I have been filleting frames to the skin of our Didi 40 Cr and fibreglassing shelves to the skin. These are a messy jobs which once started have to be finished or the batch of glass or bog as the case may be goes hard. In some brief windows of time when I did not want epoxy hands I marked out the profile of the rear of the hull. I looked at a range of options trying to get a few more millimeters of heeled water line length but in the end decided that Dudley’s original sloping profile was the nicest looking, lightest and did not give away much length.
After a few tries that did not look right I finally understood Dudley’s instructions. The ends of the battens that are used to mark the line on the radius chine have to be lined up with the straight lines already marked on the side and bottom. This needs more hands than I have available so it was a case of holding the batten and eyeing off a spot that fell on the line then marking that spot with a pencil and repeating the process until a whole row of spots marked out the cut line. For good measure I clamped two long battens lined up with the lines on the side of the hull. I could sight across the hull and check that all the marked lines on the hull were in line with the two sighting battens. Last I marked out the lines with blue masking tape which could be seen from a distance and did a final check that it looked OK.
Marking completed I got brave and cut off the surplus hull section with a hand saw.
The finished cut line is rather pleasing to the eye. Also an inspection of the lamination cut off from the hull shows no defects so I am pleased with the progress.
While it is a shame to throw away such a nice piece of lamination the plus side is that we get a 1.8 metre wide boarding platform about 45o mm deep which will be great for accessing the yacht from jetty or dinghy and double as a great swim platform. The rudder under the hull instead of hanging off the transom makes this boarding platform possible as well as giving the maximum sailing water line length.
The surplus hull at the stern of our Didi 40 Cr has been trimmed off revealing the nice shape of our wide stern version.
Nice glue lines in the lamination of the radius chine of our Didi 40 Cr
It seems a shame to throw these bits away but we do get a very large very useful boarding platform.