Upper port hull half laminated

The weather today was just total, absolute crap. Never got above 60 deg F, and it was raining from the moment I got out of bed. Despite these obstacles, I was able to laminate the upper port hull half.

As you're doing this job, many parts of the laminate are hard to reach, and the only way to reach them is to walk on the gunwale (or have some sort of gantry). Obviously I'm walking on the gunwale -- even had to stop using my plywood walkway, since there wasn't room for it and the new laminates as well. Since I was walking back and forth to the garage and it was raining, I started tracking dirt and grass into my hull! Arggh - ya gotta be kidding me I thought - is this a boat or a gardening project?!? Quite aggravating - I had to start carefully checking my shoes before entering the hull. It's like one of those Jeff Foxworthy jokes..."you might be a redneck, if there's grass growing inside your new boat"... :-)

Thankfully the gunwale laminate seemed quite able to bear my weight (so the rest of you should be fine).

I started up at the bow and worked aft. Right after the laminate went past past form frame 5, I added the extra A laminate that the plans call for (since I wouldn't have good access to it later):

Here's the forward half all done, including the strip of uni running horizontal below the center line:

I made sure there was plenty of overlap on all the joins. Right in front of the cockpit though, I cut a piece of glass too short and had to add a patch piece at the upper gunwale:

I did do one thing differently today: I wet-out the foam before laying down the glass on all sections, mainly as a new step in my bubble avoidance strategy. It turned out to have a beneficial effect on the large vertical deck areas: you hold the glass almost in position, fine-tune it, then start lightly pressing it down into the wetted vertical areas. The wet epoxy on the foam then grabs it and usually has enough grip to hold it in place. If I had done this the dry-layup way, the glass would have kept wanting to fall down.

My wife was helping me out today, lending an extra pair of hands for holding the glass while it was getting positioned; it took us about 4 1/2 hours from start to finish.

One final picture, with the halogen lamps turned on; I just thought it made things look cool:

Oops - that extra lighting does reveal some resin-rich areas though.

Well, that's it for today. I go back to work tomorrow, so progress will slow down to a more normal pace for awhile. At least I'm ready to start placing the bulkheads.