New transom takes shape

and puts closure to the hull carpentry.

It's December, 2012.  The Belhaven has a designed length on deck of 19 ft.  The pattern for the top curve of the new transom made from scrap is screwed to the shearlogs at 21 ft., the modified length arrived at after innumerable days of deep contemplation.  Looking back, it now seems to be another proof  of "Two-Footitis," that severe affliction that strikes sailors and boatmen and makes them believe that their present boat would be the ideal one if it were only two feet longer.

My decision is of course based on strictly rational arguments, the best of which is that I want the auxiliary motor inside the boat, not hanging out on a mount off the transom. By their very nature and by the immutable law of Murphy, the motor will quit on you and you will vainly try to revive it by yourself. And this will inevitably happen when the wind and waves toss your vessel around while you are half out over the water bravely fiddling with the motor parts, hoping none of them nor your tools will be forced out of your wet grip this time by Newton's laws of motion.

The least rational argument though possibly the most convincing is that the boat will look lovelier.

The revised plan then is to use make original transom station of 19 ft. into a bulkhead on which to mount the motor and to enclose the motor in a well. A cutout in the transom will allow the motor to tilt up when not in use with very little of it showing outside. By meticulous measurements and estimates the exact additional length needed is--you guessed it--exactly two feet.



With the hull level to the designed waterline, an 18 degree angle is scribed on the side panels inward from the transom top pattern and the sides are trimmed to this line.

The pattern has been replaced by a curved frame. The transom panel is held against this and the sides ...

... to scribe the proper curves for the transom bottom.














After the lower edges of the transom  are cut and positioned, the curves of the bottom panels in turn are traced and trimmed ...

... to get a perfectly shaped and fitted transom.  A small triumph but with an immensely satisfying sense of achievement.














All of which do not perturb a supervisor on the worktable mocking me by resting his head on one of my early miscalculations.