#22: Who You Callin’ Bulkhead?

“Jackie, when are you putting out the next blog?!”

I know, I know . . . I hear you loud and clear, Dad! Believe me, it pains me too to wait so long in between postings. My brain cries in protest as it tries to crank up the rusty cogs to remember how to interact with the website, iMovie, and YouTube, much less remember the details of what we’ve completed since the last post. Finally, though, the wait is over. Time to get this show on the road lest my brain completely rusts and seizes up from inactivity.

Here’s where we left off, with two flipped hulls:

After the hulls were upright, we taped two layers of fiberglass along all the inside joints, then covered the fiberglass with peel ply to help soak up excess epoxy and give a consistent finish.

Some of the big bulkheads came in two or more parts, so they needed to be connected with a biscuit joint in the middle.

We laid additional fiberglass in the hulls where the major bulkheads would press against the inside of the hulls.

Nick’s mom offered her services to help us roll one of the really long fiberglass + carbon fiber uni “ropes” that we stuffed in the routered perimeter of the bulkheads, as called out in the plans.

Tristan and I spent some quality time not listening to each other as he cleaned up the messy edges of epoxy and I pulled off tape.

Additional fiberglass layers were added above bulkhead openings for reinforcement.

In order for the four of us to hoist these massive bulkheads into place, we used the trusty scaffold and pulley system (our homemade overhead crane).

While utilizing the scaffold to hover our first bulkhead (BHD 4) in place, we glued it in. Then we did the same steps with the second bulkhead (BHD 5b), which is where Felicity stands today.

In other news, the kids finished 7th and 9th grade, and we love watching their progress into adulthood. In his spare time, when Tristan’s not helping a ton on Felicity, he has been sailing in weekly Sunfish races and fixing up his from-scratch RC airplane. (More on that when it actually gets airborne—fingers crossed.)

Calvin has been sharpening his skills in the kitchen. He is a big fan of concocting smoothies, fresh ginger ale, and unique desserts (for example, he made baklava out of crepes instead of phyllo). Plus he just finished assembling his ukulele, so I’m looking forward to some fun beach music in the near future.

Well, that’s the latest news in a nutshell. Now if you’ll excuse me for a minute while the rust sets in, school’s out and summer break is singing my name! À bientôt!

If you're interested in watching how we placed the bulkheads, check out this video: