I'm starting to put on weight. No not me, the boat. I'll try to post a good picture later but as I start to assemble all the parts, I am getting the sense of the mass of a Tiki 26. Ok so it's much lighter than say my former Westsail 28 which had a displacement of 9500 lbs plus with 3500 lbs of that a big chunk of lead at the bottom of the keel but the finished T26 won't be something you can throw your shoulder against when it's sitting in the sand and you move it. Maybe if it's balanced on some rollers but not otherwise. I guess I've just gotten use to being able to push the whole thing around on my own. I may need to rethink launch day!

Yesterday, My friend Carter came by to check out my progress. I don't think he'd been by since I started H2. He was like a boy with a new toy - wide eyed and darting around. He did point out an interesting thing about the keel-skeg design; on a sandy grounding you'd be ok but if you bounced over a rock and then caught the skeg the outcome could be serious as in tearing off a skeg and rudder. I've seen photos from Matjaž Chvatal web site on his T26 the Ariki http://ariki.zalozba-turistika.si/2005/modif/index.htm that fills in the space between the lowest keel point and the skeg. My concern would be with the extra water resistance to course change but maybe it is minor. A solution, if there even is a problem would bw to add a section of stainless angle or channel bolted through the skeg and running forward to the keel where the flange(s) could be cut off and the web then attached to the hull with a flush screw. While on the topic of modifications, I've been wondering if anyone has played around with adding wings off the skeg as a way of dampening the hobby-horse motion that is suppose to be an issue with canoe sterned cats. They could act like the stabilizer fins often added to offshore power boats to dampen the rolling motion such vessels experince.

On the list of activities today are cockpit construction and starting on an extra beam for the stern trampoline. I've already glued up a 4 inch square of Sitka for this so next is cutting down to its finished size and then turning it to get a round section.