i be sailing

Our first Messabout

We were able to finish painting two days before the messabout, which was going to be on a Saturday. And on Friday we were cramming to get all the fittings installed, we were able to finish most of the work and loaded the boat into David’s L300 at around 2 a.m. Just in time to get some sleep for the next day. Amazing how we were able to finish the boat just in time.

The week while Andrew was painting he was actually having doubts weather the boat will fit inside the L300 or not. His doubts were laid to rest after I measured the cab and found around two inches to spare from the backrest to backrest. Perfect fit!

We arrived at Club Lake in Talisay, Batangas at around 9:30, Mario was already there after having rented a topper sailing dinghy from the Taal lake yacht club. Arriving a little before us were Rolly and his 25 year old "red boat" and Louis with his unfinished but ready to float Corsair 13. Also there was Lester with his planing speedboat called "The Fugitive".

After everyone got their boats in the water, we decided to try out rowing first.  The oars I had made were a little on the heavy side, but it still rowed pretty well, even with three full grown men on board. Rowing solo, it was flying.

Since I didn’t have sails ready yet. Arvin was nice enough to bring the sail of 12′ Snark Sunchaser II and were eventually able to Jury rig my mast to take it. Arvin said I had a truly composite mast now,as we used a 3′ bamboo pole to extend my aluminum mast to take the snark sail. 

I christened the boat "Ceol Beag" which is Gaelic for "Light Music". It’s what i played on my pipes to pay for the boat anyways, so fitting enough to name the boat with a piping related term.

Taking the Ceol Beag out on it’s maiden sail were Mario, Arvin and Me. I was originally supposed to be just a passenger,but I was handed the helm around 5 minutes after we cast off. Even with three full grown men on board and one of them weighing almost like two people, we were moving fairly fast in light to moderate winds. I can only imagine how well she’ll fly with less live ballast on board. Rolly, Lester and Louis were aboard Rolly’s red boat. They set off a little earlier than we did and we were able to catch up to them in no time. Sailing close hauled into the wind, mast started to give at the joint and we had to turn back. Bitin na bitin!

The mast gave way the weak point indicated on the pic left. There wasn’t supposed to be joint there, but we had to put one in since we couldn’t find the right sized aluminum tubing to fit the mast collar and we couldn’t enlarge to the hole in the mast collar anymore. The two aluminum pipes were joined by a smaller diameter aluminum tube, but the outside wall of that tube was way to thin to handle the stress. I’ve since found a thicker walled aluminum pipe as a replacement. Hopefully it will hold up better.

Despite the short sail, Arvin and Mario were very impressed with the Spindrift’s sailing performance. According to Mario, the comfortable helmsman position was likened to that of a larger pleasure sailers, he also said that;

"Under the right wind conditions, it should be a serious contender to the other sport boats in its size class. Most impressive its hull design. Although it looks atypical of other dinghies, they seem to have got something right which is not evident to us non-naval architects."

and this is what Arvin said;

"The boat felt lively, but also gave the crew confidence with buoyancy and stability. It didn’t feel like we were going to have water in the rails when we went through gusts. It also had quite a bit of buoyancy at the bow, because even when Piper was sitting in front, the bow didn’t submarine like I imagined it would"

You can only imagine my elation in hearing these comments, especially from   seasoned sailors like Arvin and Mario, and I was beaming with pride for our little summer project. I can’t wait to get her out sailing once again.

We were also able to strap on a motor on to Ceol Beag, courtesy also of Arvin. The motor was a 4hp Evenrude. with 3 people on board it moved alright, Arvin said is wasn’t quite hull speed but it was fast enough.

Red Boat Capsize

The most unforgettable moment of the messabout was the capsize of Rolly’s boat. As we were forced to turn back because of the bent mast, Rolly, Louis and Lester sailed on alone in Rolly’s red boat. Story has it that they were really flying when a sudden gust hit while first time sailor Louis was at the helm and causing a capsize. They where able to right the boat, but couldn’t get the water out of it. Rolly’s wife Marte noticed that the red boat’s white sail couldn’t be seen anymore and promptly initiated a rescue, Rescue boat was Louis’s Corsair with Arvin’s motor. The red boat was towed to shore almost completely submerged and all of the crew and the rescue party on the Corsair, which took the load quite well.

Buoyancy Test

Soon after lunch, Arvin wanted to do a buoyancy test on the Spindrift, too bad we weren’t able to take pictures of the event as even I was elated on how well she passed the test with flying colors. First we completely swamped the boat with water, even while full there was still plenty of free-board, we then put four people in her, and she still had showed some sheer, then two more. It was then that she was completely underwater, but still she didn’t touch bottom. So the floatation compartments worked pretty well.

After the the buoyancy test, I checked the compartments and all of them had water in them but only around two cups per compartment so the seals held up pretty well. We then did a capsize test (without the mast) from turned turtle position. She turned over pretty quick and when she righted there was less than 2 inches of water inside, even senior boat builder Rolly was surprised.

Almost Trip to Volcano Island

The next day, I was able to take the family out on the boat with the motor, and we were able to get around a hundred meters from the shore when the motor conked out. I tried to restart it again to no avail, so we had to paddle back. But Cholo had a great time nonetheless

After our short motor trip, I put the oarlocks back on and went to try out some solo rowing. Then it started to rain.

After the short rain spell, Andrew and I put the motor back on to see if he might have better luck, and he did. We found out that I put the gas line in the wrong direction. Dumbass!

Having the motor up and running again, Andrew then said "Volcano?" and I said "Let’s go!" and off we went, the way there was pretty uneventful as we were following the direction of the current. However, the sun was starting to peak out from the clouds and Andrew’s pasty complexion is not really made to take prolonged UV. After motoring for about 30 minutes and about 3/4ths of the way to Volcano Island, we suddenly realized that we forgot to inform anybody where we were going and promptly turned back. motoring against the current, the boat was pounding. So we decided to take a perpendicular course from the current and go the scenic route.

As expected, we weren’t missed. so we packed up and went home. Wondering when our next time out on the water will be.

OK, now time for paint.

Since we’re  painting and the rainy season was hinting to start. We strung up some tarp above the carport. Andrew started with painting the small bits like the cb, center seat and, and cb plug. This is when he found out that the smell of epoxy paint can be unbearable. So he had to stop until he was able to get a proper respirator. That wasn’t a problem as he’s in the business of selling safety equipment anyways. So the next day we were able to resume with no problems.

We went with white primer on the inside and gray primer on the outside.  Painting is Andrew’s specialty so all I had to do was stand back and watch and mix paint and clean the brushes. We were expecting that one liter of each kind of paint will do. But we ended up using up 2 liters of primer, 3 liters of white top coat and 2 liters of blue topcoat.

Pretty no?

After seats were fitted we were able to install the centerboard trunk. Andrew  left this task for last, as he wasn’t really looking forward to it. I suppose for new boat builders like us, putting a hole in the middle of a perfectly good hull goes against human nature.

It wasn’t as hard as we thought, but it was a three night job to finish the cb trunk. after cutting the hole, we filed down the sides of the hole to get the cb to fit. Then the cb trunk was dry fitted and trimmed to fit, then filleted and glassed into place. I also reinforced the trunk sides with fg to give it extra strength.

While Andrew was messing around with the cb trunk, I took this time to clean up the messy epoxy work I did on the aft side. A lot of the clean up was done manually with a wooden block and 80 grit sand paper as the misus said I had to cut down on power tool use in the evenings as the neighbors were complaining. I also glassed the whole centerboard to give it strength and abrasion resistance. In event’s of capsize the centerboard is used for leverage get the boat back up on its feet, so it needs to be extra strong for this purpose.

Soon as a the trunk was done we were finally able to join the two hulls together after what seemed to be a really long time. While they were one, I trimmed the tops of the gunwales flush with the hull sides and we also tried out the cb fit. Andrew wanted to see how the it would be like inside the boat and test the strength of the seat tops. so despite my protests he went ahead and sat inside the boat. We must’ve done something right as the boat was pretty solid. It also gave us a better idea on how big the boat is with someone in it.

The next day we installed mast step and construction was finally complete. Next was paint. I got one litter of each of the following, white primer, gray primer, epoxy enamel white and epoxy enamel marine blue. I got the paint from Cord Chemicals.