I awoke with a start this morning - still dark out but my mind had been at work on the boat for awhile. I was building the wrong hull and it was only 5 am. How could this be I tried to resolve. Still in bed I tried to picture the boat and that my mind was wrong. No I needed to get up and go confirm that my mind was right and my hope was wrong. Time to pull on my jeans and find my headlamp. As soon as I stepped into the shed my fears were confirmed .
Now it's not that I had an epiphany and discovered I was building the wrong boat, it was that I was building the starboard hull when I should be building the port hull. At this point the difference is with bulkheads # 2,3, and 4, they are the only non-symetrical parts, laterally. In fixing yesterdays alignment problem I had turned them around. The issue is that my yard, behind the cottage I live in, is just big enough to hold a Tiki 26 (with a tree inside the starboard bow) so to be able to assemble it before I haul it out of the yard I need to build it the way it will sit. I was building so the outsides of the hull would be against each other. At first I thought I would just continue, afterall everything had been trued up, the bulkheads were perfectly wired in and the keel was epoxied. I justified that I could lay the starboard hull on its side and lift the port hull over top of it. Ya right! - lift all 450 lbs of the port hull over the starboard hull which would need to be lying on its side. I went back inside to make tea; afterall it was too early to be down in the dumps over this problem, I needed to solve it. I studied the plans while the kettle boiled. Tea in hand I went back out to the shed, turned on the lights and was so glad that I hadn't glued anything other than the keel and that the epoxy wasn't up to the bottom of the bulkheads. I resolved to try to remove the toughest bulkhead, # 3 first. If that worked then maybe I could remove the other two with equal luck. I found the wire cutters and cut the six wires holding the bulkhead in place and wrenched it out from between the hull sides. Once it was out, it didn't feel like I was going backwards but going the right way. I turned it around, pushed it back in between the hull sides until it snapped down so the bulkhead notches took the stringers and wired it back in. Three hours later all three bulkheads were turned around, wired in and the hull was trued up again. I'd done the right thing. Like in mountaineering there is a time to retreat to try another day instead of slogging on into the void.
Now it's not that I had an epiphany and discovered I was building the wrong boat, it was that I was building the starboard hull when I should be building the port hull. At this point the difference is with bulkheads # 2,3, and 4, they are the only non-symetrical parts, laterally. In fixing yesterdays alignment problem I had turned them around. The issue is that my yard, behind the cottage I live in, is just big enough to hold a Tiki 26 (with a tree inside the starboard bow) so to be able to assemble it before I haul it out of the yard I need to build it the way it will sit. I was building so the outsides of the hull would be against each other. At first I thought I would just continue, afterall everything had been trued up, the bulkheads were perfectly wired in and the keel was epoxied. I justified that I could lay the starboard hull on its side and lift the port hull over top of it. Ya right! - lift all 450 lbs of the port hull over the starboard hull which would need to be lying on its side. I went back inside to make tea; afterall it was too early to be down in the dumps over this problem, I needed to solve it. I studied the plans while the kettle boiled. Tea in hand I went back out to the shed, turned on the lights and was so glad that I hadn't glued anything other than the keel and that the epoxy wasn't up to the bottom of the bulkheads. I resolved to try to remove the toughest bulkhead, # 3 first. If that worked then maybe I could remove the other two with equal luck. I found the wire cutters and cut the six wires holding the bulkhead in place and wrenched it out from between the hull sides. Once it was out, it didn't feel like I was going backwards but going the right way. I turned it around, pushed it back in between the hull sides until it snapped down so the bulkhead notches took the stringers and wired it back in. Three hours later all three bulkheads were turned around, wired in and the hull was trued up again. I'd done the right thing. Like in mountaineering there is a time to retreat to try another day instead of slogging on into the void.
posted by tsunamichaser at 9:12 AM
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