Beam fairings

After a long pause in boatbuilding activities, I resumed work by starting the construction of the fairings in front of the beams. Before any actual work could begin, the garage had to be reorganised and the appropriate tools for composite work gathered.

There were also several partly used containers of resin and hardener left over from earlier work. The initial glue-up of the foam strips seemed like a good opportunity to use up these remains. Unfortunately, I assumed that the unlabelled clear bottle contained resin and that the smaller, heavily used bottle held the hardener. In hindsight, this was a serious mistake.

The epoxy bog refused to cure. A closer inspection of the unlabelled bottle revealed that it was not resin at all, but another hardener—of a different brand and almost odourless. Da$%!*. A stupid mistake, requiring the first fairing to be broken down and redone.

In retrospect, this outcome was still preferable to an incorrect resin-to-hardener ratio, which would have resulted in a sticky and much more difficult-to-remove mess. This uncured mixture was relatively easy to remove; it mainly cost time.

The subsequent trial fit on the starboard forward beam was satisfying. The plans allow for a build-out of the cabin to match the fairing, but I chose a different approach. Instead, I extended the fairing slightly to achieve the same goal: a fair and continuous transition between the cabin, the fairing, and the beam.