Hull removed from frames

As mentioned in last post, it was time to remove the main hull from the frames. I've been both excited and nervous about this step - excited for obvious reasons, and nervous since I didn't have a really good plan in mind for how I would accomplish this. I decided to use my tent frame as a lifting point, although I wasn't sure if it would be strong enough (certainly the tent manufacturer does not support this type of use!). Lacking any other plans, I reluctantly decided to go ahead.

Fortunately one of my neighbors was willing to help me out, and he already had the necessary lifting equipment. Thanks a ton Sean - I couldn't have done this without you. (He was also much calmer than I was, since I had visions of fallen\smashed boat dancing in my head most of the time.)

Without further ado, here's some pictures; this is a lift strap tied around the hull:

We used an electric hoist for the rearward lifting strap; the hoist is chained to the bottom rail of the tent; the two wood braces are to minimize the bowing of the tent walls:

After achieving lift-off with just one strap (located at the rear main cabin bulkhead), we got busy removing form frames starting from the transom moving forward. The battens were cut away piece-meal from below using a cutoff tool, then were broken off as needed until each frame could be removed:

In the picture above, the boat is indeed being supported from above, but the clearance above the battens is quite minimal (we didn't have a lot of lifting room due to the low clearance at the top of the tent).

After removing up to about form frame 5 or 6, we attached another lift strap at FF #5, and picked up the remainder of the boat. For this we used a chainfall tied to the bottom support rail of the tent:

Hey look! It's a side-ways flying boat:

After that we rigged a couple of more straps under the boat, attached to the mid-height tent support poles. Suspending the boat like that gave us enough slack to be able to turn the boat over:

Damn but this is a nice looking boat (but I'm biased):

I had picked up some cheap used baby mattresses from the local thrift store to use as padding under the side of the boat. Should have gotten more though, since I didn't feel comfortable laying the gunwale down without any padding. So we left the boat semi-suspended for the night:

I made another shopping trip this evening for more mattresses. Tomorrow we'll finish laying the boat down on its gunwale, and then I'll get busy fairing the rest of the bottom hull half and preparing it for lamination.