This blog is devoted to my John Welsford designed 15' Navigator yawl Ellie. I built her in my garage over a period of 18 months and launched her in 2011. She sports a sliding gunter main, roller furled jib and sprit-boomed mizzen. Her construction is glued-lapstrake over permanent bulkheads and stringers. This blog is a record of her construction and her voyages here in the Puget Sound area and (hopefully) a useful resource for fellow Navigator builders.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

A little more work on the transom

Tonight I cut two more holes in the transom. A 1" drain hole, and a square hole for the boomkin.
That makes a grand total of 17 perforations through my transom. Six for the Duckworks motor mount, eight holes for the gudgeons, and three more for the tiller, boomkin and drain!  I hope the boat will still float despite all these holes!



Another challenge was how to trim all the planks flush with the transom. I thought about using a saw but was afraid of scratching the surface of the transom and chipping the planks. Then I thought I'd carefully whittle away at them with a sharp chisel. That would have taken forever.  I ended up using the Gain Machine


I set the Gain Machine so that the router bit was flush with the bottom of the base, like this:






Then, holding the base firmly against the transom, I used the Gain Machine to route the protruding planks flush with the transom.


The planks were perfectly flush a few minutes later.