Hello geophile!

Sounds like you are nearing the finishline! Congrats!

Thepeices need to be scarfed together. I am away from my old manual at the moment but you will end up with 4 total rails. 

Here is a picture(the best I could find) http://www.clcboats.com/scripts/phpThumb/phpThumb.php?src=/images/photos/boats/skerry/construction/SKERRY_WBS_0707-049.jpg&w=580

so, you want to get these three sections scarfed together using thickened epoxy. once done sand it smooth now as it is easier.

Then you epoxy one side, screw it in to the bresthook (countersink!) and clamp the living daylights out of it, screwing the other side down as well.

Do the other side and wait to dry (you will have to trim the first side.)

Repeate!

I remember this being in the manual, maybe take a look from the begining again. I did a few things out of order to speed up time, like scarfing things together before wiring the boat so I could shape/sand them while the other part is drying.

Good luck!

Thanks for your reply, dmiddad.

> Sounds like you are nearing the finishline! Congrats!

This is good to hear! I don't have that sense based on page count, though.

> The peices need to be scarfed together. I am away from my old manual > at the moment but you will end up with 4 total rails. 

So I scarf together pieces like this?

    |----------------//----------------//-----|

(I.e., left to right: long piece tapered at one end, long piece tapered at both ends, short piece tapered at one end.)

That piece should be about 18' long, which is longer than the boat. So doing that on both sides uses 1/2 of the rail pieces. What about the others? It seems like 1/2 of the rail pieces would be unused.

   they should be longer than the boat as they need to curve thus making them longer. Also, having extra is better than having not enough.

The clever diagram you produced is correct, the flat ends on each end and the double taper in the middle. you should end up with 4 really long peices . (mine where just over 16' 8")

Page 41, and 75 of my manual describe these steps, on page 75 it is the first step. there are no pictures that I see of actual scarfing, but it is similar to the ones you do for the mast and booms (lug)

   Geophile, we are building a pram -- very different from the skerry, but I''ll guess similar in this respect. The four scarfed lengths you end up with for the rails are laminated together, two per side. Two thinner pieces are easier to bend around the sheer of the hull than if it were one thick piece. Hope that makes sense along with what Dimiddad has already said.

digger

So I put four pieces together to form one rail. And then two of those rails go on each side?

Once all this is done, it appears that the edge of the panel is exposed, is that right? I.e., it looks like the rails are flush with the top of the panel. I looked at the pictures through the rest of the manual, and I can't see any steps applying anything else there.

(I also notice that the pictures for many of the later steps, finishing the interior of the boat, seem to have been carried out BEFORE installing the rails.)

   That all sounds right, at least that's how it works for an ENP, except no scarf joint needed. Yeah the top of the strake is exposed unless you do some custom work. The ENP manual has a nice drawing of the process.

OK, I understand this now. I called CLC support and they walked me through the process. Those curved lines in the A and B diagrams are not showing the rails. They are meant to illustrate the grain of the wood! Completely confusing and misleading.