Flippin'

This past week I gave the hull a couple of coats of paint, which made it very shiny and made the small flaws stand out even more, but as I said before I don't care.  Finally, on Sunday afternoon I marshaled together four other guys (thanks, Carl, Chris, Gregg, and Paul!) and we flipped it over (right side up) from the building frame to the trailer.  Before doing that I removed the nails that secured the boat to the frame, and rigged together a safety system of ropes running through eyebolts screwed into the garage walls.  Here I am with the rope system in the "before" picture.  You can see everything being reflected in the super-glossy paint. 

It turned out to be utterly unnecessary.  Two people can lift the boat hull with great ease, and using the ropes would have meant doing the flipping inside the garage.  Seeing that the boat's beam is almost six feet, that would have been awkward (it would have hit the garage door opener overhead).  The guys therefore decided on the spot to ignore the ropes, lift the hull, walk it outside and flip it manually.  It took almost no time.  It was a revelation to finally see the inside, after only a few glimpses while clambering underneath.  Ah yes, and it became clear that the trailer is too small.  Designed for a personal water craft, the trailer is fine for my little 11' 6" (3.26 meter) first boat, the good ship Robin.  But Aerie is 15 feet long, and the trailer, while fine as a building platform, will not be safe enough on the road.  You can see two "after" photos, inside and out.  By the way, the strip at the sheer was left unpainted to receive the 2-inch-wide oak rubrails.  Next I will be giving the inside a coat of epoxy, gluing in the inwales, filleting some seams, and putting in the bench tops.

So, I hear you say, where are the "during" pictures?  Well, my camera ran out of juice at the wrong time.  Fortunately, my daughter Georgia is visiting from San Francisco, and she took some great photos with her camera.  Unfortunately, she didn't bring the little USB cable so I can't upload them.  We'll have to wait until she goes back and e-mails the photos.  So, as usual,

keep checking 176inches!

boatbuilder

Epoxy and paint

 The past week has been devoted to filling, puttying,  sanding and coating with epoxy.  As I've already confessed, sanding is my least favorite activity, so a purist would be able to look around and find many small flaws.  I don't care.  After many passes of setting nails, filling with filleting compound, sanding, more filling, more sanding, etc., then some final spot touching up with wood putty, then more sanding, came the time to call a halt to it and coat with epoxy.

Word to the wise: working with filleting compound (epoxy mixed with wood flour) is a pain.  It starts getting stiff very soon, and requires a lot of sanding afterwords.  If it is allowed to cure for more than 48 hours, it's very hard to sand level to the wood.  On the other hand, it's extremely strong and adds to the structural integrity of the boat.  The scarfed joints of the strakes, 8 in total, benefited a lot from filleting compound, since they were far from perfect to begin with.  With a bit of wood putty at the end they will be completely hidden once the paint goes on.

So here is the boat after the second and final coat of epoxy, which has brought out the beauty of the wood and gleams blindingly.  Too bad it will be covered with paint, but it gives an idea of what the inside parts (benches, lockers, thwart, floor, splash guards, CB case), which will be left natural, will look like.

This coming week I will give the hull two coats of paint, after some light sanding.  Then I will flip the boat right-side-up onto its trailer (which I hope will be big enough) so I can work on the inside.  The flipping will be done with a few friends and neighbors, perhaps with the aid of a canoe hoist that I attached to the ceiling of the garage years ago.  I promised to pay them in beer.

So check 176inches in a week or so for more pictures and stuff.

boatbuilder

Skeg, keel and all

I spent the last two weeks mostly doing things that are neither glamorous nor spectacular, namely trimming strakes and filling seams with filleting compound (epoxy and wood flour).  Then in the last few days I put on the skeg, keel and bow trim.

The skeg (on the right) was cut and laminated from two layers of 3/8 inch (9mm) plywood.  It was screwed and glued on with some difficulty (and with my wife's help), since I had to duck under the boat and drive the screws from below through the keelson.  Once that was done, I reinforced the bottom of the skeg with a 3/4 x 1 inch length of solid oak. 

Then I screwed and glued a strip of 3/4 x 1 inch oak along the rest of the boat's bottom.  It's a little small to call it a keel, but really that's what it is--a sacrifice keel to be precise.  It's there mainly to stop rocks and other stuff damaging the bottom.

Then I put on the bow trim.  As I said before, the bow was angular, so I used the trim to give it a nice rounded shape (left).  This I achieved with two 3/4 x 1 inch pieces and one 3/4 x 2 inch piece.  The latter was the one that was cut and sanded to achieve the necessary curvature.  Skeg reinforcement, sacrifice keel and bow trim were all secured with bronze screws from the outside.  They are recessed and the holes will be filled along with all other holes, gaps and blemishes.  Throughout I was once again reminded of how hard oak is, with several screws inevitably getting stripped or broken.

The final photo shows the entire boat.  It is ready for recessing the last nails (I have done over half), filling all holes etc., sanding, two coats of epoxy and two coats of paint.  I chose the most standard paint I could find (which happens to be one of the cheapest too): Rustoleum topside boat enamel, navy blue high gloss for the bottom, white semi-gloss for the fore and side decks.  The inside will stay natural with spar varnish.  I am not using bottom paint, since the boat will be trailered and does not need protection against gunk growing on it while sitting in the water.  The colors were chosen to reflect the colors of the Greek flag, and they are (along with the brand of paint) standard and ubiquitous: fancier paint is less likely to be around when I need to repaint the boat.

So there we have it.  Next time the plywood and oak will look smooth and uniform in their gleaming epoxied form,  and after that shiny and positively naval in blue paint.

Until then, keep checking 176inches.

boatbuilder

Back from Greece

The last two weeks I was in Greece, mostly on vacation but taking care of some family business too (as usual).  So I didn't do any work on the boat but heck, I needed the vacation and the inspiration to continue, since the plan is to take the boat there when I retire (eventually).  It will obviously cost far more to ship it than to build it, but if it's part of a half-containerload of stuff we may be moving anyway I'll be able to justify it.

There was plenty of inspiration from the beautiful beaches and the sea, which ranges in color from the purest, palest aquamarine to the deepest indigo, depending on depth, weather and what's on the bottom.  When crossing on the ferry I am always reminded of Homer's frequent reference to sailing "on the wine-dark sea" (epi oinopa ponton).  This is very appropriate since the island has had a reputation since early antiquity for superlative wine.  The house we built for our retirement sits on what used to be a vineyard for three generations, up to my grandfather who passed away in 1963.  He was a Greek Orthodox priest and my strongest memories of him are olfactory: a mixture of incense, sweat (from toiling in the fields in a black cassock) and ouzo, which he distilled in copious quantities and partook of in moderation.

While swimming at a different beach every day, I was always aware of wind and wave and made mental calculations of  what it would be like to hop from beach to beach.  The island's circumference is about 60 miles, with dozens of beaches, many more-or-less inaccessible by car.  However, I didn't get much inspiration from other sailors.  I am in my fifties but I do not remember seeing a single traditional boat with sails when I was young: motors had already eclipsed sails.  The occasional sailing yacht makes an appearance but none seem to be from the island.  What I did see was perhaps the sorriest spectacle of lubberly incompetence I had ever seen, in what is arguably the most stunning cove and beach on the island.  A group of tourists (from some Balkan country by the sound of them) had rented a sweet little catamaran built on inflatable pontoons.  Using a large outboard they moved it from its mooring, through the swimmers (I almost called the police for the brazen breach of safety) to the beach.  There they proceeded to hoist the mainsail (a tall, narrow, fully-battened Mylar affair) and unfurl the jib.  Then they used the outboard to move part way up the cove, cut the motor and started sailing straight for the rocks.  Clearly they had no more than a vague idea about how to tack, and I suspect that they hadn't even deployed the very small centerboard.  They brought the jib over but did not put the helm to the lee, or the helm did not obey.  In the nick of time they fired up the outboard and managed to exit the bay.  Then they spent the next hour or two making approximately 20 feet of headway, until they ran out of patience and motored back in.  All in all, a waste of boat, wind, water and beautiful scenery.


Hopefully my boat will do better in that setting.  BTW, I thought of calling it Aerie (every one of the four vowels is pronounced separately in Greek), after a Homeric name for the island which means airy or breezy.  I may be mixing Ionic and Attic dialects of ancient Greek in spelling it thus, but I like the sound, look and concept of the name.  We'll see.

This coming weekend I'll be resuming my work, so keep checking 176inches.

boatbuilder

Sheer Strake

Well, here we are.  The fourth and final strake, at the boat's sheer, is on.  No problems or big insights to report, I got better at it as time went on.  I still need to trim, add more filleting compound at the seams, and recess the nails before I start finishing the bottom.  On the bow photo you can (barely) see the bow piece protruding a little on the top side (bottom in the photo since the boat is being built upside-down).  That protrusion is there in case I decide to rig the boat as a sloop: the bowsprit will be secured to it with a pin.

The second photo shows the transom.  The last strake has not been trimmed yet, nor has the curve been cut into the transom itself.  All in good time.

After putting on the final strake, I cleaned up the garage (it was a total mess) and made room for the car which had been banished outside.  The next two weeks I will be busy with other things, so there won't be any progress or updates. 

But sometime in July and early August the bottom (keel, skeg, paint and all) will hopefully be done, and it will be time to flip the boat right side up to work on the top and insides.

So don't stop checking 176inches!

boatbuilder

Strake 3

Progress has been slow, because of a backlog of gardening and home improvement projects.  For example, last summer I replaced my porch floor, cut off the rotten bottoms of the posts holding up the porch roof and replaced them with pressure-treated wood, and installed stair rails.  Of course the pressure-treated wood had to weather for many months, so I ended up puttying, sanding, priming and painting everything this summer.  I managed to do it (took four days) just before the dry weather ended.

Anyway, I had to put in seat stringers before putting on the third strake, which meant I had to notch five of the frames.  While trying the stringers on, the scarf joints broke apart, so I had to redo them with a shallower angle.  After putting them on (picture), one of them broke again (I neglected to put a screw in the frame nearest to the joint).  Clearly the stresses on these bent stringers are heavy.

Finally I put on strake 3.  The hardest thing about lapstrake construction may be shaping the strakes so they meet at the bow exactly right.  Normally this involves planing a rabbet in both strakes.  My rabbet plane was not working properly, however, so I ended up planing and sanding a scarf instead.  It worked out fine.

One lesson that I learned, though, was that it's very nice to have a helper.  When putting on the port strake, I did it all by myself and it was slightly off, which meant that the lapped edges did not line up properly, and I had to (slightly) force them together using screws and pieces of scrap plywood.  Once the epoxy cures I'll be able to remove them. The starboard strake went on much more easily, because I enlisted my wife's help for about 5 minutes to hold one end of the strake straight.  

The fourth and final strake is ready to go on, after the epoxy cures, strake 3 is beveled with plane and sander, and the tips of the frames are notched for the inwales.  After that, it will be time to put on the skeg and keel, and finish the bottom (set the nails, putty, sand, epoxy and paint).  Then I'll need to get some friends to help me flip the boat right side up to finish the inside.  With some luck I'll be done before the cold weather sets in.

boatbuilder

Adventures with lapstrakes

Since last time I cut and scarfed all the rest of the long pieces: strakes 2, 3 and 4.  It involved measuring, drawing and cutting two copies each of two parts (fore and aft) of three strakes, or twelve in total.  The design program provided coordinates, which I manipulated on Excel.  When the time came to scarf and glue, I had to be extra careful not to join anything the wrong way.  I found that laying the pieces on top of each other, staggered in 2-inch steps, then using a belt sander, worked very well.  Provided, that is, that the sanding belt was coarse and very new--it's amazing how quickly the grit gets dull while scarfing.

I first beveled the edges of the garboards (strake 1 or bottom piece) to the correct angle. then nailed and glued strake 2, lapped over the beveled edge of the previous one.  Nailing along the lapped edge is a lot easier with something heavy, smooth and hard held behind it--a second person would have been good doing that but I don't have a helper, so I tap in the nails enough for them to stand up, then hold the clenching iron against the back and nail them in.  I have been filling the excess overlap gap with filleting compound (epoxy and wood four).  Here's what the boat looks like with the second strake on.  There is still trimming, sanding and nail setting/puttying to do, but that can wait.

After scarfing what I thought was strake 3, I tried it on for size, but it didn't fit.  Panicked, I concluded that I had glued the fore and aft pieces upside down--the curve of the edges looked that way.  I looked for ways to cut through the scarf, but it was clearly too strong: I would have to cut the long pieces in half and butt-join them the right way.  Before taking that drastic step, I tried to calm down and double-check.  Using the Pythagorean theorem again, I calculated what the width was supposed to be at different positions and measured the pieces.

As it turns out, the pieces I had scarfed together were strake 4, the last, top strake (at the sheer).  The pieces of strake 3 were still leaning against the wall, unscarfed.  Why I never actually labeled them and relied instead on a vague idea (strake 3 in this corner, strake 4 in that one) I cannot explain to my satisfaction, but I made a mental note for next time (and so should you).  Strakes 3 and 4 were too similar.  I had labeled fore and aft, top and bottom, but not 3 and 4.  I expect it's even easier to mess up with traditional, narrow lapstrakes, as opposed to the 4-per-side wide ones I used.

So there you have it.  Strake 3 fore and aft halves are glued together and curing as I write, and will go on next.

Until then, keep checking 176inches.

boatbuilder