OK, now it’s starting to feel like a multihull! With the beams set up, we got our first taste today of how big the main nets are going to be – lots of room for stargazing evenings.

Big thanks to Dad for the painstaking drill press and cutting work on the 8 aluminum tangs that emerge from the beam bottoms and attach to the diagonal braces. Those braces are about 3 ft long, made from heavy 1/2″ stock. The plans allow them to be narrowed down to 2″ along most of the length. I think after all the trial fitting they’ll go to a cutting shop to remove that extra weight, but more importantly when they are narrower, I’m thinking it’s less surface area for waves to hit on the leeward side.

The second photo shows the positioning of the tangs inside the beam. The web they attach to is 12lb high density foam with six layers (each side) of 18oz bi-directional fabric, alternated 0-90 and 45-45. This is some of the beefiest fiberglass construction on the whole boat. Next week is a multi-step process of positioning the metal precisely on the web using wooden dowels, then glueing one tang at a time, drilling out the dowels and replacing with bolts, etc. etc. Many more hours of permanently hidden details :)

looks like the boat is stretching out its arms for the first time

note to other F36 beam builders:  plans call for putting the ‘wings’ on the top of this web before you glass the web in place (same as the beam-attach web in the top of the photo). Having those wings in place made it really difficult to work on the tabbing-in. This time I’m leaving them off for now, and once tabbed in the beam, will go back and add wings with the similar method Farrier wrote for attaching the full side-widening edges just before installing the beam tops.