No pix today...

...but if you want to imagine what the boat looks like right now, just remove frames 4 and 5 from the "3-D" shots in the last post. That's not as dire as it sounds; allow me (Courtney) to explain.

When we took the last photos, everything was "pretty close" to lined up, and it was temporarily clamped in place. There were a couple of problems, though:

• frames 3 & 4, which are in two halves and butt up against the CP case, were not precisely in place;
  
• the joint between frame 2 and the CP case wasn't plumb; and
  
• the tripod with the laser level was bumped by the shop door and knocked out of alignment.

Not the end of the world; I was planning on taking everything apart anyway. The problem, which Dad and I arg^H^H^Hdiscussed at length Tuesday night, was that you need the CP case straight to check the level of the frames... and with the laser level you have to do that one frame at a time in numbered order (3, 4, 5)... and frame 5 is the one that straightens out the CP case. Spot the circle?

By last night, I kinda figured that our parts were precise enough that we could attach them and they'd be pretty close, but first we had to reset the laser level, re-level frame 1 (which still isn't attached to anything except the construction frame), and fix the joint between frame 2 and the CP case. This latter task involved backing out the screws, shimming the joint, packing it with epoxy/wood flour filler, tightening the screws again, and filleting both sides of the joint with fibreglass and epoxy.

THEN we could try attaching both sides of frame 3 with itty bitty brackets and screws, twisting the CP case into the right alignment, and checking the level. Vindication - everything lined up just fine, so we filleted the joints of frame 3 (forward sides only, the aft sides still had brackets on them). We'll do the same thing for both sides of frame 4 once it's lined up properly, filleting the aft sides of the frame 3 joints and the forward sides of the frame 4 joints, then move on to frame 5... which by now we have good reason to believe will pull the whole structure into pretty fine alignment.

But sometimes it feels like nothing is ever easy. This whole boat-building thing is a good lesson in patience, cleverness, and foresight.