Still going!

Some stretches are straight and simple...

Crikey, it's been a while since anything's gone up. I admit, work on the boat has slowed: lining the hull has been the most difficult work so far. About a third of these lining strakes have been pretty straight forward (literally-ish), but the fore and aft tapering coupled with the hull's overall curvature make many of the pieces between the easy ones a real bear. It's a small but palpable victory when one goes down, with glue, knife blades, trimmers, sanders, and lots of test-fitting coming into play. When I carve out time to work on Albatros these days, it's usually only enough time to do one or two strakes at a time.

...while others involve cutting some precise angles and lots of test fits.

Delays aside, though, lining is progressing, maybe 60% done -- a coverage hard to discern in the picture below, since it's mostly curved up the sides of the ship. (The wood above appears darker thanks to a Google+ Photos HDR filter, which helps make the dark separations between lining pieces more visible.) I have a notion, too, of how to plan out the remaining tough spots, i.e. the bow and stern.

And last little update: as I've mentioned before, when I procrastinate working on the boat, I occasionally turn toward video games. I recently found one, Eve Online, that has me hooked. There are some similarities between that game and building this ship -- including, in fact, the notion of building a ship. I've started writing about Eve. One of the nice things about Eve is, at this point, I can set the game to a task and then perch by the monitor, keep an eye on things, and work on the boat; photo evidence below.

On the monitor: my miner harvesting minerals to sell; I'll use these funds
to buy a bigger, better ship to let me undertake more challenging tasks. In
the foreground: Albatros before an afternoon's work.