We didn’t ever expect to purchase so much plywood or utilize epoxy as much as we have while building our wooden sailboat but it turns out to be a vital money and time saver. Garrett’s done his best to stick to his guns but even a stubborn man has to overcome one want to meet another. We were, literally, right on the edge of planking the hull in plywood, making it a composite hull, if it weren’t for one last effort to find quality lumber to traditionally plank. We decided at that moment we were driving into town to find planking stock, whether that was discovering a new listing on craigslist (fat chance) or settling and heading into Portland to Mr. Plywood! Unexpectedly, a true sign, a post on craigslist for clear old growth vertical grain douglas fir at a price we could afford. So that Thursday in December we never made it to Mr. Plywood. May 8^th, however, a Monday, we took advantage of this great source. This day we purchased 9 sheets to form the middle layer of the cabin top after being happy with the material we acquired for the main deck last September.

We have quite the crown in the cabin so it took both Hoffa and I to sit on either end while Garrett fastened each sheet down to the Port Orford planking.

The pieces went on quick. If we hadn’t run out of screws we probably would have finished the puzzle of sheets in a day.

The top turned out to be so solid we’ve decided there’s no need for a second layer of ply. (The extra layer of plywood was overkill anyway, thicker than Buehler’s plans even called for) After a very scientific “frolic” test confirmed the deck’s rigidity of course. If you’d like to check out the test you can visit our Patreon page to view our findings on film!