Shearwater 16 Hybrid

I am new to boat building.  I am building a Shearwater 16 Hybrid.  I am at the point where I have stitched, glued and removed the wires.  My question is do I have to do the fillets, tape and fiberglass cloth on the cockpit all at once?  I was wondering if I could do the fillets and the tape one day and the fiberglass cloth the next?  The book says I might need help for the fiberglass cloth part - I can arrange that but it would be easier to time if I could do the fillets and the tape first.  The book ... which is a bit vague at times .... makes it look like this is all one step.

 Thanks for you advice.


4 replies:

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RE: Shearwater 16 Hybrid

I did the fillets, taped the seams and ran a sealer coat of epoxy over the entire inside of the hull as one job. Then the next day, I positioned, cut and wet out the cockpit glass. You could possibly do all this at once, but getting the cockpit glass positioned so that it conforms closely to the interior curves, and runs up under the shear clamps neatly is a little bit fiddly. It is somewhat tricky to wet out working on a concave surface like that since when you try to push the glass down here or there, it tends to pull up a bit somewhere else leaving a bubble. I'm not sure if the explanation is clear, but you'll see what I mean when you try it:) I think it might present some difficulty doing the cockpit glass neatly if you were trying to work on top of wet fillets and tape. But it could probably be managed reasonably well if you were in a hurry for some reason.

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Ogata (eric)

RE: Shearwater 16 Hybrid

Thanks for your reply. 

I will get to work on the fillets and taping today.  Great pictures of your boat - thanks for posting so many.  I like the way you did the deck rigging.

RE: Shearwater 16 Hybrid

Another option is to save yourself a step and NOT tape the cockpit seams.  I only taped the seams forward and aft of the cockpit on my Shearwater 17, per blessings from John Harris.  The cockpit cloth provides plenty of strength to the cockpit seams.  This is the way all the CLC demo Shearwaters are done.  Hope I caught you in time.

Paul G

RE: Shearwater 16 Hybrid

The pictures are an excellent vehicle to remind myself of all the little (and big) mistakes I made:) Even so, I've been very happy with the result, I'm sure you will be too. I stole the idea for the deck rigging padeyes from looking at pictures of builds done by John Caldeira:

http://www.outdoorplace.org/paddling/

Thanks John! There are quite a few useful ideas there. Good luck with your build! Now I've decided to spend the summer doing less talking, less building and more paddling! (while thinking about what's next :)

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Ogata (eric)

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