Thursday 6 June 2024

Waterline & Boot Top | Levelling & Marking Up

This might be a long post but marking up the waterline and boot top stripe entailed a lot of work and was great fun, so it's worth giving a good description.

The first task was to ensure that the hull was perfectly level, along and across the keel.

When I made the dollies to support the boat upside down I inadvertently made the rear one far too low, so the boat needed to be jacked up quite a lot at the stern to temporarily make it level for the marking up.

I taped a long spirit level to the keel, like this.


I did something similar across the transom, as here.


I wanted to be as accurate as possible, because a difference of just a couple of millimetres would be amplified along or across the hull and would doubtless be noticeable.

I purchased a second bottle jack so I could safely raise both corners at the stern at the same time until the spirit levels showed that the boat was level.

This is the port quarter, jacked up and resting on wedges.


The hull was now level, and marking up began.

The first time I did this I worked out where the waterline should cross the chine at the front of the boat. It is at a point directly below the forward side of the front portlight.

Here the laser level is being used to mark this spot.


This is the laser level itself. It is an excellent tool.


Here the laser level is indicating the location of the waterline along the length of the starboard side.


The waterline was marked up by making pencil marks a short distance apart along the laser line and then joining them up with a rule to get a nice, fair line.

The waterline crosses the chine 154 cm from the stem, as here.


If this measures the same on both sides, you know it's level. It did.

This is the laser level in use across the transom.


I had also previously worked out that the boot top stripe should be 38 mm wide midway along the sides. So the laser level was then used to mark in the top edge of the stripe, like this.


This line was then pencilled on in the same way as the waterline.

That was fun!


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