Yo Sage

The closest thing that I have built to your little beauty is a minimax minature power boat thingy. If you can be bothered, check the plans and pictures of a minimax on Mikes Minimax page: http://www.maineconnect.net/ptwd/

The bow treatment for the minimax (including my fine effort) is very hard to keep flat as per design? and I ended up with a minor distortion and butterfly shape myself. Other mere mortals seem to have the same problem looking at the pictures of the other boats. I figured that my bow would be out of the water most of the time and I could live with it, warts and all.

Your hollow section looks pretty cool and alot of planing windsurf boards have them. It may not be a bad thing.

Back to the minimax. The transom plank helps square everything up at the back end of the hull. The compression struts, mid cockpit also stiffen the hull and definately hull shape behind the bow on my minimax is pretty sweet.

So as mentioned by other posters, putting the deck on may help things a little to push things back into shape? Putting a few stategic struts or even semi/demi frames may also bring things closer to line.

Incidentally, I went on to build a minimost, which has the same basic hull panel treatment as a minimax. I used 6 mm ply for the minimost hull and not 4 mm ply like I did on the minimax. And I had the same butterfly torsion problems with the bow. So going to thicker ply doesn't seem to make much difference. This might suggest the dimples may be an artifact of the unsupported? side shape.

It is hard to get it right first time. I guess at the end of the day, you have to ask yourself, can you live with the minor glitches. It sure looks good enough for me to continue with your project and try that little baby out!!

Good luck

Pete