I’ve developed this terrible habit lately of adding a whole bunch of frame modifications for accessories that I end up not using. Seems like it takes just long enough for me to glue things on to decide that something was a stupid idea and I should do it differently!
This latest LPB frame features an extra long drain plug mounting block that I thought might be convenient to dive rudder cables through, but as soon as the glue was dry I thought of a better way to do that and also realized that this blocks the location where I normally drill for my stern carry loop. Fail.
I’m going to try to catamaran two of these together across the front decks so I used a lamination of yellow cedar and Port Orford Cedar to beef up the deck Ridge strength. If this works it will have been necessary but if not it’s just another pound on the boat.
Reinforced the deck beams with some yellow cedar plies, which also might actually be a good idea, but then as long as I had the wood on on the saw I slipped into a fugue state and made the rear deck beams out of yellow cedar, which is 100% completely unnecessary and adds an extra 10oz of weight!
Added some little reinforcing blocks to the tail of the boat and promptly realized that this is a stupid way to mount the tail rudder, so on the next boat I’m switching to a totally different system that won’t kill the aesthetic of the stern the way these last two rudder mods have.
So including the catamaran reinforcements I’m probably running about 3 pounds heavy on this frame which is very noticeable when you pick up the boat! Hopefully it’s worth it.
I am pretty happy with this little block I glued on the back deck for the Ram ball mount for my Go Pro. The normal location I use doesn’t give me quite the right shot and I can’t reach the camera to turn it on and off. Can’t wait to use this on the water.
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