go out to the shop after dinner and work from about 7 to 9 which eliminates a lot of waiting for epoxy to dry if I do it during the day. Now to start the inside. More make it up as I go along.

Just when I think I'm doing a good job this guy sends me a picture of his build. Kevin Lott's "Cortez melonseed". I showed you his hatch cover last time. OK Richard and Steve and even Barry, back to the drawing board. You can't let this Georgia red neck show you up with this beauty. He says that he'll be at Cedar Key in May. I hope so cause I'm going to go over this one with a fine tooth comb to see if it's really this beautiful. He even has a black sail for it. I knew Kevin was serious about a melonseed when he showed up here at the shop to see it they were as good as I've always said. He looked at everything, took pictures and ask lots of good questions. They are as good as advertised Kev.

Speaking of good Melons. I tried for years to get you guys to buy the foam boat that Jim built here. Well Fland and Brenda did get it and love it to death. She's named it "Bad Seed" and hot rods it all over St Augustine Fl.

I caught Howard up painting the roof of the "Mega Yacht". It's almost finished and we need to figure out what to do with it. Any of you need a really cool boat with a big V8?

One last thing; one of the bums who stops by for a cool one once in a while is the master rigger for Panga boats. Panga's are the ultra seaworthy boats used all over the world by everyone from native fisherman to fishing guides. The factory has just started offering the bare hull for a 22 foot world class boat for $6000 at the factory in Sarasota, Fl. If you're looking for a boat like this it's worth a thought. My 18 foot hull will cost me half that much and it's not nearly the hull this is.