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With hindsight, I guess I should have been on guard considering the summer seemed to have progressed fairly uneventfully. I steadily made progress in the cabin, painting and running a minimum of electrics.

I spent the remainder of my time in the hayloft installing various deck and rigging hardware.

I will never feel comfortable drilling through the deck. Paranoid about leaks and rot I’ve been drilling the initial hole slightly larger than the corresponding bolt, filling it with epoxy and then re-drilling at the proper size. Finally, everything gets bedded with a generous application of sealant. Only time will tell how successful this approach will be.

Usually I close up shop in the hayloft on the Thanksgiving weekend. This year I thought I’d see if I could squeeze in another weekend or two and so planned to spend the day installing the chainplates. As I was stepping onto the ladder to climb out of the hayloft it broke and I instead spent the day in an emergency room nursing what turned out to be a pair of broken ankles.

To celebrate the start of the this year’s building I spent some time below deck painting and varnishing. I was surprised to see how large the VG23’s cabin appears with a shiny coat of paint.

FDTracer
I put together this update sometime ago but am only “officially” releasing it now. The recent release of FlashDevelop 3 RC1 requires that you also update your installed version of the FDTracer plugin:

Download FDTracer 0.3.4:
http://www.andrewlucking.com/code/fdtracer/

FlashLogViewer
Apparently I have a habit of writing plugins who’s features end up getting baked into the product they extend. I’m happy to announce that FDTracer is facing it’s EOL. The current pre-release of FlashDevelop 3 RC2 includes a FlashLogViewer plugin which provides FDTracer like functionality and more. I installed FD3 RC2 this afternoon and FlashLogViewer feels like an old friend:

To prepare for painting the VG23 I put in the requisite “who knows how many” hours of sanding primer and then erected a bit of a spray tent by hanging an enormous tarp from the hayloft rafters. The hayloft has been the perfect space to build but I was worried about dust and the pigeons that have been hanging about all summer.

On painting day we setup the air compressor on the lawn next to the barn and ran a hose up through the hayloft window. To keep dust down we used a watering can to wet down the floor and then we started mixing paint.

I’m still not sure if my giddiness was due to finally seeing the VG23 with a coat of paint or simply a result of getting a bit too close to the overspray.

One of the things I find so satisfying about this boat building project is being challenged to just figure out how to get a task done. Building and installing the VG23’s windows was a perfect example.

My first step was to pick up some lexan to fit the window holes cut last fall. And using the “universal radius”, (which just happens to come filled with a refreshing beverage), I measured and then cut it to shape with the jigsaw.

The first lesson I learned was to cut plastics at a nice slow speed, otherwise things heat up and the blade tends to stick. Combine that with a couple reminders of the “measure twice, cut once” lesson meant that by the time the windows were complete I was on a first name basis with Lynn over at Johnston Plastics.

My attempts at sealing the windows were turning out to be a frustrating mess until my sister’s fiancee suggested I use the masking tape edging trick pictured above. The key to getting a reasonably clean edge is to remove the tape before the sealant begins to dry.

In between tasks I’ve also been making gradual progress sanding primer.