With one flick of his mighty tale he cut the dinghy in two!

The whalers were locked in a life and death struggle and lost, I cut my dinghy in two on purpose!  In some ways, my chop job looked like a whale had smashed it. This is the part of the build where I upon the instructions took a long saw and cut in between the two forward bulkheads and separated the two parts of the Take apart passagemaker dinghy.

NOTE: you may notice there is a 6 month gap in this blog. It is called boating season. during boating season there is no time to write blogs and barely enough time to work. It is now Oct 31, and the mother ship and the PMD come out of the water this week. I put at least 40 hours, mostly sailing. on the PMD. I also motored and rowed almost every day. The PMD was quite a hit and the envy of all the sailboaters who cannot understand how a powerboater can build a sailboat.



Surely one cannot be both a sailboater and an powerboater, why thats like being a republican and a democrat at the same time! impossiable! They would motor past in their sailboats to the lake and I would hear them say, "You know he built that boat himself, He should sell his powerboat and get a sailboat!" They would stare at it and wonder how it was built. Some wondered how old it was!  haha. Back to the construction story:

If I could have a "do over" for any part in the build, this would be it. I did it all by myself, a mistake. I had never seen this done before and I was in a bit of a hurry and overconfident in my abilities. In the end, one can hardly tell I messed it up but I did cost myself a few hours of repair work. I would say almost anything can be repaired in this process so don't worry if you screw it up now ant then, it gives the boat some character.

The mistake happened almost at the beginning. The saw did not want to follow the piece of cardboard build in between the two bulkheads. The saw slipped in between the cardboard and the bulkhead and started cutting the bulkhead from the first draw. This led me to think that the resistance was normal. You are cutting the outside planks and the rub rail but you need to keep the saw straight in the middle of the cardboard. 

I got off track several times. Stopped and made corrections. Finally, I found the correct path for the saw. Now, I could do it much better, but with out watching it one time, its a little hard. If some one would put a you tube video of this that would be great for others.

I tried to snap a chalk line to help me to visualize the path for the saw and I started cutting from the bottom of the boat. Both were mistakes. I also cut it on the floor, not on the horses like the book says. You need at least another person and to do it on the horses, cut from the inside of the boat and let the bulkheads guide the saw.

Finally the agony was over, and the boat was in tow pieces. I was actually wet with sweat all over. Not the work but the pressure of screwing up the whole project. Now I know you cant screw up the whole project. Almost anything can be fixed.

But look at the damage!!!

I did not take many pics of the repair process but basically, I just used epoxy in layers, sanding and more epoxy until the surface was smooth and then I painted. Planned anyway!

Above is the raw patch and below is the finished work. 

The bow was the same, layers of epoxy, then sanding, then paint. 

I filled all the saw marks with epoxy and it never leaked or really could be detected except for one area in the inside of the bow bulkhead. No one has noticed that patch yet! Remenber as you build your PMD, 99%  of the flaws, only you will know where they are. Or maybe another PMD builder!