Day 22, so close to finishing

I must admit, dyeing the boat was a bit more nerve wracking than I'd expected.

After reading the instructions a couple of times, where it says to mix a litre of water with an ounce of the powder, I weighed the powder I had and found there was only half an ounce of it. The website where I ordered it said there should be enough to dye a boat the size of mine (about 16 feet), but I thought I'd make sure before I mixed it.

I emailed Elroy who has just finished building the same kind of boat and got his nylon and dye from the same place, and he confirmed that half an ounce, mixed with half a litre of water is indeed enough for the whole boat.

So this morning I got everything ready, put on an apron and some pink rubber gloves and started dyeing. The reason I found it nerve wracking was that by the time I got past the cockpit, about two thirds of the boat, it was starting to look like I was going to run out of dye after all. Well I did have enough, but only just. I suspect the towel I was using as a brush may have soaked a lot of it up and a foam brush, or smaller piece of towel might have been better. There's also a few drops of it on the ground and on the saw horses too. The shed looks like someone's been bleeding in there, which is a bit of a worry since there was a police car and an ambulance parked across the road for a while this morning. I have no idea why.

The colour I chose was russet, which is a kind of reddish-brown. It looks almost maroon at the moment, but that should change once it's dried and the poly-urethane has been applied. It'll probably fade a bit and look more weathered after a while too. I'm told the Goop tends to yellow a bit after a while.

Once the dyeing was finished, I used an old iron to shrink the fabric. The instructions on the skinboat school website say to just shrink the deck and only do the hull if you feel it needs it. I decided to do the hull as well. There are a couple of patches where the iron was in one spot for a bit longer than it maybe should have been, but I think that gives it a more authentic look than it would if the whole thing was completely even.







The dyeing and ironing only took me about an hour and there's nothing else I can do on the boat now until the dye has dried properly. I'll probably leave it till Saturday before I tackle the next step. That way I can get Donna to help out and I'll be sure the dye is dry.

That's 76 1/2 hours. I wonder if I can finish it in under 80.