Building the Skoota Coach Launch

Not sure who else could've done it.  I got to the shop this evening, and found the strongback gone, and the hull sitting in a new cradle.  Must've been elves.  Port hull off the strongback I couldn't resist temptation and pulled the hull out of the workspace into the main shop, pulled the starboard hull out of its hidey hole, got some help with the deck, and viola!  It's a boat!  And everything fits (or close).   I've been trying to visualize the actual size - it's a lot bigger than I thought, and I'm quite pleased.  A lot of work yet to be done, but I'm pretty chuffed with where it's at today! Thanks, elves!!!

Why... One of the questions I've been asked repeatedly is "why"?  The answer is pretty simple - new boats (used just don't exist) are 10-15K.  Building a new boat from scratch is more in the 2-3K range.  Here's "Murphy", our existing boat.  14' older design (probably 90s).  The deck gave out last year (large areas of rotted balsa), so we replaced it with 3/4" underlayment in order to use it for a few weeks until the new boat is ready.  Anna and Sam - Jr Worlds Team!!! And here's a link to the GoFundMe to send a Sam and Anna to Junior World Championships in Romania.   Both of these athletes have been training hard over the past couple of years, and were selected at Team Trials in April.  Anna is in seat 1 and Sam in seat 4 of the K-4 (video below).  One of the other reasons for building a new launch is to have a launch that is capable of going as fast as the K-4 without being at max throttle! Progress report -

Progress Just because there's lots of dead air doesn't mean we stopped work!  A couple of key 'learnings' Once the competition season begins, it's a lot harder for a coach to spend several hours a day working on the boat. It's damn near impossible to take pictures and work with epoxy at the same time And when you work with epoxy, most of the 'work in progress' is hidden from view anyway. Putting the second hull together goes much faster than the first. So here we go... Port Hull We put the last panel on the port hull this morning.   As noted above, it did go significantly faster this time around. Panel screw clamped in place We learned a lot of tricks the first time around, and by measuring/adjusting our work from the starboard hull, we cut 2 months off the second hull's build! We also had several of our team athletes volunteer to help with assembly.  It was great to get them involved, and saved us a much longer night (or 2nd

It's been a few days since the last update.  Lots going on in my other worlds, and also quite a bit of 'small work' in this one. After cutting away everything that didn't look like a boat, it was time to start filling things in.  The basic hull is quite strong, but the deck side and fittings have to be even stronger.  Imagine having a 140lb athlete putting all their weight on one knee and then on a 4mm bit of plywood - probably not a long term good prospect. Over the past two weeks, we've added additional stringers to the top deck (where the frames were bolted in, laminated plates for the fore and aft hull sections (including access ports), added pink foam for positive buoyancy, filled gaps, and reinforced anywhere we thought we might be weak. We also spent several hours doing take-offs from the starboard hull, updating drawings, and transferring to the port hull frames. Clamps.  Lots of clamps. The proof of doing all the cloning, copying and transferring is