The old daggerboard simply wasn't going to work, for several reasons. I was still trying to fair it, and adding more fairing compound all the time, but at the same time it was a tight fit in the trunk, because it had turned out thicker than I planned. I decided to try to slice it in half, on centerline, and glue it back together. If that didn't work, I'd scrap it and try again. It didn't work.

I had Phil of Phil's Foils mill me a new daggerboard. I built the blank in 4 pieces, from Airlite, a thin piece of Core-Cell, and leftover 3mm marine ply for the head, and shipped it off to Canada.

2/10/04 Phil milled the blank to Farrier's shape and plans. In fact, exactly to plan: he even milled the rebates for the different lengths of unidirectional to the correct depths, meaning that I can put the unidir on the outside of the core and not have major fairing to do at the edges of each piece. Unfortunately, Purolator and DHL managed to trash his work, breaking the board into several different pieces and ruining the trailing edge, despite the 1/2" thick cardboard box. I glued the pieces back together and faired the board, and built a new trailing edge from a 2" strip of glass. Ironically, the box I used was the same box that Noah's had sent me the Core-Cell in (from Canada, via DHL), but heavily reinforced.

The new board is progressing quickly. One day for each side to repair damage and add fairing putty, plus one day to sand and bag the initial layer plus unidir on each side, plus another day to trim and bag the quadrax on each side. By 2/16 I have one side in the bag and the other waiting for quadrax, but I'm getting a bit low on resin.

2/20 After a few days off I return to pull the starboard side out of the bag and clean it up. The scheme of putting packing tape between the core and skin in the area of the high density insert worked well, since it's easy to pull out the foam core here. The saw attachment on my Fein works well to cut through the foam to the skin. I should try using it on the foam for the hulls. It looks like the insert will be almost exactly 2" thick. The port side is in the bag, hopefully for the last time, getting its 29oz quadrax laminated on. I've gone through a lot of vacuum tube, peel ply, and bleeder for this board.

2/22 Finally get it glued together, with core installed. It takes a lot of adhesive to glue in the core, so I put the completed board in a vacuum bag to insure it's clamped completely.

2/29 Trim some of the edges and check to make sure it fits in the trunk. No problems, except I have to grind down the head fore and aft to get a good fit. Plenty of space on the sides in case I want to try to cant it. I'm not going to do any more work on it until I have a shop with outside space, since it's now fiberglassed externally and sanding it creates a huge mess in my enclosed workshop.

Around the end of October, I finally get back to the board.  It's smooth and fair but still has the texture of the glass, so I'm glopping fairing mix on and grinding it back off.