Building the Squirt

Decking Structure Flipped the boat off the stand! Finally! First thing I did was encapsulate the inside of the boat with 3 coats of epoxy. Then I installed the bow eye with an extra long drill bit and very carefully drilling through the center of the stem. Now it's ready to tow. Of course I had to test out the trailer so I decided to take it out to the lake with my fiancé and test out the hull. Wanted to see how the waterline would look on the water. Turns out you really can't know your water line on this boat until you've got it all rigged up with your motor. In this picture the hull glides on top of the water. Later once I had my heavy 20 hp 4 stroke the rear of the boat sank way passed the water line I had painted. However, in the water no one will really pay attention. Out of the water on the trailer the line looks superb. You'll see in my posts later on. I didn't go with a boot stripe because using this 2 part marine paint was already a challenge and I ...

Time to Paint Painting is such tedious work! I really wanted to achieve a great paint job so I called up a local marina to get a quote to paint my boat. It would've been around $3,500.00! So I quickly decided to paint it myself. I opted to use Interlux Perfection (topside paint) because of its high gloss and durability rating. Since my boat will never be in the water for  very long (more than a day or so) I am not going to use a bottom paint also known as an anti-fouling paint. Not only is marine paint expensive but all the supplies is probably just as much. However, still nowhere near the price that a local marina would paint it for. I set up some plastic to cover the garage ceiling that constantly flakes off and made the sides to roll up out of the way so I could still open my garage door when not painting. I had hopes that this plastic draping would help with dust control. It may have helped...a little. I prepped the surface following the Interlux directions exactly. ...

Installing the skeg I decided to add a skeg to help maintain a straight path when the boat is on plane as well as to provide grip in turns. It seems that everyone has skegs of various sizes so I decided to make mine somewhat shallow in hopes that I would have just enough to keep some control during turns while being able to slide a little bit when I want to have fun. Mine started out at a 1/2 inch and ends at 1 1/2 inches at the highest point aft. It's 43 1/2 inches long and I ended mine 24 inches from the transom with an airfoil shape. The shape and placement should prevent any cavitation problems with the motor. I also trimmed the center of the skeg to match the angle of the keel for a tighter fit. I think it was around 3-5 degrees, I don't really remember because it was so long ago when I actually installed it.  I also reformed a sharp edge along the hull at the transom. Earlier on when prepping the boat for  fiberglass; the sharp edge of the transom had...

Fiberglassing It's exciting every time I get to the next stage of building the boat. After filling the screw holes with famowood and using system three QuickFair to smooth out the scarf joints in the panels it is time to start fiberglassing. I sanded down all of the sharp corners of the boat, mainly around the chines and transom because the fiberglass won't bond well to sharp angles. It will end up creating air bubbles on the corners witch we really don't want. I used the fiberglass kit from Glen-L. I couldn't find any instructions on how to use which fiberglass sheet where, so I finally decided to use one sheet to cover the bottom of the boat and the transom. Then trimmed it to size. I invited some friends out to help in the process. Much easier to do with extra hands than by yourself. When dealing with epoxy and having to work quickly it is nice to have someone to mix the epoxy and multiple people to poor and smooth out the epoxy into the fiberglass weave....