i be sailing

18 April - installing the keel

With all of the outside seams fully taped up. it was time to install the keel. Since the boat has a v-bottom, the keel had to be shaped to fit. Andrew did this with a chisel. Installing the keel involved drilling holes along the center line, and driving screws into the keel from the inside of the boat. Andrew thought that driving the screws into the keel without prior drilling would be easy, it wasn’t, and he ended up with a stigmata on his palm. about half way through the installation we decided to drill holes into the keel to ease labor.

i also started fairing the edges of the glass tape on the outside seams. it’s very labor intensive work, used sanding block in some places but used the palm sander did most of the work. Not really finished with the fairing when the sander broke again, this time the head came loose. took it back to the dealer to get it fixed but I’ll probably get a belt sander while I’m there. Me thinks the sander won’t be able to take any more of the abuse I’ve been giving it.

20 April - THE BIG CUT

This is the day we’ve been anticipating and dreading at the same time. It’s not really normal to cut a boat in half but for this boat it had to be done.

First step was to drill all the holes in the nesting bulkhead for the bolts that will hold the boat together. five in all, two each on the sides and one in the center. After the holes were drilled the bolts were then inserted.

Then it was time for the CUT. starting at the port sheer, it was a fairly easy job until you hit the cardboard pieces between the nesting bulkheads. I used two pieces of illustration board stuck together for this purpose and it was very tough stuff to cut through.

upon passing the the first chine we decide to flip the boat and cut from the  outside. The original plan was to cut until the keel then start cutting again on the starboard sheer without flipping the boat. upon hind sight this was actually the best way to cut it. but decided to do it another way. Which was a Big Mistake, read on…

After passing the keel, we decided to continue cutting on to the other side, eight inches after passing keel Andrew was having a harder time cutting through. First we thought we hit a tough piece of cardboard, but this wasn’t the case, the saw was starting to veer off course and cutting through the nesting bulkhead! the bad thing was, we actually thought the cut was going okay, until at the point of the starboard chine i noticed epoxy dust flying from the saw. this should have had alarm bells sounding as no epoxy was between the nesting bulkheads, somehow it didn’t. after a few more minutes of tense cutting Andrew then decided to cut upwards (as the boat was upside down) from the starboard sheer. the two cuts eventually met and the cut was done.  

The Horror!

The cut actually took 3 hours, a lot longer than we expected. and after laying the boat on the ground and removing the bolts that were holding the two halves together. We finally saw how far our cut went off course. everything from the port sheer to the keel was fine, and most of everything after that was a disaster. At the worst point, at the starboard chine, the saw was off by almost 3/4 of an inch. This meant that the cut went through the nesting bulkhead and the doubler and into fillets on the other side. So we have a big chunk the forward nesting bulkhead sawed off.

We had no one but our selves to blame for this, but a solution was eventually reached to rectify the problem. and Yes it mostly involves filler.

Here is Andrew’s take on the Matter.

The next few days (hours really) was spent on sulking and fixing the problem. Number of man-hours to get to this point: 99. 100 if you count the extra hour of blame storming after the cut. 

4 to 7  April - Full fillets and taping inside seams

With the tack welds in place, all stitches were removed and full fillets of the seams can now commence. since the plans recommended to put the fiberglass tape on while the fillets were wet. I did that. I worked on the aft section first, before the nesting bulkhead. The next day I did the same with the front half and the day after that, i did the inside of the bow after the front bulkhead. The red wall paper applicator Rolly recommended was a great radiusing tool The excess epoxy was used to coat some parts of the boat. As I did the back half first, it was a little sloppier than the front half. I know it’s going to be a bitch cleaning it up later. The space after the forward bulkhead was a little small to fit the wall paper applicator so I used a plastic spoon to apply the putty.

8 to 10 April - Side B, filling outside seams and radius chines

Since the boat was still pretty light, flipping it over was an effortless task, I could have done it by myself, but I solicited Betty’s help just in case. The boat is really solid now. After the flip, I trimmed off the excess plywood at the transom with a planer and a palm sander.

Next to do was filling in the outside seams and stitch holes with putty. since this would use very little putty and  I wanted the chines to be solid, I used Pioneer non-sag epoxy. The smallest amount you can buy was actually more than enough to do the job. After letting the epoxy dry for a day. it was time to round over the chines with a sander. The epoxy cured very well, and it was rock hard. Sanding the stuff is harder than sanding laminating epoxy with micromix, but it was no more difficult than sanding solid wood. around a third of the  way into the job, my palm sander seized up, it’s been making some strange noises the past few days and I guess it just died. So I had to do the rest of the sanding by hand with a sandpaper and a wooden block (Andrew’s recommendation) I can actually say I liked the experience, it was very therapeutic, I also think the job came out better without the power tool as I had better control.

11 to 13 April - Taping outside seams, scribing and cutting the keel

Next to do was to tape the outside seams with fiberglass tape. I decided to double up on the tape on the outside also as the locally available glass cloth is of a lighter weight that what is recommended by the designer.

I did the starboard side first, then the port, then the center line and aft. The task was fairly easy to do, around 30 minutes for each chine.

While I was doing this, Andrew was trying to figure out how to make the keel. I was also having a hell of a time figuring it out also, so I left it to the guy who has English as a native language. He eventually got it and started scribing. The wood we used for the keel came from a 1 1/4" x 6" plank, finished size was around 1" x 5" it was a little thicker that what was recommended but I think it would work out well. The keel stock was hard stuff, so Andrew decided to use a Jigsaw.  Man-hour total to this point, around 83

Went to the beach over the holy week and didn’t get any work done on the boat for a couple of days. After around the second day I was actually missing the boat work. Andrew is saying I’m obsessed, what’s new?

Hoping to be able to install the keel this week and do some minor clean up work before the "BIG CUT"

<== Not my boat, but this what the "BIG CUT" will be like

Also got the sander going again, The dealer where I got it from replaced the carbon brushes and the bearings. cost to repair: P150. not bad.

25 March to 1 April - Gunwales

Thanks to fellow boat builder Louie, I was able to figure out how to cut straight strips using an angled jig saw from a solid piece of plank. After two not so straight trial cuts, I was finally able to rip two pieces of 12 foot sticks that would be used for gunwales. the lower angled corners were rounded off with a sander to make a nice 1/8" radius, I wanted to do this now before they were attached as it might be difficult to do once they’re on the boat.

We first installed the knees and and breasthook as this is where the gunwales will be anchored to. dry fitting the gunwales was the next step, it actually wasn’t as hard as we originally thought, the pieces were fairly bendable and required little effort to coax into position. after screwing them in place, we let them set for a couple of days.

Gluing them to the boat was fairly quick process. since we didn’t have enough clamps, brass screws were used to hold them in place.

here’s a pic of the bow where the screws were driven into the gunwale and into the breasthook. screws that held the rest of the gunwale in place were screwed from inside. Notice the re-enforcing block at the end of the butterfly joint.

I’m actually thinking of putting in an inner gunwale to give the hull extra stiffness and cover the screw holes for the outer gunwale. The inner gunwale will also make sitting on the sheer more comfortable when hiking out while sailing.

There were around six inches of extra gunwale material sticking out the stern, these were perfect for propping up the rear of the boat and minimizing the force on the hull bottom while on the saw horses.

3 April - Tack welding the inside

Using laminating epoxy and micromix borrowed from Louie, I made some putty to tack weld the inside of the hull. Micromix is pretty light stuff, it flies up into the air with a very light breeze. the putty was very light and easy to work and held it’s shape well. It’s also easier to sand that Pioneer marine epoxy when dry. Tack welding is just placing putty between the stitches, it is important to have your tack welds lower than your final fillet.  While I was doing this, Andrew also drew and cut out the pieces to be used for the center board.

Total number of Man hours to get to this point, around 54.

Now this part has nothing to do with sailing or boat building but might be just as interesting :). BBC Radio Scotland interviewed me last week for one of their daily programs, the topic was on Scottish culture abroad. The program was aired last Tuesday and will be available for listeners on the BBC website until 11 April, after which it will be replaced with next week’s program. Click here to listen, the best bits come in at around 17 minutes into the clip.