I placed three 3/8^th's inch sheets of plywood end to end on the building table and clamped them down. I have to transfer the measurements from the plans of the sides and the bilge panels to the plywood. In this instance, I will draw all three port side sections on the left half of the plywood and the starboard bilge sections on the right half. Two-feet of plywood are to be cut off each end of the assembled line of plywood to be used for seats in the cockpit. I plan to omit these seats from Intrepid to gain more cockpit space. Mr. Michalak says these seats do not add much to the boat structurally. The smooth side of the plywood, what I will face to the interior of the boat, is positioned upwards.

There I am, hard at work plotting all the key points. I will later connect all of the points into the actual lines of the panels that I will cut out. You can tell it is warming up a bit, I don't even have my winter coat on.

Mistake 1 -- no foul.
Despite my diligent efforts, I managed to draw the bilge panel two feet short. The bottom circle is the tail end of the bilge panel, and it should more or less line up with the line in the top circle, which is the back end of the side.

Corrected.
The lines were redrawn to their proper position, and I am happy again.

Mistake 2 -- foul.
My plots are perfect this time. I used my fairing baton to connect the dots from the stern sheet of plywood to the middle sheet. This will be the curved coaming of the starboard side of the cockpit.

I used the circular saw to begin the cut for stern side, and finished the cut with a hand saw. I will use the circular saw to cut the top of the side next.

Oops.

In this next shot, you can see the comparison between an error I made, and the new panel I had to re cut to fix that error. Somehow, when I was connecting the dots -- I missed one. The top left edge of the front panel is according to plan up to that right angle you see in the back panel. At that point, the front panel was supposed to go up 2-inches and then take a right turn just like the back panel. However, I apparently aligned my fairing baton to the wrong dot when drawing my lines, and ended up cutting off a small section of the side panel. I realized my mistake while I was sitting next to the panel arranged like I was inside the boat. I thought the side seemed short so I rechecked the plans. Yup.

Now, I could easily fix the error by redrawing and re cutting a different plywood panel, except I only purchased exactly enough wood for the boat and the lumberyard did not have any more in stock. But with thoughtful rearranging of the plywood layout patterns, I find that I should be able to use the mis cut front panel for another section of the boat. I may not have to buy another sheet of plywood after all.
IMPORTANT PLAN CHANGE:
When I re cut the new panel, I decided to increase the side at the transom by 1 and ½ - inches, and the side just before the right angle was raised an additional ½-inch. This results in an increase to sides after the right angle of 2-inches; this increase will be faired in to the plan dimensions at Bulkhead 4.

I am re drawing the port stern side, but instead of aligning the edge of the plywood with the building table as before, I've aligned it with the side coaming line from the mid panel. I need to conserve every inch of plywood for these next few cuts to make sure I have enough wood for the boat. Looks like I will be happy again.

Here is one method of getting some help holding up the piece being cut off so the saw does not bind. I simply looped a line around the plywood and attached each end to the building shelter's support structure.

Mistake 3 -- This one's Mr. Michalak's -- no foul, but definitely a lot of head scratching.
After I drew the lines to the starboard bow bilge section, as you see in this photo, I turned my attention to the lines for the port side. This panel is supposed to have a flat section on the bottom for about the first 8-feet from the stern forward, then gently and gradually curve up to the stem for the last 10-feet. I plotted and re plotted, checked and rechecked, but no matter what I did, I could not get a fair line using my fairing baton for that gentle forward curve. Some of the points drawn were both above and below the baton resulting in zigzag shape to the bow. That is not how it is supposed to be. You see, the actual shape of the boat comes from precisely cutting out these panels and bending them to shape, and if I were to "guess" on this side, it probably would not match up with the bilge section.

I wrote to Mr. Michalak with my concerns. I asked him to check his lines as I could not get a fair line. His response came quick, but left me holding the bag, as they say. Paraphrasing, he said, "I don't recall exactly how I did this one eight years ago, but when I lay the Mylar tracings [Dorado and Dorado B] of the two sides atop each other the chine lines match fairly well. Besides the customer I designed the plans for got a very nice boat out of it." That was it. I'm thinking, OK, son-of-a-gun, what the heck am I supposed to do with these plans now? They don't work.

I decided to re plot the lines for both the Dorado and the Dorado B (I am building the Dorado B.) The green line in this photo shows the Dorado's plot, adjusted for the increase in cabin size of the Dorado B. The circled dots represent where the plans of Dorado B deviate from the Dorado. Clearly, I obtained a fair line from Dorado's plots. It would appear that three of the plots for Dorado B were incorrectly scaled from the original Dorado for the Dorado B's plans.
IMPORTANT PLAN CHANGES:
Replace 6 3/4-inches at the 16-inch mark with 4 3/4-inches. Replace 12 1/8-inch at form 2 with 12 3/4-inches. Replace 8 3/4-inches with 6 3/4-inches and 15 3/8-inches with 15 5/8-inches at the 40-inch mark. Add that 7 1/2-inches is at the sheer at form 4. Replace 20 3/4-inches with 19 3/8-inches at the 64-inch mark. These numbers give a fair line for the front side pieces. I shared these numbers with Mr. Michalak. He agrees with them and will incorporate them in the plans for Dorado B. I am back on course, and I am happy again.

Drawing the lines to the corrected plots for the bottom side section.

Now that I have the three port side sections cut out, as well as the three starboard bilge sections, it was a simple matter to trace their outlines to plywood panels for the opposite sides. This is a picture of the port mid side panel being used as a template for the starboard side.

Tracing the port bow side and the starboard bow bilge panel. Note that the bilge panel, in fact all of the bilge panels, are cut about two inches oversize width-wise. Mr. Michalak recommends precisely cutting out the side panels and attaching them to the bulkheads. Then trial fit the oversized bilge panels, and cut them to size.
IMPORTANT PLANS CHANGE: The bow side at bulkhead 4 is ¾-inch lower than the side at the stem. I believe this was done to follow the shear. I raised this part of the side by ¾-inch to match the height at the stem.

The warming trend continued. This was the beginning of the flood, and the Ark was not yet ready. Two and a half sides of my building table quickly became flooded. I could not have designed a better moat.... Half a week later, the temperatures went below freezing and my moat became an ice skating rink. At least I could walk around my building table again.