Rudder mounts

In a brave endeavour to sustain interest in this truly glorious and wonderful account of my proa build I have laboured all weekend (liar) to put the rudder mounts in. For starters I cut oblong holes in one side of No 1 hull. It having long been established that I am stupid and useless and everything I do is some kind of bodge, nobody will be surprised that I had to chop bits off my finished pieces to get them through the holes. The middle bits were too big; god knows how, but they were. While I was about it I drilled some 25mm holes in them for pintles. I would have drilled 25.4mm holes but for the fact that Sandvic only make 25mm hole saws, the rascals. A pintle - since my computer draws wiggly red lines under it - is what boat people call a Pin Tail, and it's what a rudder pivots on. Boat people - this has long been established - are incapable of encountering a word with more than one syllable without suffering an unconquerable urge to reduce it to something unintelligible. (Or as they themselves would put it, Bpleellible.) I don't know if I'll use 25mm pintles, but by drilling holes now it makes it a sight easier to do so later. The Optimist has little stainless steel eyes for its pintles, but stainless steel = £, and since I have applewood in abundance and since cog pins in waterwheels were made of applewood and lasted forty years of use, I have a fancy for wooden pintles. - This may have to be revised in view of shipwreck, if there is a shipwreck anon, & if it is caused by broken applewood pintles.

Next I cut a stick of wood the same length as the deck is wide (A, above), and jammed the sides apart with it. Then I stuck the top rudder-mount through the hole, and fiddled around more-or-less endlessly with files and saws and general wood-chopping implements until the inside end mated with the far side. A temporary screw goes into the side of the hull and holds it in place while the glue goes off.

Then I stuck the bottom mount through t'other hole, and in order to make these two mounts parallel I cut a short plank (B) to jam the far ends apart, and a short stick to jam the near ends apart (C), and with a lot of fiddling round with a 22mm pole (D) - because I didn't have a 25mm pole, only inch ones - persuaded myself that both sets of holes are in line. There are two lots of holes because I haven't designed the rudder yet, and I haven't done this because I'm stupid; see endless blog entries.

Today saw lots of epoxy mixing and gap filling and whatnot, and, not having measured beforehand, I was pleased to find the whole is only 27 inches wide because that means it goes through the workshop door to sit in the sun and harden.

My wife, meanwhile, went and bought herself an old plastic kayak and with all the confidence of maritime ign'rance stuck it in the sea and paddled it to Split Apple and back, befriended off Kaiteri by a seal and accompanied and misguided by an experienced canoeist who shall remain nameless because he didn't have a lifejacket and hadn't tied his paddle to his boat, both of which are
a) stupid
b) irresponsible
c) illegal.