The 3 boards of black locust have all now been ripped to various pieces and largely glued to the boat. The deck stringers are in place, with a cross piece at the main hatch forward end. The toe rail and rubbing strake base pieces are also complete and in place now. I have a few pieces left that will be trim at the forward and aft ends of the raised deck, and that's about it. I think I'll buy at least one more board to use for trim on the bulwarks, so it all matches nicely, and that'll be that. What it does is outline all of the panels of the exterior hull in prep for painting. Nice! Coming soon!!

The shop is open and our new t-shirts are on sale. They come in a range of summer colours and 2 sizes (L and XL). Other sizes are possible - drop me a line if you'd like other sizes!

Quite a few people have asked me what it costs to build a boat such as this, and this isn't the easiest of questions to answer accurately. I've attempted to break down the costs of the build so far and I present them in this video

Working black locust and fitting it to the boat. The deck rails/stringers make a massive difference to the solid feel of the deck, and will certainly enable me to remove some material from the deck supports in the galley area, freeing headroom there.

I've said many times now that I am not using any newly-sourced tropical hardwood on this build and that remains the case - I feel that it should be possible to build a durable boat from (relatively speaking) locally source woods, and so am restricting myself to woods of European origin/growth. A couple of weeks ago, I bought 3 largish boards of black locust wood (known here as robinia, or robinie, and otherwise known as false acacia). This has properties that compare favourably with the properties of teak and yet is grown commercially in Europe (and reaches maturity in 25 - 30 years). My intention is to use this wood for various pieces of exterior structural members and trim pieces. It does, however, have a reputation for being quite hard to work, so I must admit to having had some concerns when it came to ripping these 5cm thick boards down to the dimensions I require, particularly considering the cheapness of my table saw!

I invested in a new ripping saw blade to give the poor saw a bit more of a fighting chance, and set to. The results can be seen below!

I was very saddened to hear, last week, about the loss at sea of sv Bertie. As far as I understand, Bertie and her owners were underway on the east coast of the US, when they met some unsavoury conditions and were suddenly gybed by a big squall. Bertie capsized and, for whatever reason, didn't come back up again (she's a Spray, which, as far as I understand, don't have self-righting and probably has loose internal ballast). Fortunately, after a dunking, the owners were able to get up on the hull and, after a while, get to and activate the EPIRB. They were rescued by the US coastguard.

We saw Bertie in Half Moon Bay on our trip down the Pacific coast. She was a striking vessel, with a big junk mainsail, a lug mizzen and two jibs/foresails out on an enormous bowsprit. The fact that she had a stayed mast was probably instrumental in her downfall, as the junk sail was resticted in how far it could swing out to feather into the wind, but the owners had certainly sailed plenty of ocean miles in her. Of course, they have now lost nearly everything and have started a "GoFundMe" page here

Please donate - every little bit helps!

I wish them every success in whatever comes next.

Who'd ever have thought it, eh?? 90 episodes of the boatbuilding video series! Wow!

And.... Here it is!!

Last weekend, we were invited to have a look at 2 things. Till had seen us on our YouTube videos and got in contact. A few weeks ago, he came down to visit Tapatya and we spent an enjoyable afternoon chatting about boating and European inland waterways in particular - Till has travelled these fairly extensively and had a wealth of good info for us. Then, last weekend, we went up to visit Till and his boat - a very pretty Dutch-build steel motor yacht.

He has this moored at the confluence of the River Elbe and the Elbe-Lübeck Canal, in an old working boat boatyard. We had a tour of the boatyard facilities and then a good look around Till's boat. 

The boatyard is ideal for us as a launch site. It boasts a huge hall with 2 gantry cranes of 32 ton capacity each. At the river end of the hall is a launch pool, with a big door that opens up to let boats out to the river and canal. The yard is only some 25 mins drive from our place, so about as good as it gets in terms of location. Excellent!

This week's video shows that and the recent progress on the boat. Enjoy!

Good progress this week. I've got both the main and aft decks glassed and sealed - just the cabin sides to go to get the whole thing epoxy and glassed. From then, there'll just be a few small bits of board to glass and the end of fibreglass and epoxy work is clearly in sight!

This week's video concentrates on the glassing of the aft deck and I take the oppportunity to talk through my method of doing this.

I'm building a deck 'box' /cockpit combing either side of the forward end of the aft deck. The aft end of these will actually be deck boxes, but the forward end will be put to other uses. On the starboard side, the quarterberth extends below the 'box' and the forward half will give extra headroom in that quarterberth. On the port side, the very forward end will be a cubby hole accessible from the galley, intended for storage of plates, bowls, etc. Aft of that will be a sealed section, open to the engine room, with the day tank. The diesel filler caps will also be accessed there.

This video shows the early construcion of these boxes, along with the flooring of the cockpit and a bit of nice video as Hazel buys a sit-on kayak and tries it out.

In the video below, I talk about my the Jay benford designed, junk schooner sailing dory that I am in the process of building. we have a tour of the boat and a look at the ways I am interpreting this design.

Here's a slideshow of photos of the boat. They're all recent; many of them were taken this very morning. I'll let them speak for themselves in showing you where we are with the build right now.

This week, I finished the painting of the engine room floor and then completed the fabrication of the stainless anchor roller bow fitting (although the roller itself still needs a bit of modification). I've assembled that to the wooden bowsprit - fashioned from a left-over piece of Bangkirai I've had kicking about for about 15 years - and mounted that on the foredeck with 2 large 316 stainless bolts and a lot of thickened epoxy. Where the bolts pass through the reinforcement that I fitted under the deck for this very purpose, I made up a stainless plate to spread the load and then fitted it all with nylock nuts. Naturally, the bolts are sealed with a liberal amount of sealing compound - I'm using a Wiko MS polymer sealant for this, which I hope has very similar properties to 3M 5200, but is substantially cheaper in this part of the world!

I've finished the engine bed installation - glassed it in, epoxy primer sealed the engine room floor and bed and coated it all in 2 coats of bilge paint. Looking very tidy :-)

Time to attack one of the  most important tasks of the whole build - quite possibly the one that most needs to be done right - fitting the engine bed. This is because, for a saildrive engine such as is being fitted to Tapatya, the saildrive passes through a hole in the bottom of the boat. This hole is under the waterline and is quite big!. The water is kept where it belongs (outside the boat) by a rubber diaphragm that fits to the saildrive and to the engine bed. It is absolutely imperative that the engine bed is fitted in such a manner that it is sealed to keep the water out of the boat and that it stays sealed - i.e. that it cannot move at all. Unfortunately, there is a dearth of information on the web about the fitting of saildrive engine beds to boats generally, and even more so to hard-chined, plywood boats. This means that I'm breaking new ground here, and indeed, that this report of how I go about it might actually be useful to somebody!

I've almost finished the final shaping of the bulwarks - this might seem a very minor task, but in fact, the lines of the bulwarks are pretty much a personal thing - at least when you look at the way other builders of these boats have done it. At least one has even gone as far as to not fit the forward bulwarks. On Tapatya, I have decided to run the forward bulwarks from level with the top of the bowsprit, in a gentle slope to a sweeping curve up to meet the raised deck line. Now that I have the dimensions of the bowsprit, these lines can be drawn and finally cut. As these bulwarks then enclose the foredeck, obviously, significant scuppers are needed to ensure adequate drainage.

Fitting the final pieces of the aft bulwarks also made it clear that I the boat was sitting a bit too far back in the shed, so Kerry and I jacked her up and pulled her forwards.

It was quite a successful weekend in which I got quite a few bits and bobs done on the boat. I trimmed the forward bulwarks, cut the forward scuppers and ran a fillet of thickened epoxy around the forward bulwark to deck joint. I fitted the first layer of the final pieces of the aft bulwarks, did a bit more wiring in the switch panel vicinity and put the first coat of primer/undercoat on 2 of the internal bulkheads. Coming along!

Here's a look round as she is at the moment.

Well, this week's video seems to have inspired people to get in touch! I've had lots of feedback concerning the bow roller design, which really is quite impressive. It's certainly made me think and am in the process of adapting... Wait and see!!

The limited edition SV Tapatya challenge coins are still available from the SV Seeker junk store, here;

http://www.svseeker.com/wp/product/tapatya-coin/

They really are a very nicely made piece, with a weight and appearance that speaks for their quality. They can be purchased on their own, or as part of a set supporting all 12 YouTube boatbuilders who have released them. All proceeds go to the respective boatbuilder and, speaking for myself at least, all proceeds from the SV Tapatya coin sales will be put directly into the boatbuild. Purchasing one of these coins would be a very nice way to show your appreciation of all of the hard work, time and expense that goes into producing YouTube boatbuilding videos, that, naturally, are free-of-charge to the viewer.

I've been doing its and pieces all over the boat this week - a bit of varnishing here, some electrics there, trimming the raised deck ends, etc, etc. But the main thing that happened was that I got the final ply pieces in position for the forward bulwarks, and this has made a big change to the appearance of the boat. Here's a couple of pics and this week's video :-)

I had a bit of a frustrating time yesterday, but I suppose it's all a learning experience :-) I cut the holes for the forward looking deadlights (non-opening ports) earlier in the week and had bought 2 deadlights to fit those holes (actually I cut the holes to fit the deadlights!), and yesterday I wanted to fit them. I began on the starboard side, which went smoothly enough, but as I was fittting the port side deadlight, it fell apart. This was surprising and a bit annoying - it was brand new and clearly not up to the job that I'd bought it for. So, what to do??

After a bit of thought, I decided that I couldn't trust this product. I removed the port side one, which, naturally, was caked in sealant, as I hadn't intended them to leak and so had been pretty generous with the white sticky stuff. I did my best to clean it all up, cutting my finger and getting blood and sealant everywhere!

A couple of things became clear in this whole palaver, some of which were clearly my fault, but we'll start with the one that wasn't :-)
1. Some of these deadlights are not very well built
2. A careful inspection of the deadlight is necessary before appling sealant to it. If it's not up to par, it should be sent back and replaced with a good one
3. The deadlights I bought weren't really designed for the thickness of the cabin top where I want to fit them. I have now ordered some of the same diameter that are built to fit thicker structures
4. I was fitting them the wrong way round. The dress ring should go on the outside, not on the inside as I had it!

All in all, a bit of a cock-up, but we live and learn..... Hopefully :-)

On the positive side, we had an outing to Toplicht in Hamburg on Saturday. Karin bought me a very nice barometer as a birthday present and I bought a couple of nice brass catches for the switch panel. Here they are..

And here's this week's video