Every little bit helps!

I had some carbon fiber (Saertex) kicking around with nothing actually planned for it. I used a couple of yards of it on the forward section of the hull around the waterline and bow thruster holes. Looking at the hull I can see where there are some areas that can benefit from a little extra reinforcement. Here I've covered the back of the keel and the area where the rudder port will be with the Saertex. I'll mirror this on the inside when the hull is flipped. It should make for a really strong hull section where there's two penetrations, the prop shaft and the rudder shaft.

The Saertex is really heavy stuff. It's 4 layers of carbon fiber stitched (Quadraxial) together. It's the same stuff they used to make the liquid propellant tanks for the space shuttle.

You can see the Saertex here (black area) on the bow section.

Should provide some good protection if we hit anything, not that I've done that before! ;-) There's a lot of submerged junk in the river and I'd prefer not to put a hole in my nice new boat.

Update: It's stinkin' hot in the sed. 28.5 down below and 37 on top of the boat!

Lori and I traced out one of the bottom panels two years ago when we had the long table setup in the shed. For the love of mercy I don't know why we didn't do both bottom panels. *sigh* So, we'll have to transfer this one as a template to another roll of fiberglass.

That panel is almost 11 yds long and about 55 lbs. Half is still rolled up at the far end of the table (16' long) It's quadaxial 30 oz fabric. It'll replace two layers originally specified by the designer. It wets out nicely. We've used it on some of the bulkheads and cabin roof so we know how it goes.