It's Green!

Finally, all the supplies arrived. We decided to start with the bulkheads and test some of the laminating methods: infusion, vacuum bag and manual one.
Manual and vacuum bag technics were the firsts. This methods are simple and our simple construciton condictions and skills matched very well. Our workshop is just an open garage, some of the tools are improvised and our building experience is near zero.

So we liked the firsts results! Pretty good for first timers!

Foam cut into the bulkhead form over the improvised table.

Result after manual laminating before trimming the excess of fiberglas

Close details

Going Lightweight

Analising the plan set we took a big and important decision: build the boat in Divinycell foam instead of the original plywood project.

The most important factor: weight! We estimated that the boat in foam would weight much less than the original one. We thought that Divinycell would also be easier to work with and a good quality naval plywood is not so easy or cheap to buy over here.

So the next step was purchase the Divinycell foam, fiberglass, resin and hardener and wait to laminate the first panel!

Getting Things Started

After some months of dreaming and planning we finally decided to build our own sailboat. My friends Bruno and Marcos (both engineers with sail experience) and me (without any experience in sail, homebuilding nor anything else) chose the i550 project because its simple, easy to build and not expensive. After purchaising the plan set,  we analised and decided that it was doable. We were set to enter the game.