I'm back, and I'm building the Chesapeake Light Craft Expedition Wherry !  I'm still sad that Pygmy Boats has gone away, but this boat from CLC isn't a kayak anyway. It's a beautiful rowing wherry with protected storage and enough stability (they say!) that I can use it in a kayakishy way.  Pictures from the CLC webite (copyright CLC):   The kit was delivered yesterday and today I have epoxied the first panels together.  CLC uses a great "puzzle" joint to align and strengthen the panels. For those of you new to stitch and glue kits, they are generally cut from 4' x 8' plywood panels, so the longest piece they can make is 8'. Therefore, to get panels to the full length of the boat, they make you butt joint pieces together. Pygmy did it with flat butt joints that required you to put fiberglass tape over each side of the joint. CLC does it better with the puzzle joints. They do not require any taping. Nice. Plus, they look sorta cool... at least ...

Since my last post for the completion of the Pygmy Pinguino, Pygmy Boats announced that they are suspending operations, whatever that means... ugh!!! What... no more Pygmy Boats?! How can this be? I've now worked through my feelings and have moved on. I've embraced the dark side, by which I mean the East Coast... yes, I'm actually considering building a Chesapeake Light Craft boat. Can you believe that? Specifically I'm very interested in their wherries. The Expedition Wherry looks good and suits my size and rowing interests. It's capable of carrying a sizeable payload in its watertight compartments. (Picture from the CLC website and they hold the copyright to it):   My wife purchased a Whitehull Spirit rowing wherry a couple years ago and I've enjoyed rowing it. I'm fairly new to sliding seat rowing but have really become interested in a boat that is more sized for my large build.  So... the CLC Expedition Wherry ... is this my next build? Stay tuned!   Al...

Ta Da! I finally finished it. Haven't been able to blog much about it, but here's how it looks... It has four coats of varnish on both the hull and deck. It probably should have had six or more, but I'm tired. I made my own padeyes, and I opted to not install a perimeter line yet. My friend who I built this for is a very casual user and this is probably sufficient for her, but perimeter lines would be a nice safety feature though. That's it! Until next time, I'm signing out for now.... Cheers!

The bulkheads are often one of the more challenging bits to install on your Pygmy. You install them after the deck is epoxied on and the hatches are cut. It's a pain to get them in there and fit them. First, you have to figure out where to put the forward bulkhead. You need to give at least an inch or more in front of the foot peg sliders. The aft bulkhead fits in just an inch or two behind the furthest aft part of the cockpit opening. Pygmy generally gives you a slightly oversized bulkhead, but I noticed on this latest Pinguino that the bulkheads fit better right out of the box than any other bulkheads. Nice! However, I still needed to trim the bulkheads a bit with my rasp and stationary sander. I apologize for not having any images of the trimming and fitting process. Ooops. Then you must remove the bulkheads and fiberglass them. Epoxy some cloth on both sides of each bulkhead. The focus of this post though is aligning the bulkheads so that they are as straight as pos...

Still slow going on the Pygmy Pinguino 145. Today I managed to get the inside hull/deck joints epoxy filled and taped. The manual has you do this earlier in the build, but also suggests that if you are planning on cutting hatches later that you can wait until then to do this step. It's a great suggestion by Pygmy and well worth waiting. IF you do wait to do this step, you can usually also avoid their "tape a filled syringe to a stick with a plunger" idea and just do it all by hand. On boats as short as the Pinguino you can reach the entire run of the joint by hand. Easy.  Here's how it looks now... Tomorrow I'll scrap, sand, and give a light coat of epoxy to the joints so that you don't cut yourself on the sharp tape edges. This will soften them up and make them much more comfortable on your skin. Cheers! 

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, ...