Building a Chesapeake Light Craft Northeaster Dory -- Day 2

Last spring I finally got motivated to fix some relatively minor (but long term) leaks in the roof of the garage and one section of the cabin. This required me to tear off a bunch of shingles, pry up and replace some significant areas of rotten plywood decking, and then re-shingle it all. I saved the old plywood because, while parts of it were rotten, larger parts of it might still be useful in other projects.

Today I put that decking to use in building my boat. My task today was to begin gluing together the Dory's hull panels. These Okoume panels are cut from 4 x 8 sheets of plywood and then glued together to lengths of almost 18' in the case of the Northeaster Dory. The best way to glue them together is to lay them out on a large plywood table. I have an old flatbed trailer with spaced 2 x 4s that I use for hauling firewood. It was easy enough to take the relatively solid parts of the old roof decking and screw them down onto the trailer. This gave me my "table" and allowed me to clamp the joints in the Okoume panels by putting a piece of 1" lumber across each joint and screwing it down to the "table." In this way I was able to lay up the hull's bottom and its first row of "lapstrake boards."

Tomorrow I hope to glue together the rest of the lapstrake panels and perhaps also the thwarts, the spars, and/or the mast.