It has been just too cold, too wet, and too busy to work on the Pygmy Pinguino kayak for a long time. But truth be told, I've also been busy on my latest wooden IOM RC sailboat ! But today I was able to get back to it by fiberglassing the first sides of the bulkheads and the hatch lips. How do you like my new logo that I had printed on rice paper? :-P See those holes near the top of each bulkhead? They are for pressure relief. After I fiberglass both sides I will drill a very small 1/16" or smaller hole through the cured epoxy to allow air to pass through. The hatches tend to work pretty well and can actually get sucked down quite firmly in warm weather so that you must pry the hatches up with a screwdriver and potentially damage the hull or hatch. The small holes let you avoid that. The bulkhead holes don't need to be as large as mine... I just happened to have that size Forstner bit in my drill press and was too lazy to chuck a smaller one. :-P  You only need ...

It's been a couple weeks since my last post. Haven't had too much time to work on the Pinguino. But this weekend I made up some ground. So far I've added a third coat of epoxy to the entire outside of the boat, and have sanded parts of the deck where the hatches and cockpit cowling will go. The hull I will let cure until the boat is done and I'm about to varnish. Yesterday I cut the hatches. Today I installed the spacer pieces for the hatches and the lower spacer pieces for the cowling. I then ran a bead of thickened epoxy around the outside of the cowling. It adds a nice touch and feels good on your fingers when you attach your spray skirt. Here's how it looks now... Yes, I have a lot of clamps. No, you can never have enough. :-P Over the years of making RC sailboats and other hobbies, I've amassed several boxes of clamps. Most are spring loaded which I prefer to screw-down C-clamps. I use C-clamps when I really need to get some pressure down, ...

Yesterday I drilled all my holes for the soft padeyes and then coated the holes with epoxy. I also cut, sanded and installed the hatch dowels. One trick is to sand a notch into the bottom edge of the dowel so that it acts as a grip to hold onto if the hatches get sucked down. To make the notch I used the round end of my stationary sander. I then epoxied them onto the hatches. Finally I made the decision to NOT paint my coaming as I had planned. Instead I will simply varnish it. So I added a final coat of epoxy on the coaming and will sand it flush in a few days once it's really cured. So... that's about it for the actual building of the Pygmy Borealis XL kayak!! My next steps are varnishing and installing the deck hardware. Then, gulp, I get to take it out and go paddling! Peace!

Didn't have time to update yesterday but I was able to get the hatch spacer strips installed on the Pygmy Borealis XL kayak. Did both hatches at the same time. And yes, I still have the boat on its side. It makes it easier to access the hatch openings. Here's the front hatch... The stern hatch... And this is what the spacer strip looks like after the clamps came off... Today I was able to epoxy on the upper coaming strips. It took just about every clamp I own! I really wish I had more of the metal screw-type "C" clamps! They are much more adjustable than the spring clamps. The front of the coaming strips came together pretty well. I'll have to use a bit of filler I'm sure.. and loads of sanding. The bits of broken Popsicle sticks are so that the "C" clamps don't leave an indentation. The back of the upper coaming strips met pretty well too. Again, I'll need to do some filing with the rasp but otherwise it looks good...

I've mentioned many times that I'm doing some steps out of order. It just makes it easier and makes more sense if you can keep them all straight. The Pygmy manual has you wait to cut the hatches until the entire boat is done. It also suggests that you wait to run tape along the inside hull/deck joint until you cut the hatches. However, if you do that then it's a real pain to get the tape cleanly behind the cockpit hip braces. The seat is in the way too. So, here's a better order to do things: 1. While you are installing the coaming, you will have some time while the fiberglass cures on the upper coaming strips. This is a great time to go ahead and cut your hatches 2. Before you install the hip braces, run the hull/deck joint taping step. It's pretty easy to reach most of the joint if you have the hatches cut. 3. Now you can tinker away at installing both the upper coaming strips and the hatch spacers. Easy! Here's side two of the upper coaming stri...