Because the weather warmed up in the last week or so, I have rushed to make progress on the main hull. Before Christmas, I screwed the frames to the building jig then cut out the bottom panel. At that point, the case for the center board had to be installed.

I made some strips of wood to follow the profile of the bottom of the boat and glued/screwed them to the matching places of the case. While that was clamped in place, I traced and cut the opening for the center board in the bottom of the boat. Taking a deep breath, I glued and screwed everything together. In this picture, I have also added the stringers to the frames. The frame with the big hole cut in, stays in the boat, but the two behind the centerboard case are temporary.

In the last few days, I got brave and brought in the side panels I had glued together in August. It was an easy job to rest the first panel against the side of the hull and trace its shape. Took it out to a cutting table and with the skil saw set very shallow, cut out the finished shape. I checked to make sure it would fit and predrilled for the screws. Once the epoxy was spread on both faces, I screwed the panel to the side of the hull. Then it was the time to attach the side with the bottom of the boat. As there was no stringer there, I drilled little holes now and again and stitched the side to the bottom with wire.

As the other side panel was not in place, it was easy to reach inside and apply little fillets of epoxy to hold those panels together.

Yesterday I took the wire ties out and put the epoxy fillets where the wires had been.

Repeated the process with the second side. That took longer as I was not able to reach inside the hull, but had to crawl underneath around the building frame.

Now the boat has a bottom and both sides. Feels great to be making progress again.