Problems and progress

Getting the materials was a real pain, since we live in a small mountain village on an island, far from regular supply routes. Plus we don’t even have a street address, full time post office or home mail delivery (thanks, Hellenic Post, I remember when you were a service that made us proud; now, not so much). Plus, as far as I can tell, nobody ever builds boats on their own, so sourcing materials as a DIY consumer (as opposed to a boat yard) is tough. I had to contact a manufacturer/exporter of marine plywood to get the right stuff, and they sold me the sheets wholesale as a favor. The epoxy and related materials ended up in a similarly named island 400 miles away literally at the other end of the Aegean Sea due to someone mishearing my call. Anyway, I managed to get what I needed after dozens of phone calls and lots of waiting.

Another problem is that I have no enclosed workspace, workbench or many tools. I am building the boat in a sheltered part of our terrace under a large roof overhang. We are now being affected by a medicane (that’s a Mediterranean hurricane, who knew such things existed?) named Zorbas, with lots of wind and bands of rain, and so far the work area has stayed dry and safe. I am using four rather flimsy sawhorses for the cutting and backbone building phase, and I will secure the backbone and frames to a strongback secured on top of the sawhorses. It helps a lot that the tops of the CB trunk and four of the frames are exactly 16 inches (403mm) above the bottom line of the boat, because of the tops of seating benches and rowing thwart.

Completed so far:

1. Scarfed two sets of 6mm (1/4 inch) sheets of plywood together. Without proper tools (only a hand plane and palm sander) I ended up with scarfs that look terrible but are strong and will look better after a thorough sanding.
2. Marked and cut all the keel and stem pieces and centerboard sides. A lot harder than it sounds, starting from measurements on a piece of paper. Also cut a mockup of the centerboard from hardboard to make sure it fits and pivots correctly.
3. Since I don’t have a table saw, I had to ask a carpenter friend to cut a few boards into straight and beveled cleats.
4. Glued and nailed garboard cleats onto stem, skeg and CB trunk sides.
5. Cut and fit spacers for the insides of the CB trunk. Making space for a sheave for the lifting of the centerboard proved particularly picky.
6. Cut transom, fore bulkhead and mid bulkhead from 12mm plywood. Four more frames (one temporary) will be cut from 8mm plywood.

I only have just over five weeks before we leave (helping with another grandchild on the way, in Spain this time, then winter in Sacramento), so I hope to have to hull put together but not epoxied or painted. That, plus flipping the boat over and completing benches, decking etc. will have to wait until I come back. I will sew the sail in the US and bring it over.

At it again

It’s been years since I posted on this blog, and lots of things have happened. I considered shipping Aerie to Greece, but it was way too expensive, enough to pay for the materials for two or three new boats. Plus the paperwork for getting it through customs and registering according to European Union regulations would have been a nightmare. So I decided to build another one in Greece instead, which is not surprising since I love to build things.

Meanwhile, I retired in April 2016. The plan to stay in Greece full time was put aside, on account of our children and their hoped-for offspring. We planned to move to California to be near our younger daughter, and spend up to half the year in Greece. I considered selling or giving Aerie away, but was talked out of it by members of the Wooden Boat forum that live in the Sacramento area. So we dragged the boat and its trailer over the Rockies, with a nasty incident in Albuquerque where the rear window of the SUV was smashed and random stuff taken. I could blame Aerie for it, since the length of the car plus trailer forced us to park in the one area not covered by security cameras and right next to the fence to boot. But I don’t blame the boat really; thieves are mean idiots who will steal anything they can, causing $500 worth of damage (not to mention the replacement cost of what they stole) for a duffel bag of clothes and such, with a street value of maybe $30. Breaking Bad was right, Albuquerque must be full of meth-heads drugged out of their minds!

Anyway, Aerie made to Sacramento, where she spent a while in storage and now sits in the back yard, without much opportunity for outings since we spend summers in Greece. But she is still beautiful and works just as well. But now, one grandbaby later, it was time to build one in Greece. It’s cutting into my bagpipes practice (that's another story), but you can’t have everything.

Materials and planning

Hello faithful readers!  Here's the Robin, my old boat, before the centerboard got stuck and the tiller came off, on the other side of the lagoon you see in the background (read the first couple of posts for the history).  I've learned a lot since then--but at least I was younger and thinner...  Shallow little thing she is, with seats flush with the gunwales.  Obviously one gets quite wet in rough weather.  She also has a simple, angular cross-section.  The new boat will be deeper, with seats well below the gunwales, side decks with splash guards, etc.  It will also have a more complex, rounded form and old-timey lines from the overlapping boards.

I ordered the plywood and oak boards from Homestead Hardwoods in Vickery, OH.  Three 9mm thick 4x8 foot boards for the transverse pieces (frames, transom and bulkheads), and nine 6mm thick 4x8s for everything else.  I think I only need 8 sheets of the 6mm plywood, but it's good to have a spare, given the high cost of shipping.  The oak is mainly for the keel, bow and rubrails, places that will be scraping against rocks, sand and docks (hopefully not other boats!).  By far the largest expense for the whole project, this purchase pushed the total cost so far to just over $1,000.  I have all I need for the hull (except paint), and there will be more expenses for lumber for the spars (masts, yards and booms), sailcloth and related supplies, and chandlery items (that's marine hardware, etc.)  The marine hardware will be things like blocks (pulleys to you landlubbers), line (rope to you), cleats, fairleads, deadyes, snaphooks, etc.  Oh yes, and the lead.  People may wonder why I will be buying 100 pounds of lead shot, since I don't own a shotgun. I will need it for ballast (for stability), and the rudder and centerboard so they can drop into the water when they are not hoisted up. Both need to be retractable for launching and recovery, and when in very shallow water.  But all that will come later.  I have to build the hull first.  By the time I'm done I expect to spend a total of somewhere between $1,500 and $2,000.  That's not counting my labor of course!

The way it will proceed is:

• Cut the transverse pieces and a bow brace first.  
• Assemble the fore-end, joining together the two forward bulkheads and bow brace.
• Build the centerboard case.
• Cut the bench risers, with slots for the frames.  
• Lay the bench risers on the building frame; fit and attach all transverse pieces and the centerboard case.
• Attach the keelson (a 1X4 inch board along the whole length of the bottom of the boat).
• Then I'll be almost ready for the long hull pieces, otherwise known as strakes.  The first (since the boat is built upside-down) are the bottom pieces, otherwise known as garboards.  

But that's enough for now.  For more about the project, check in again at 176inches.

boatbuilder

Getting Started

Things are starting to move beyond pencil and paper.  Three days ago I received my first shipment: epoxy, nails and screws and a few other bits.  Epoxy of course is ideal for boats because it is very strong and a totally waterproof coating.  Old-fashioned purists will argue in favor of other glues and coatings but I'll go with what I know.  The nails and screws are made of silicon bronze: pricey these days but will not corrode, even in sea-water, which this boat may end up bathing in: witness ancient bronze statues found on the bottom of the sea.  I hear that stainless steel is not as resistant, and in any case it will rust if it's not exposed to the air, which rules it out for boatbuilding, except for fastening bits of hardware on the deck and spars.

Th epoxy is for gluing things together, and also for coating all the wooden parts with two coats before the paint or the varnish.  Speaking of that, I intend to paint the bottom royal blue and the fore- and side-decks white.  I have sought the advice of my wife and daughters, and they agree.  It will be a nod to the national colors of Greece, and consequently the boat will have to have a Greek name.  Ideas welcome!

Yesterday my wife Robin and I cleaned out the garage and, with some regret, banished the old boat Robin outside,  She was named that, at my daughter Georgia's brilliant suggestion, partly because it is red and brown, partly after my wife, who was peeved at me at the time for being a "boatbuilding widow."  Here's the Robin leaning against the garage wall.

Yesterday I also bought some cedar boards for things like the keelson, srtingers, cleats and beams, all fancy words for lumber that the plywood pieces will be glued to in places other than the overlapped edges of their neighbors (the "lapstrake" bit).  Bear with me, you'll learn all these terms if you keep reading 176inches.  I also got a couple of wheels and a couple of 2x4s.  The result was the building frame, which can be rolled in and out of the garage.  Here it is on the left.

For more boatbuilding sweat, blood and tears (only kidding, at least for now) keep checking 176 inches.

boatbuilder

Design quirks

A bit more about the design and planned building method:

The Carlson hull design software builds up a hull over four polygonal (straight-sided) transverse bulkheads, including the transom.  It gives the dimensions and coordinates of these plus other frames specified by the user.  I divided the 176 inches into 8 sections of 22 inches each, so I have coordinates for 8 frames.  The program also calculates the flat profiles of the strakes that wrap around the frames, and allows you to place the pieces on 4x8 sheets, giving visual printouts and coordinates.

Here's the standard three-view as created by the software.  As you can see it has the basic outlines, without seating, decking, floor, thwart, skeg or anything else.  The rest needed some work.

There were many more things to figure out, such as the shapes and sizes of the bench risers, seats and skeg, the depth of the floor, the angles and overlaps between strakes, etc.  I worked all that out by plugging  coordinates into Excel and working out formulas.  High school trigonometry helped a lot!  I also converted everything to millimeters just in case--Excel does not like fractions and 5.81 inches is hard to measure.

Because the program assumes carvel-built design (with the strakes flush against each other), I have to add enough extra width to the strakes so they can be beveled and glued together.  I will have to bevel the plywood (after scarfing pieces together--more on that later) using hand planes I bought cheap at an antique store.  I plan to use epoxy and bronze ring-shank nails that will be set (recessed) and clenched on the inside, then the indentations filled before painting.

I also had to figure out some basics about the centerboard and the sails, to make sure everything fit around the frames, decks, etc., and that the centerboard and sail placement was correct for a balanced helm, not only for the chosen rig but for the three alternatives. It all took a fair amount of pencil-and-ruler-on-paper work.  I will post a more detailed drawing of the design with the extra features, but it will take some time because my pencil sketches need detailing and prettying up.

Next time, a few more design details.

boatbuilder

Design Choices

What went into the design you say?  Well, it was meant to be an open boat, about 15 feet, with plenty of stability and freeboard, and pretty dry in a chop.  It needed to be a capable sailer (including single-handed sailing) and easy to row.  Preferably it would look old-timey, but not be impossibly hard to build.  I would have a short unstayed mast or two, but the rig would be flexible.  It would have adequate storage, plus extra buoyancy in case of swamping or capsizing.  The oars had to be stowable out of sight, and the floor had to be flat.

That's a pretty complicated combination.  What I settled on was a lapstrake design (nice and traditional looking) with a V-bottom (ditto, and less slappy on the waves), with four strakes per side (easier to build but still nicely rounded), built around a total of eight frames, including transom and two full-size bulkheads.  Unlike regular lapstrake forms, the frames will be permanent and will increase rigidity.  The boat will have side benches all the way from transom to main forward bulkhead, with storage and buoyancy built into them, and large storage lockers fore and aft.  It will have a foredeck and side decks for dryness, and a removable plank floor with room under it for oar stowage and lead shot ballast in a special compartment.

The hull will be built upside-down over two sturdy sawhorses, connected with wooden runners on wheels, so the whole thing can be moved in and out of my small, unheated garage.  Most of the work will have to be done in the warm season, because epoxy doesn't cure in the cold.  The vertical risers of the side benches will sit on top of the saw horses, and the frames and bulkheads will interlock with them like three-dimensional puzzle pieces. 

The other decision to be made was the rig.  At first I thought that it should be switchable from cat to sloop, the latter with a jib and a bowsprit.  But that would have meant a tall mast, which I dislike.  I then considered a yawl rig, which I rejected for various reasons.  The chosen rig was a cat ketch with a balanced lug main and a standing lug/ sprit boom mizzen.  For more on all these old-timers, you could read David Nichols's book.  Still, there will be four different possible mast steps that can accommodate all four possible rigs.  I like the cat ketch design, because it is stable, has two smaller and more manageable sails, and is very easy to tack and to sail single-handed.  It also means that a mast hole goes through the rowing thwart, and the centerboard case has to be slightly off center.

So there you have it.  Next time I'll talk about the mechanics of the design and planned building techniques.

boatbuilder

Some history

This blog will be about my (still theoretical) 15-footer sail- and row-boat.  It's called 176inches because that's the exact length in the plans, which I designed myself, in my first such effort.  Whether I will regret such arrogance remains to be seen.  You, dear readers, and the elements will be the judge of that.

Yesterday I ordered my first materials for my putative boat: 2 gallons of epoxy, 2 lbs bronze ring shank nails, three boxes bronze screws, gudgeons and pintles and some other stuff.  I haven't yet ordered the 12 sheets of marine plywood.  But first, some history.

Many months of  thought and design went into this project already (and it was all great and totally free fun).  My history with boats all started with a little 11 foot 6 inch dinghy I built several years ago.  It was a very old British design, called the Siren, still available from Clarkcraft.  It arrived on old-fashioned (actually blue!) blueprints, and I believe it was influenced by the ubiquitous Mirror dinghy.  By then I had heard about stitch and glue techniques, which I thought would be easier than the hard chine construction described in the plans.  I had to modify them significantly, but eventually I built a nice little sloop in marine plywood and mahogany, complete with home-made spars, rigging and sails I sewed myself.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say.  The boat proved to be wobbly, but hard to swamp nonetheless.  The biggest problem was the rig, with something called a pivoting Gunter mainsail and a tiny jib.  The pivoting Gunter proved a real pain: its impossible to reef, all or nothing nature forced me to launch with the full canvas on, which is pretty dangerous on a stiff wind.  On the first serious sail, first the centerboard got stuck.  I had to return across Indian River lagoon in the teeth of the wind, and tacking was out of the question.  I tried wearing (turning the boat 270 degrees through a jibe), something I knew from reading the naval adventures penned by Patric O'Brian of Master and Commander fame, but I was making very little headway.  Then the top of the rudder delaminated and the tiller came off. My brother-in-law and I had to beach it, walk to a phone and call for help.

So I had to do some repairs, but I finally realized how bad the rig was when the feeble remnants of hurricane Ivan reached a South Carolina lake just as we were launching, capsizing us about six times before we got under way.  So I changed the rig into a sliding Gunter, which boat designer and traditional rig booster David Nichols did me he honor of highlighting in his very nice book on traditional rigs and this e-zine article.  You can find David's designs (all lapstrake) for sale here.

For more of the plans' history, check the next installment of 176inches.

boatbuilder