Firstly apologies for not having a report last week. I have been having computer problems and still not resolved the issues. My laptop is back to the repair place on Monday. Hopefully I will be back to normal through the week and can start rebuilding my laptop. If anyone is trying to contact me by email, please use my projectperfect address as I have a couple of email addresses and have not been checking them all regularly.

Great progress over the last two weeks. The fin case is now in place permanently and definitely will not leak.

We, or should I say Robert, strengthened the keel by adding another piece of timber the length of the keel. We had to bolt everything together before we could finish the keel and we managed that mid this week. In the latter part of this week we fibreglassed the keel and with a light sand today (Sunday), it should be ready to paint. We will be painting it through the week.

After a few trials, we decided on a stain to apply to the hull. There is a picture below of the colour. It is a mid brown colour which is much lighter than the almost black finish on Top Weight.

The plan for the coming week is to finish off painting with epoxy and varnish through the week, and be ready to turn the boat next Saturday. At this stage, we will probably have the boat on it’s side to finish off some work on the inside then final sand, stain, epoxy and varnish.

We are aiming to be back in the water in two weeks. Hopefully take the boat out of the boatshed on Saturday 7 September. The limiting factor may be the boat ramp which is still under construction. We cannot get the boat back to the boatshed until the ramp is complete. In any case, the aim is to finish the boat by 7 September.

If anyone can spare us some time it will be greatly appreciated. Robert is at the boatshed nearly every day, and now we are down to finishing, the more hands we have, the better.