I finished sanding the epoxy and cloth on one side of the boat and have one more side to do. This is tedious work and it seems to take forever to finish. The now smooth layer of epoxy and fiberglass cloth will get one more coating of epoxy but it will be Progressive's Low-V epoxy which flows and levels easily. This will be then covered with varnish or some other clear coat with UV inhibitor.

To make things more interesting, I started fitting one of the rails. The Thistle has some tumblehome in the starn and the hull flares out in the bow. That means quite a bit of shaping to get things to fit. Larry Ligget has a nice set of videos on Youtube showing how this is done. I'll embed part 1 below.

I really like Progressive No-Blush epoxy and no, I'm not paid by them for this endorsement. I've worked with different brands of epoxy over the last 30 years and have developed a sensitivty to several of them. Not so with No-Blush. I also like the way it sands. Epoxy gets harder as it cures. Try to sand it too early and your paper will gum up and the epoxy will heat up and turn to gunk on your sand paper. Wait too long after the cure and it will be hard and difficult to sand. If you time it right, you'll have easy sanding without clogging and No-Blush seems to have a good two-week window where it's easy to sand.

Last week I sheathed the inside of my Thistle with 3.7 oz fiberglass cloth and epoxy. Before this can be varnished, it must be sanded smooth, first with 80 grit and then eventally up to 150 or 220. Areas in the boat that will get epoxy paint (right next to the keelson where the crew's feet go) will be painted and the rest of the boat will be left natural. The cloth will be transparent under epoxy and varnish.

Some general sanding tips:

The first step in strengthening the hull was to lay up some fiberglass tape under the seat supports. These have now been sanded and the edges feathered. Next we'll sheath the inside of the hull with fiberglass cloth and epoxy. The purpose in doing this is twofold. Once finished with new wood and lighter mahogany rails, this Thistle will be underweight. My last wooden Thistle (1014) was 30 pounds light and could not be raced until I added six 5-pound dive belt weights distributed around the hull. Thistles must weigh 515 pounds when racing. Class rules allow for the application of fiberglass cloth inside the hull to add weight. You can't just add it in key areas to stiffen selected parts of the hull. It has to be added over the entire inner surface to be legal. That's fine for us because we need the extra weight and we want the other positives fiberglass and epoxy give us, that being a totally sealed hull with added abrasion resistance. The inside of a Thistle is a busy place when racing.

This is a great video of the making of a laminated Firefly hull. Thistle hulls were made using the same technique. CLICK to play...

Now that the hull is sanded clean and all the old wooden parts removed, it's time to start rebuilding. The glue used to laminate in these 1950s era Thistles can become brittle and fail after all those years. This is even more true in areas of high stress in the hull. You'll often find stress cracks in the laminate (5 layers of 1/16" mahogany) around the seat supports.  If the boat has been sitting on a trailer with inadequate support you'll find stress cracks or delamination in that part of the hull. All of these areas need to be repaired and strengthened to meet our goal of a boat with another 50 years of competitive sailing.

This movie is about the building a 50 foot gaff rigged schooner by the Gannon & Benjamin Marine Railway, a boatyard on Martha's Vineyard.

Trailer for Charlotte: A Wooden Boat Story from Charlotte The Film on Vimeo.

I'm going to try to post a few shots of my progress

A few months have passed since launching "Alice Gale".    We have sailed in various bays and lakes from Newport Beach up to Seattle's Puget Sound.

The two year building of "Alice Gale" is documented on my blog: http://stansboat.wordpress.com/

The garage construction was completed in March.  We got busy at work and I started working on the garage again off & on in September. I have buit a workbench and purchased a new table saw.  I have insulated and sealed the ceiling and am now working on the walls.  I want to keep the humidity at 50%.  I just got a used Shopsmith Mark5.  I am considering inviting my neighbors to help as a community boatbuilding project.  Maybe I'll get lucky and find one or two people who can help me occaisionally.