Planking Has Officially Begun

Back from a weekend spent swimming with the kids in a hotel pool.  Nothing spectacular but it was nice to get out of town and have someone else do the cleaning for a couple of days.  With two days away from my boat I was ready to get back out there.  I faired off the garboard butt straps and got the first bow plank installed. First a picture of the butt straps.

Then this is my preparation for installing the plank. I got it in position fore-aft and vertical, and then traced a line in red marker on the butt strap. That way I could quickly tell when I had it right while it was on wet glue. I also traced pencil lines on the outside over the stringers that way I would have a target to hit with the nailer.

Then I took a deep breath and reviewed the plan.
1. Butter all the stringers/chine/shear/butt strap with filled epoxy.
2. Position plank and clamp at chine and BH2 (red handle clamp)
3. Clamp at bow top (blue clamp). Cant really see this in picture, it is on the bow/shear joint.
4. Install 2 screws in the middle stringer mid span BH0 - BH1 and BH1 - BH2.
5. Go a little crazy with the polymer brad nailer.

The screws were needed to suck in the plank to make it follow the hull curve. As it turned out I used three but the extra one did not seem to make a difference. Also I missed the stringer with 1 screw so have a hole to repair. Here is the after picture (I can't get that great an angle for pictures in the boat shed).

On the inside the plank appears so sit pretty well on the frame, there is some very small gapping near bulkhead 2 but very minor and I'm not going to worry about it. Here is the picture from the other side.

I spent all my time for the day, so I will have to get to the other bow plank tomorrow. But for now I'm feeling good.