By now I have been boat building for about 9 months, 1 thing that you don’t find out easily is just how quick building timber boats is compared to alternate composite construction methods. Peters 11.6m was around 2500 hours whereas an equivalent Schionning or other boat was in 4-5000 hour range. I started in mid September, December was family time down south and so not much happened until January, these photos are the progress I had made up until June of 2006. the learning curve is steep but worthwhile. I had many opportunities to see quite a few other builds as I worked on mine and it was interesting to see the wide range of abilities that some people bought into play, some of the tradesman-built boats were pretty rough whilst some of the self-taught boats were Mastercraft workmanship, I was always on the lookout for people who could teach me better ways of doing things or cool ideas on boats and incorporated a number of these. I had a mantra that any mistake I made could be turned into a design opportunity
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
42*19 to get the side of window shape correct prior to fitting the window hull sides
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inside of rear stairs timber

starting work on the rear lockers

finishing off the aft hull walls, these become the helm seat backs with the outboards directly underneath
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window sides installed

cutting back the frames hear means they need beefing up in terms of thickness for strength, but important if you want to maximize front berth size

starting the interior lounge fitout, at this point i have been working on the boat for approximately 9 mths, you can also see the start of the kitchen storage shelves down in the hull

the beginnings of the nav area in behind the saloon counch
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die grinders with flap discs are an essential tool
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
glue coves are one secret to making a boat look beautiful and are a perfect late night noiseless activity

double thickness ply for the windows witha routed corner always looks nice

i added a front port hole in the front single berths and this became a magical place to watch when on passages

framing in place for storage shelves, these also add a fair bit of stiffness to the hulls and the stringers are convenient heights for shelves
bathroom under construction
more work on the nav station
kitchen under construction