An insomniac's dream

Get it?  Insomniac...  Dream...  A play on words maybe.  Okay, it was lame.  Seriouly, last night, I woke up at 1:00 A.M. and couldn't go back to sleep.  What to do?  Work on the boat of course.  So, I went to the shop and put one layer of fiberglass on each side, bilge and bottom panel to make them stiffer at the splice. 

After catching a few winks, I went back out and started assembly.  Step one:  Tack the side panels to the transom.  It wasn't too bad.  In fact, it was so easy that I decided to do it again.  Okay, I put them on backwards the first time, but I was just practicing, wink.

Next I built little stands to hold each of the frame molds. 

Then, I lined up each frame between the side panels.

Then, I added the bottom panel.

Then I installed the stem.  You've heard the phrase, "From stem to stern."?  Well its the curved thing up front.

At this point I had to have back-up.  Lori, Maggie and Colton helped me lift the transom and side panels into position.

Next, the bilge panels...

Now, don't worry about those little holes down the entire length of the boat.  I'm going to have a nice coffee can to bail water with:~)  Ha!  Seriously, the panel didn't fit so hot the first time and I couldn't figure it out.  I had installed the second frame mold in the wrong location.  Once I swapped that around, everything fit a little better.  But, it still doesn't want to go right into place. 

At the end of the day I decided to just tack the bilge panels into place and leave them overnight.  My brother-in-law once told me that guitars don't know they are no longer trees until they've been playing music a while.  So, I'm hoping that sometime during the night this pile of wood will realize that it's going to be a boat!