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No real progress to report other than ripping and scarfing a bunch of strips. As of tonight, I have 6 20' strips and 2 12' strips all at 1.5" x .75" which I will process to the chine and side stringer dimensions. I may attempt to keep the inwales at .75" but we'll see after they all cure for a week. Epoxying all those strips was a challenge but it went pretty well. The only real troubleI had was the limited space to do that in so I got creative with my workstation which was far from level so a lot of shims were used. Hopefully by this time next week, I'll have something photo worthy to show, we'll see how it goes.

Thank you Frank for your tireless work on the forum, it is greatly appreciated! Bit of an update. The way I had things set on the strongback set things a touch too high for me (I'm short) so I lowered everything a bit so I could reach better. I got everything squared up and leveled and added some more support to the frames. I had some difficulties hanging the transom until I asked for tips and used some temporary screws. I got that fitted and glued, did some fillets on the fames and stringers, and fitted the chine battens. I will glue those on Thursday and start shaving down the keel. I didn't have any problems with those battens, even with using douglas fir. Maybe it was because I used 2x stock and the way I ripped them made them pretty much quartersawn. Or I just got lucky. Either way, I'll take it!

Thanks, Andy. It's like baby sitting a three year old that is usually very good, but every now and then ... I think it's stable now. Fingers crossed.

The software the forums use is "end of life" on Dec. 31, 2026, and to be honest, the company has been mainly ignoring it for the last couple of years. My "lifetime purchase" with semi-annual maintenance payments was back in 2011, turned out to be 15 years, 8 months and 12 days (not counting today). So I guess I can't be too mad at them. What irritates me is they marked the software as unlicensed with the latest update release, even though I have paid through the end of the year. Their goal is to get me to pay them more for the new version, $200 a year instead of the $110 I have been paying. Or go to their cloud hosted software at $149 a month. Yeah, not going to do that. Their support sucks. What happened: The "unlicensed software" issue caused the software to hammer a database, slowing down the VPS I lease to run the software on. The server company then "throttled" the databases, making the server less responsive. When it was responding slower than the software likes, the forums would go offline. And, during this time I was on a cruise with my wife in Alaska after a year being grounded by my doctors due to my head first exploding (hemorrhagic stroke, but caught in time) and then the management of that (pumping me full of clotting factor to keep my head from exploding more), causing a CVST (clot in the cerebral sinus veins in the head), which was also caught early. So no harm, no foul, and I was lucky and am mostly fully recovered. I am kicking everyone else off the VPS to eliminate resource competition and trying to get things stabilized. Because of health issues, I will be converting the forums and then handing off management to someone who can better maintain things. I don't want to get to the point where the forums are just simply abandoned, and I have probably another five good years of travel stuff we want to do. So there are things in the works to keep this place alive for the community.

Thank you, Frank, for all your work here!

After calming down from discovering my mistake, I went back out and looked things over again. I will have to cut the relief in the sole, it is bending the frame between the outboard stringer and the cutout since everything was cut correctly. That's why the frame isn't sitting right on the keel. I'm glad I looked it over again, it's an easy enough fix. At least I didn't start gluing up the framework, that could have made the corrections much more difficult. I have heard it said that the hallmark of a master craftsman is not avoiding mistakes, but knowing how to skillfully fix or conceal them. I sure ain't no master but I'm really good at fixing my screw ups and making them look pretty in the end.

Dave, it's true. I sail with a lot of other boats who are often "dragging a#$". Skeena is big enough I only need to get to the mizzen, and I pack gear to compensate when I have crew. I do have a bubble level on the thwart just to be sure. The problem I try to address is side to side trim. My constantly evolving data says keeping Skeena sailing on one of the flat panels slightly healed is fastest in light conditions. I think it's probably due to keeping the sails full and driving, and sometimes I find being on the leward side is too much heal and on the windward not enough.