pushing fillets

Today I filleted and glassed the stern, which means I have finished filleting bulkheads and keel. It took me about a week and lots of boat-yoga to finish this section of work.

I must admit that I did not overwhelmingly enjoyed this head down to the knees epoxy cooking… but nevertheless it is great pleasure to see how step by step those wobbling plywood panels shape up into a sturdy and beautiful boat… all done by my own two little pale hands 😉

And my condolences to this poor quay whose path may cross with this hefty stem fillet…

stemFillet

 

And again I can not get enough of those dare lines of Tiki’s – now all filleted and reinforced…

lines

reinforcing the keel

TIKI ITATAE – reinforcing the keel from AGUR VISUALS on Vimeo.

Today I continued with fillets. This time were the keel fillets in to-do list, those will be glassed as well.

I use West System 407 Low Density filler. For applying correct radius I produced plywood spatulas. But they are inflexible, so I guess I shall replace them with metal spreaders shaped in desired form…

Check out previous time lapse videos about stuffing the giant taco — starboard hull goes from 2D to 3D and filleting bulkhead radiuses.

 

something is brewing

The dream… it all started brewing some five years ago. The initial impulse started with kind of uneasiness… I felt that it is time to change the boat type or sailing location. Later seemed unfeasible, so I started to look around for alternatives regarding the vessel i might continue sailing with. So far I had been fooling around only with monohulls, from Optimist and Laser dinghies up to keel yachts.

And as it happened to be there were one Hobie 14 for sale in Estonia. Back then it was only a half a dozen beach cats sailing around or just sitting in the back yards in Estonia.

So without much further ado I went for this particular Hobie 14 and fresh breeze began to  blow… There were aspects to rediscover and new things to learn. Beach cats can act like in the midway between dinghy and surf board. With Optimist I have had started sailing two decades back and reflexes – embedded since  – had to be reshaped.

So as I get the fun out of my little Hobie 14 called Fatu-Hiva, the phobia of multihulls – commonly wide spread amongst the sailors of Norhtern latitudes – started to fall back in my mind. I started to dig deeper into this world and discovered amongst others the Wharram designs. The sleek and dare lines of Tikis caught my eye. The combination of simplicity, seaworthiness and beauty converged in the designs imprinted themselves somewhere in the hidden corners of my consciousness.

And here Im as the opportunity window opened I bought building plans of the Wharram Tiki 21 catamaran.

And today is the day when I received those.

Will see how it goes… hard to put into words… its strange to hold in hand a folio of papers which ought to shape up into a boat that carries you over the waves some day…

fatu21