Idling Too Long

September 2023 marks the sixth year of the boat build.  I can only claim progress for 3/4 of a year this September due to a lack of materials.  Materials ordered in July didn't arrive until the last of September as the result of ongoing shipping issues.  Having nowhere to go, no one to see and nothing to do I spent way too much time on a YouTube addiction.  My ship has just arrived so my normal boat building days can resume.

Two 70 watt solar panels have arrived.  Both panels will be installed on forward locker lids as shown above.  The combined output of 140 watts is not likely to provide enough power for much more than a day sail.  Provisions are made for a future larger solar panel accommodated on the aft trampoline for extended cruising.

Painting is in my future.

The anchor, bow rollers, and anchor rode (anchor chain and line) will not be in service for a while but are necessary to size, design and build an anchor locker.

Above are two of the four 4' by 8' sheets of honeycomb core fiberglass panels.  The cockpit will be built with these panels.  Two panels will be joined with a spline and cut to size to form the cockpit floor. 

I manage to make some progress in July before the lack of materials idled me.  Above is the top of one of the two electric outboards.  Normally the battery latches into the black battery mount.  The mount is composed of two halves that clamp around a tube preventing the shaft and lower propeller end from falling into the sea.  The normal arrangement is too tall to fit under the cockpit seats, so modifications are necessary to separate the battery mount from the clamp.

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A dull hacksaw blade and persistence managed to separate the mount and clamp.  What do you suppose this operation would do to my warranty?  In any event the warranty will be expired before the outboards will see any action.

 The outboard is significantly shorter without the battery and mount attached.

A washboard closes up the hull entrance.  A plate, on top of the washboard, covers the raw wood groove in the image above.  Water enters the gaps between the plate and the opening to flow towards the interior due to the slope.  The groove slopes in the opposite direction to drain the water outside.  Rain initially proved this arrangement was not effective.  Reworking the groove has removed all concerns that water can enter the interior this way.  All passengers may sleep well and dry.

 The aft trampoline crossbeam is nearing completion.  On the right is a template used to cut out the plywood that is installed in its' place.  A batten, small sticks and a hot glue gun will build a template easy and quick.

The completed raw aft trampoline crossbeam is shown in its' place.  In time it will receive the same color scheme as the other crossbeams.  This crossbeam will not only support the trampoline, but a retractable boarding ladder as well.

Burgundy Curve Boat Works

 I am highly surprised to learn that most readers of this blog live in Brazil.  I have no idea of how that came to be and would be interested to read any comments on this matter.

The three major crossbeams have received tabs on the underside that will later be drilled to lace on the trampolines.  A little more priming and the crossbeams will be ready for ......

Some sanding, masking, painting and hardware mounting bring the crossbeams into a state of readiness for installation on the hulls. 

The hulls must be lifted onto the dolly to move them outside.  In the previous experience with this, the dolly wheels appeared to be overloaded.  Two additional wheels were added to the dolly to better handle the load.

3/16" neoprene is adhered to the crossbeam locating blocks so there is no wood-to-wood contact.

Pad eyes are installed along the hull's inboard edges as part of the trampoline lacing system.

Here the crossbeams are placed in position on the hulls under a sunscreen.  A good friend was very helpful extracting all this from the shop as well as erecting the sunscreen.  The forward crossbeam has lashings on the outboard ends to secure the crossbeam to the hull.  There is a shortage of lashing lines for the inboard and outboard positions on the remaining crossbeams.  

The shop is so much roomier now with all this moved outside.

This is the control panel for the dual electric outboards.  This control panel will be mounted inside the starboard hull near the companion way.  A person may operate the motors from inside the hull or from the cockpit.

I've repurposed the outboard shipping box as a mockup of the outboard cockpit installations.  The outboards will reside in cockpit seat/lockers located along the inboard side of each hull.  The seat/lockers will extend to the full eight-foot cockpit length, a length longer than the shipping box.  The box width is about right to accommodate both the outboard and the battery.  

The box bottom is cut out to allow the propeller and shaft to be tilted down into the water.  A wall will follow the cutout edge and a cover over the propeller and shaft will prevent water entry.  Two episodes ago (The Light of Day) the outboards were shown in their normal configuration with the battery mounted on the outboard shaft top.  This would not work for my application and the battery mount was cut off from the shaft.  No doubt this voided the warranty, but the warranty will run out long before these motors see the water.  The cutting provided a means to mount the battery within the locker as well as the only thing preventing the outboard from dropping into the ocean is the black shaft clamp located above the tilting mechanism.  The lack of the battery counterweight makes it difficult to lift the shaft and propeller from the water.  Some lever arrangement must be worked out to overcome this issue.

Partly visible at the image top is a cardboard outboard mockup.  This was much easier to hold up near a hull to work out any issues.

I think the color combinations are working out well and I had to include a little boat porn.  Some may mistakenly think this project is nearing completion.  The truth is there is there is much work left to do, but I may have completed the most time consuming and difficult parts at this point.

Remove the Mask

 

The decks now sport a top side paint coating.  All this masking must mean significant changes are coming and I'm eager share ....

The shear stringers have received a burgundy paint coating to emphasize the sweeping curves.   This painting scheme will be carried over to the curving crossbeam tops once the paint supply is replenished.  This image was made in the early morning when the rising sun streams directly into the shop through the roll up door.  The result is an image that does not reflect the color combination accurately.  

Above is the bow end while the sun is setting.  The hatteras off white (a yellowish white) hull paint appears closer to the color seen, but the burgundy seems more ruby to the eye than shown here.  The upshot is that lighting in the shop and my tablet image taking skills are lacking to produce good color renderings.  Lighting seems to change the burgundy significantly.  I may not truly know what this color scheme really looks like until it is rolled outside.  As it is, I am pleased with the result.

The observant ones will notice that the decks have a light grey nonskid applied.  Are you among the observant ones? 

The forward deck has masking challenges with the conjunction of the crossbeam (not present), hatch and solar ventilator.

I use cutting templates to trim masking tape into the needed shapes.   The ventilator threads into the deck and clamps the template in place.  The two 3/4" pieces are placed against the ventilator to space out the template the correct distance.  The 90° curve template was made for the aft ventilators and no material was available for a 180° template.  Masking cuts had to be made in segments to produce the ~180° curve.

The small circular cutting template rounds corners where masking tape lines cross.   Rounded corners produce a more pleasing result.  Masking is the most time-consuming part of applying the nonskid.  Of course, sanding will be involved!  KiwiGrip nonskid is very easy to apply.  The nonskid is applied to a clean surface with a notched trowel.  A special opened holed foam roller is run over the surface to produce the desired texture.  The masking, which took the better part of a day to apply, is immediately ripped off, with satisfaction, to finish the nonskid application.

A friend helped with sanding primer on the crossbeams, a rudder, and the lashing pads shown above.  His help has saved me some weeks of work.  The lashing pads have the first coat of three burgundy coats.  Lately I've been using Scotch-Brite pads to abrade the surface between coats as shown here with the frosty surface appearance.

The finished lashing pads are in place along the shear stringer.  This image cannot convey what I would have called the money shot of this episode.  I often find myself enjoying this view for extended eye candy moments.  

The finish paint has been applied to both hulls with the exception of the inboard cabin sides.  The cabin sides will be modified in the future and are protected by primer for the mean time.  With this work completed I'm now able to begin installing the various bits of hardware that have been consuming space for several years.  Possibly, the shop disorder will slightly be diminished as a result.

What follows is straight up boat porn:

The Light of Day

 

This pile of planer shavings should suggest to regular readers that my whining about the lack of materials may be over.

At long last, sealant has arrived to install the final portlight to make this hull weather tight.

The planed lumber provided material to complete the third crossbeam.  The beam is about to have the foreground fairing epoxied onto the beam face.  At this point the interior surfaces have received two epoxy coats, fillets on all joins and the areas to be joined are ... sanded.

This new beam will be installed forward of the mast.  It is unusual as the underside has an arc, where the other beams have flat bottoms.  I puzzle at a reason for this but can only concede that it looks cool.

The bows received some new bling in the form of chocks complementing the cleat.  The chock fasteners screw into the shear stringer.  As will all such fastenings, an oversize hole is drilled. filled with epoxy and later drilled out to accept the screw fastener.  Water and wood should not meet with this arrangement.

It is so dicey drilling next to an edge like this that a drilling jig seems wise.  The first hole is drilled using the jig and then a transfer punch is inserted through the jig and into the hole.  The "pinned" jig precisely locates the second drilled hole.  To the right of the pinned jig is the jig used with smaller diameter drill bits to drill out the epoxy filled holes to accept screws.

The port hull was the first to see the light of day.  My yellow wheeled dolly is a bit over loaded as the axel is bending so that both wheels were canted in towards the top.  This is the money shot for me as it is the first time I've been able to stand back and get a good overall view of the hull.

Beam Landing Pads

The dolly axel received some stiffening before the starboard hull was rolled out.  The distorted dolly wheels are at or near the limit of what they can support.  A fair amount of effort went into leveling and positioning the hulls.  A water level (water filled clear tubing) proved to be very effective for this task.  I was able to borrow a laser level to find my work and the laser agreed.  

The hulls and crossbeams are gathered here to be joined.  The beams are lashed to inboard and outboard hull sides.  The curving decks must be fitted with beam landing pads to transfer lashing compression loads between the beams and the hulls.  The landing pads need features that prevent the beams moving fore and aft or side to side.

Measurements between the beam and hull indicated compound angled cuts on the landing pad raw stock.  I found that making a shallow cut all around the cut's permitter helps to guide the hand saw on these tricky cuts.

A fair number of parts were required to mount the crossbeams.  The mounting parts above have just been fiberglassed.  There are many sharp edges on these parts that the fiberglass cannot bend around.  The fabric tends to stretch and move around as the epoxy is applied.  This feature makes cutting fabric to an exact size to butt up against an adjacent fiberglass face can be a futile exercise.  The sharp angle faces must be fiberglassed one at a time before continuing to adjacent faces.

The next day the excess fiberglass edges are trimmed and it is time for another round of fiberglassing.  Some of these items took three rounds of fiberglassing to complete.

The plans do not provide great landing pad details so a person must improvise.  Above is the underside end of the mast crossbeam.  The raw wood face with lettering is the landing pad face that will be epoxied to the hull.  The landing pad and the beam's locating features are separated by 3/16" thick neoprene to prevent the wooden parts from working against each other.  The locating faces are angled so the beam and hull will mate and de-mate readily.  This landing pad resists fore and aft motion as well as beam motion in the outboard direction.

The inboard landing pads must span a valley between the fore and aft edges.  The sloping valley edges and the sloping edges of blocks glued into the valley will receive the shape of a truncated pyramid mounted on the top of landing pad resting to the right.  Once the landing pads are painted, all neoprene pads will be adhered to the landing pads.  This landing pad arrangement resists fore/aft and inboard/outboard beam motion relative to the hulls. 

The hulls and beams can now be joined to each other, but everything must be dismantled and moved inside for finishing and other work.  I added all the gingerbread fittings to take this image before disassembly.  Can you spot the gingerbread before it is detailed in the next paragraph?

I'm impressed if you were able to spot any gingerbread crumbs.  There are cleats on the bow and stern as well as on the ends of two beams.  Did you spot the bow chocks?  Solar powered ventilators are found forward and aft of the cleated beams.  I still think these ventilators are a bit garish with the optional shiny stainless steel shell.  I attempted to remove the garish shell but found that it was adhered to the white shell underneath.  I may not learn to love it, but I can learn to live with it.

The Future is Electric

Electric propulsion is an emerging trend in sailing vessels.  I'm embracing this future.  My electric outboards ordered in middle November have arrived late in January after the Christmas shipping break and the Department of Fisheries got their fees figured out.  These three horse power Epropulson motors will be installed in lockers under the cockpit seats.  The motor's overall height must be reduced to accomplish this.  A great height reduction is to relocate the clip-on floating batteries to mounting locations within the lockers.  It is also necessary to also remove the black battery clip-on fixture at the motor's top to gain the needed clearance.  Initial examinations suggest this will work out very well.  The shop is filled with the new yellow wheeled dolly, crossbeams, lumber and an increasing state of disorder.  This disorder now creeps into my living space as there is no room for the outboards in the shop.

These motors will recharge the batteries while under sail.  The motors may be retracted, to reduce drag, once a charge is achieved.  A folding solar array is offered as an accessory to charge/supplement the battery.  Two motors will enable the boat to spin within its' own length.  This maneuverability is highly desirable to negotiate the 90° canal turn to reach the bay.  I need only to press an on button rather than repeatedly pulling a start cord to get going.  Gasoline fires and engine noise will not be a possibility.  These outboards are substantial and well made.  I'm happy and excited to arrive at this arrangement.