I've just discovered a truly outstanding website, full of info and videos on aspects of traditional wood boatbuilding. It's all available free-of-charge. Check it out here;

http://www.boat-building.org/learn-skills/index.php/en/home-en/

Episode 3 of the SV Tapatya video series is out!! Lofting!!

The lofting is basically done now. It was all pretty straightforward really - a hard-chined boat with a flat bottom and only one chine should really be a piece of cake, but still you have to be careful and get it right.

So that's the side and plan views of the various boat lines drawn out. It only really remains to draw out the station cross-sections. This I'll do one at a time as I build each station frame section.

My mate Tim donated a broken picture frame to the cause. I've put it to good use (see below)

Story on the BBC news today about plastic waste. Read it here;

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40654915

The first lofting lines were drawn yesterday evening. I guess that signals the official start of the building process. Therefore, for future reference and purposes of recording the duration of this build, the building started on 23.08.2017.

I don't anticipate this being the world's fastest build. I work full time in a job that keeps me away from home quite a bit. We have 3 kids, 2 of which are admittedly grown and have finished school, but still involve us in activities from time to time, I'm also a hobby musician, and I do like to go sailing when I can, and there are still house projects unfinished - all of which will limit the time available. Excuses, excuses.......

Elizabeth and I have just had two brilliant days sailing in my Pelican on Lake Schwerin, Thursday and Friday. One of Germany's biggest lakes (3rd biggest, I believe), we had good winds (4-5 on Friday, 3-4 Saturday) and some nice waves that put us and the pelican through our paces. Exciting stuff at times. Boat and crew enjoyed themselves thoroughly :-)

Shot some video footage yesterday that will be part of the next video. Don't wanna give too much away yet, but certainly won't release a next video until lofting is at least significantly underway.

Hope to get my daysailer out sailing later this week. Elizabeth and I are planning to go off for a day or two on the lake.

Greenpeace have a petition and campaign running to stop plastic waste pollution of the Mediterranean. The button above links to the website and petition in support of this. Good cause, methinks!

I've just released episode 2 of the SV Tapatya building series. It was fun making it. Early days yet, but good practice :-)

Although it may look as if nothing much is happening here, there's a lot of activity behind the scenes. I'm in the process of setting up various online elements - parts of this website, Patreon, YouTube, etc; I've bought a new camera for making videos blogs and am learning how it works :-], I need to get the last few bits of clutter out of the boatshed - a couple of bits need to be sold and some reorganisation is required. I'm currently thinking about the best way to approach the lofting - it'd be good if I could do that and manage to keep my daysailer in the boatshed for at least this coming winter. In terms of schedule, I plan to get the boat lofted and the cross-sectional station frames built this winter - I work full-time and it gets cold here in the winter, so if I can achieve that, I'll be ready to build the hull in the spring of 2018.