The rubrails stiffen the sheer line, act as sheer clamps for attaching the deck and protect the top edge of the boat from docks and rocks and stuff.
Bolger specified solid pieces of wood in his design. In mine, I'm specifying a 3-layer pre-stressed laminate. Laminates are more flexible, yet stronger than solid members. The flexibility allows the load of an impact to be distributed over a larger area, rather than concentrating it all in one spot and breaking the wood. Even though the laminate is more flexible than solid wood, due to the pre-stressed construction the sheer line is just as stiff under normal conditions as if solid wood had been used.
A laminate also limits the depth that water and rot can spread through a crack in the outer layer. The inner 2 layers are protected by the layers of epoxy that bind them together.
The plastic cover is to prevent drips from getting onto the glassed exterior. The yellow nylon straps are to hold the hull to a fair shape in the absence of mold B.
While the rubrails are curing, the pieces of the keel and dagger boxes get glassed. Due to the lack of shop space, they're glassed inside the boat on a sheet of polyethylene to save the interior from drips.
The boxes are made of 3/4 inch plywood, with the insides glassed and coated with graphite/epoxy to protect them from scratches as the keel and rudder are slid up and down.
There really was no space left anywhere else in the shop, so I set up a framework of 2x4s on top of the boat and used that as a workspace for glassing the deck. The plastic that was there for the rubrails worked for the deck, too.
The underside is covered with 6-oz. cloth, rather than the 4-oz that most of the rest of the boat is covered with. This is to help resist the tensile loads from someone walking on the deck. The carlines will provide the main support, but the thicker glass will work with them.
Note how the deck is a unit and will be attached to the hull in a single piece, rather than being patched together from multiple pieces onto the framework.
Here's the framing for supporting the deck, as well as the keel well. The string defines the centerline.
Everything is being temporarily held in place by screws, which will be removed once the epoxy is applied.
The hatch for the hold is nicely delineated. There's an extra set of carlines on the keel well to support the weight of someone standing on the deck holding the drop keel with its 100-lb or so weight. The shape of the knees has also been simplified.
Layer one was held on with temporary screws. For layer two the screws are gone, the holes are filled and only clamping pressure is used. This was pretty much every spring clamp that I owned.
Also visible are the keel and rudder wells. The graphite/epoxy coating in the rudder box is easy to see.
The carlines have been glued together and to the hull.