She's on the water!

We put the stickers on her this morning.  A fairy on either side of the bow, 

And another at the stern with her name.

 Here she is, ready to go

And she's finally on the water! 

 I'm really doing it, I'm really paddling my own boat!

Off I go into the sunset.......

The Rainbow Sprite is born!

Well, after a few more coats of green, she's looking pretty good, even if I do say so myself.  Yesterday, we added her name.  Here  she is - Rainbow Sprite.  

Now just a few fairy stickers, and we'll be ready to launch her.  Hmmmm,  With all the recent flood run off, the challenge will be to find a clean body of water to put her in..........

She's green!.....well mostly

Yep, finally we are onto the green

We needed to add catalyst again (I counted a little more carefully this time)

and stir

and away we went.

We had to avoid the skeg, which dad hasn't had a chance to clean up properly because it's still a bit wet, but we've painted her green!  I'm very happy with the colour I've picked.  What do you think?

Paint, paint, I love to paint!

Today we started the painting.  We decided to do the inside of the boat first (because we haven't really quite finished the outside...)
We had to mix 45 drops of catalyst with the aquacote..... hope I counted that right!

Then we painted!  I love to paint.

I don't even mind the cleaning up!

It was getting pretty late by this stage and mum insisted I have a bath and go to bed.  So, once the paint had dried, dad turned her over and finished off the bottom.


We still needed to glue and fibreglass on the skeg.

We also need a paddle.   Dad used the bits included in the kit to glue it together, and I'll nail it tomorrow to make sure it's strong enough.

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A little more filler

 Today we gloved up to do a little more fibreglassing

And then with a mask in place, we mixed the epoxy with some sanding powder

 And used it to fill and smooth the bottom of the boat a little more.

Here she is.  Just one more sand and we'll be  ready to paint!  The paint arrived this week.  I've stuck to the green plan, but I've had an even better idea than a rainbow sticker..........I found some rainbow fairy stickers, how cool is that!  Mum tells me that water fairies are called sprites so maybe I'll call her the rainbow sprite.

Finally somewhere to sit!

Today we epoxy coated inside the buoyancy chamber at the  back of the boat,  and the underside of the plywood cover

then we glued on the cover, which is actually the seat.

Then we epoxy coated the front buoyancy tank,

 and glued on it's cover.

We needed to weight the two covers down to make sure they stuck properly. Dad asked me to find something heavy in the shed to put on top.  I suggested my bike, but as dad felt that was a bit too big, this is what we came up with???  Hope dad doesn't need to screw anything in the next few hours!

Next time we need to coat the rest of the inside to make it nice and smooth and ready for painting.

And yet more fibreglassing.

Today we turned the boat over and did some work on the bottom.










We used the fibreglass tape to cover the joins, then we gloved up,

 and away we went painting the joins with epoxy and then laying down the tape and painting over this.  I'm getting rather good at this, even if I do say so myself.

And here it is, all taped up and fibreglassed.  Now we need to seal it, and then we can paint.  I've decided on a green boat, as long as it has a rainbow sticker.....

The fibreglassing continues...

Dad got a little bit distracted by another project, so it has been a couple of weeks since we started this step.  But we finally made it back to the shed.  So here it is, fibreglassing step two.
First we had to cut some fibreglass tape, just the right length  to fit the joins.

Its' going to get messy so dad modified some gloves for me again and away we went.

We laid the strips of fibreglass tape over the joins and then used epoxy resin to glue the strips down

 Dad did a little demo for me - first painting it on, then tapping to fill the tape with glue.

 And I took it from there...

Here's the section we finished this way 

We also glued the bow and fibreglassed it.  We had to clamp it get a better join.  Once it drys it should be watertight.

 Next we'll turn her over and fibreglass all the external joins.