Ugh

I am STILL working on the damn rudder lashing points on the sternpost. I've got 'em all notched and filled but.....

Shit, as I am typing this I just remembered that I should have glued on the hardwood inserts BEFORE filling the big holes I cut! What am I going to clamp to now?!? Well, too late to cry over it. I guess I'll put a tiny screw in as a clamp and fill it, or else make a jig. Dammit.

Anyway, once it's done I am going to put the starboard hull together.

On a side note, I am usually in a continual state of "patting myself on the back" for choosing this design. I guess it's a necessity. If you are doubting your choice in design, you start on a downhill slide to somewhere you don't want to be.

The wharram Tiki 30 is definitely a safe, stable, small, trailerable cruising design that is very. very seaworthy. I know it doesn't move fast to weather, and I know it isn't a luxury craft, but I don't doubt that it would convey us, safely and relatively comfortably, wherever we might want to go.

But God damn, they're practically GIVING monohull boats away now. I could have a cruising boat for a song and a dance, almost without taking out a loan. It has begun to worry me a bit, a little taste of self-doubt that I am used to anywhere else in my life, but not in my choice to build the Wharram. I also have read some other things about the designer that worry me a bit. Mostly things I already knew, but had not heard in so many words. Things like how the whole aesthetic is more designed to sell plans than to create good boats. Things about self-serving design analysis and refusal to acknowledge weak points.

I have also re-read the Larry Pardey's nasty, horrifying article about how epoxy is garbage, and how your boat will definitely fall apart long before the wood even has a chance to rot.

These things worry me, but I have to shut out the worst of it and focus on the completion of the project. Whether it is the boat for me or not, it will still sell, to someone, for more than I paid for it, or I will get out of it what it cost in enjoyment. I have to believe that one day I will come over the horizon and see the Bahamas growing before me, that I will beach the boat I built, and my wife and kid will be thrilled as they jump off onto the sand.....