Great Florida Gulf Coast Small Craft Festival

Slow progress on the Goat. Took me a lot longer than expected to loft the hull sides. There is a slight hollow in the bottom just in front of the transom which I did not expect so I held off on cutting the sides out and checked in with Michael Storer and the helpful crew on the forum. Turns out I was doing it right but better ask than waste a lot of ply. I'm a relatively new iPhone owner and that little device never ceases to amaze me. I was in the workshop browsing the forums and posted a question. An answer, from Michael, was waiting for me when I got home, amazing. Did not have a whole lot of time to build anyway as there were lots of interesting things going on like:

The Great Florida Gulf Coast Small Craft Festival at Cortez.

From Gulf Coast Small Craft Festival

What a fantastic little harbor and a perfect setting for small boat messing about. Just in front of the docks is a large shoal which is exposed at low tide. It makes for a perfect beaching area for numerous shallow draft boats.

From Gulf Coast Small Craft Festival

Cortez is a unique fishing community with a working waterfront including a fish house and all of it's associated salty charm. Let's hope this little spot never succumbs to the condo-locust hordes. Click on the photos to go to the photo album of the event. Most of the pictures were taken with my iPhone 'cause the trusty old Canon PS finally gave up the ghost with one last spectacularly distorted image.

From Gulf Coast Small Craft Festival

The iPhone images are horribly low quality but considering it is a phone, not too bad. They remind me of aged Kodacolor 400 prints. Oh and since the iPhone pictures are geotagged with the photo location they automatically show up on the map in Picasa. Yes I know, nothing new but it always impresses me when this stuff just works.

Time spent: 4 hours
Total time: 13 hours 30min