L'interieur!

After many weeks of attempting to navigate the boat by standing on the framing (and consequently many a mild ankle injury), it was decided that a floor should be made in the cockpit, plus seating on the already constructed berth frames. I called my builder friend Hamish, and we began construction that weekend.

His parents were away so we were able to put the boat in their spacious garage and have access to all the woodworking tools a man can dream of! The deck came together very quickly, largely due to Hamish's incredible efficiency at such tasks, and I mostly kept back and attempted to take in the effortless brilliance of the man. The carpeted ply that came with the parts boat was used, and before long we had something that closely resembled a complete floor.

Saturday's progress was the floor and berths

The original builder had done a majestically good job on the berth frames, all perfectly joined and finished to his exacting standards, so all we really had to do was trace the tops onto ply, then cut them with the jigsaw. At this point a box of cider was retrieved from the fridge and progress slowed to a complete standstill while we "tested" the seating arrangements with our friend Euge. I'm pleased to say that they performed completely adequately and that they facilitated me and Hamish's consumption of no fewer than 18 bottles of cider without missing a beat. All three sailors had an excellent evening of boating without ever having to endure the safety risks and unpleasant rocking motion of a real ocean, so the day was deemed a complete success!

The next day we groggily resumed the process, and made an engine box around the SR20. This came together rather quickly, but we were spent, and took the rest of the day off to recover.

On Monday I resumed woodworking, and made the back two seats on either side of the engine box. I was quite pleased with myself, as these came out very nicely. The last few days progress really spurned my enthusiasm, and I couldn't wait to push on. I made the panels to cover the boat's skeleton from 7mm ply (one is visible in the photo on the left) and then cracked on with marinising the SR20.

The period of the boat's history that followed is known as "the Great Fuck-Up", as ultimately I wasted several months making bits to get the engine marine-ready, but ultimately it was a sub-optimal choice. Most detail will be omitted, but the next post will explain my logic in reaching this conclusion. The interior (happened March 2011) was the last significant piece of progress until around a month ago, but I'll get to that later. Adios readers!