The Keel and Hull Become One.

The last couple of weeks has seen us finish the decks by priming and filling the grooves with Saba. I had to keep putting this off as the primer was not delivered on time and it was important to prime the grooves as the decks will be finished off with a special German deck oil which has been introduced to us all by the boat building maestro Uli from Bavaria who swears by it. It will leave a maintenance free finish on all the decks and most of the wood work.
The lead ballast keek arrived back and we quickly got to work fitting it on the boat. We first used our male mould to set up the dead woods fore and aft. With the dead woods in place the boat was moved in the workshop over underneath the hoist where the lead keek was lifted on top of the boat. The centre board slot was used as a guide for placing it on the boat and everthing lined up good with just a slight kick off of the lead on the aft end. A couple of extra days work was required to build up a small laminate on one side of it and then fair the whole thing in and encapsulate everything in a cloth and epoxy. The end result is very pleasing and I am extra pleased in that we lost no weight at all as nothing was shaved off the lead to make things fair.
We have been doing other little jobs at the same time such as sheathing the centre board and rudder ready for fitting and we also made a really nice set of margin boards to go around the sole boards by laminating kaya and oak around a jig.
In between all this we have been sanding and preparing the cockpit area and most of the wood work for finishing. We started painting the outer hull today with a high build two pack primer.
Must go, so much to do. I do not know if I will get the time to do another post before I launch on June 7th in Lyme Regis harbour but I will round off with hopefully some beautiful pictures of a finished boat on the slip way.