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From Pete Leenhouts, NorthWest School of Wooden Boatbuilding, www.nwboatschool.org, an update on the Perry designed 62′ day sailor now under construction at the new Jeff Hammond boat shop.

SLIVER’s owner has said that he wants his boat built using the best, most cost-effective construction methods possible. For that reason, he chose the School to build the hull using strip planking covered by fiberglass. We can teach our students these methods using his boat as the instructional vehicle.

Contemporary Instructor Bruce Blatchley is leading the hull and deck construction team at the Boat School.

SLIVER is 61 feet 11 inches long, and 55 feet 4 inches long at the design waterline. She is 9 feet 10 inches wide, and will have a 10 foot draft. She will carry 976 square feet of sails, and will be tiller steered. She is designed to have a basic suite of accomodations, and will be driven in calms by a 39 hp Yanmar diesel.

Turn Point Design, a local CNC fabrication shop owned by Brandon Davis, cut the molds for the hull and deck.  The hull was strip-planked with red cedar, edge-nailed with composite nails and glued with WEST System epoxy under Bruce’s leadership in the shop. The hull was faired by hand with long boards and WEST System epoxy and fillers.

The boat is being sheathed in 30-ounce tri-axial fiberglass cloth bonded to the hull with WEST System epoxy.   While you were in the shop the day I met you, Bruce and his staff were scrubbing off the amine blush from the epoxy covering the fiberglass cloth and preparing to further fair the hull.  I’ll include those pictures in the next e-mail.

The deck will be built of 18-ounce bi-axial cloth laminated over the deck’s foam core. The incoming class will begin this work in January (they’re in Basic Boatbuilding Projects now through Dec 21st). The 2012 class will also sheath and fair the inside of the hull and install the bulkheads and structure.