Rethinking the rig

After a few more launches, I'd had it with the sprit rig. With the sail laced to the mast, the only way to reduce sail is to douse it by brailing, which causes lots of flapping and drag, and the brailing line gets fouled in various ways. Bringing down the sail means striking down the mast. The sprit is hard to tension properly (seems that I hung the snotter too high). But the worst problem is the difficulty of controlling the sail's shape without a boom, which makes tacking difficult, and the traveler I had to rig up for the mainsheet interferes with tiller and outboard. Adding a boom would solve some of these problems but would increase rig complexity.

So I thought about it and decided that a new rig would be a good idea, which suits my tinkerer's heart nicely (this will be the sixth rig for three boats). I had some good experiences with a standing lug rig with a sprit boom, if we discount the disaster involving the flimsy foremast of my cat ketch breaking in a stiff wind. Since the current mast is robust enough at a diameter of 75 mm (3 inches), I can concentrate on the pluses of the rig. Only three control lines (halyard, snotter, sheet), same as the sprit rig. Reefable and easier to deploy, not to mention take down. A sprit boom doesn't hit you on the head, needs no boom vang or gooseneck/jaws. And no fancy sheeting system is needed.

I took to pencil and paper and designed a new sail of roughly the same trapezoidal shape, but will need some cloth removed and some added to the existing one. There will be a small addition of square footage (up to about 112 square feet or 10.4 square meters) and the center of effort (COE) will be almost the same. My inspiration once again is John Welsford's Houdini and David Nichols' book on traditional sails for small boats. Regarding spars, I am simply shortening the existing sprit into the new boom, and making a very plain yard out of stock lumber.

I also decided to follow kind advice from the Wooden Boat Forum about the tiller. Between the sheet and the outboard, the existing tiller gets in the way. So I am replacing it with a Norwegian tiller, which runs at a right angle to the rudder, parallel withe the transom, and is controlled by a long pole with push-pull action. This will allow me to sit wherever I need to in the boat, and to use a simple 2:1 sheet tackle attached to the center of the transom top. The wood was cut to rough size and planed before I left; I will shape it and cut the mortises (one in the top of the rudder, one in the tiller's tenon for a wedge to keep it in place) when I get back to Greece.

I folded the sail into my carry-on bag and brought it back to California. I had plenty of leftover sailcloth but needed more luff tape and grommets. I also bought a sailmaker's palm for hand stitching but have not needed it yet. I was reminded that sewing a sail with a regular sewing machine is doable if a bit of a pain, and it's not worth my while to invest in anything more than heavy duty needles. The reconfigured sail is now (November 11) ready for next spring (the pandemic permitting). I will update readers with photos then.

Teething troubles

 We managed to get back to Greece in early June, on the first available flight from San Francisco to Frankfurt. It was interesting: masks all the way, a coronavirus test in Athens airport, two nights in isolation in a quarantine hotel (at public expense and with meals delivered in paper bags) until the tests came back negative, then off to our island for another five days of self-quarantine. By the end of June I had bought a trailer and a two-stroke air-cooled 2.5 hp outboard (basically a weed whacker with a propeller at the end) and registered trailer and engine. On the 4th of July the good vessel Sophia-Andreas was launched. She is very stable and tracks straight, and I love her lines.

However, the problems started immediately. The gas controller on the outboard broke (it was installed backwards, high was low and vice versa, we were lucky not to get hurt) and I ordered the part and replaced it. Also she was taking on water. I found that one of the trailer rollers exerted too much pressure on the bottom and cracked the second chine plywood. I fixed and strengthened the chine and tested for other leaks. After two rounds of waterproofing, the leak persisted with the second and third launches.

Meanwhile the rig needed adjusting. The breeze can get very stiff quickly in the Mediterranean and I found that a plain piece of line for a sheet was too hard to handle. I rigged a traveler system with blocks and it became manageable, but the boat would not tack. I asked for advice on the Wooden Boat forum, and people blamed the full-length narrow external keel and attached skeg. I ignored the advice to take a chainsaw to it but shortened the traveler and prepared for other small adjustments. Then our daughter and grandson came for three weeks and I put everything on hold to spend time with them. 

The rig is a single sprit sail with a brailing line. I found that brailing depowers the sail almost instantly, but in a stiff wind the clew flaps and creates serious wind resistance. I figured out a way to secure the clew by tying it to the mast with the end of the brailing line. The boat, having a bit less freeboard than Aerie and a generous skeg, is very efficient at rowing. 

Just as I was preparing to do another launch, there was a doozy of a thunderstorm that poured enough water on to tear the cover and fill the bottom to a sizeable depth. It took this rainwater to show me the most serious source of leakage: the pressure of the roller had also cracked the epoxy fillet at the seam between garboard and second chine.

I am having some people come over to take the boat off the trailer and flip it again. I will repair the seam, and equally importantly, will replace the rollers with cradle boards to distribute the weight. I think I know why the damage happened (the winch was attached too high on the stem and exerted too much downward pressure, something I have fixed) but I am not taking any more chances.

End of an era

Aerie, the boat I built in Ohio eight years ago, is no longer mine. A series of unfortunate events forced me to sell her for a fraction of her cost (including the trailer). After dragging her over the Rockies to California I had to put her in storage, not having a garage of my own. It was inconvenient and expensive. Eventually I moved her to the back yard, first under a tarp, then under a tent "portable garage." I built a gate in the back fence, which opens up to the grounds of a school. For a few enjoyable outings I pushed her on her trailer over a short stretch of grass to the school parking lot, hitched the trailer and took her to the water. Then the school district decided to rebuild the school and cut off access through that gate. I got Aerie out with only five days to spare before construction started, blocking the gate. 

So I advertised. Got lots of nice comments and vague interest, and a few people who were convinced they wanted to buy her. Several backed out due to advanced age and/or injuries, leaving me with $300 in forfeited deposits. I finally found a good home for her in Santa Cruz, California, just as the coronavirus lockdown was starting to take effect. The photo is from when I rigged the boat fully and tested everything. Apart from some scratches on the paint she was good as new. It broke my heart but she had to go.

At least I have built the other boat in Greece, which I have named "Sophia-Andreas" after the Greek versions of my grandchildren's names. She has her papers in order and is waiting for me when I get there. With all the travel restrictions nothing is certain, but we hope to get there in early June.

So what next on this U.S. side of the pond? I can't be water craft-less, so I am mulling over building a canoe. I was leaning towards a Hawaiian-style outrigger sailing canoe designed by Gary Dierking. But maybe I am too much of a tinkerer to fully stick to someone else's design. So I might build to a Dierking design but re-purpose one of Aerie's original lugsails (which would become a gaff sail). Or build a 15-foot American-style canoe that I have tentatively designed in two bolt-together sections (like the Dierking Wa'apa) with the option of adding an outrigger and sail(s) later. I don't know, and that keeps life interesting.

Flipped again

It took some more rework to get the centerboard to work smoothly: it was getting stuck on the way down. I had to remove the pivot bolt, to which I had foolishly added dabs of epoxy compound at the head and nut ends to seal the holes. It was a devil to remove, with the head getting badly stripped. A lot of sweat equity later, acquired while lying under the boat, I removed the CB and found that the forward end was rubbing against the CB trunk. After rasping a couple of millimeters off the right place and refinishing the  edge, I drilled out the pivot hole, filled it with epoxy, drilled through again, fitted a new bolt and problem solved finally.

The last touches involved leathering the oars and tying loops of line to fit over the thole pins (visible in the photo). Meanwhile my attempt to acquire a boat cover failed, like everything else involving people and purchases off the island in August: first the supplier was closed, then they called it was coming, then called again to say the warehouse was closed until the end of August, which will be too late. So I decided that storing a fully finished boat upside down should be safe, and I got three strong guys to help me lift the boat, remove the bricks and cradles, flip it and lay it on four bricks with styrofoam on top (photo, after touching up puttied holes with paint). This is where it will await my return in the spring. The registration paperwork I hope to complete before I leave, so I will have to get a trailer and hitch and finish the rigging, which is mercifully simple. With any luck I will launch it before next summer. Thanks for reading!

Oars and mast step

While all the rest was going on, I also made oars from 6x4 cm lumber (nominal, it is less since it's planed) cut to 2.5 m lengths. One of the pieces had served as the strongback on which the boat was built. I edge-glued 2x4.7 cm pieces on either side to make the blades. The sawing and electric and hand planing jobs were messy but nothing that a bit of epoxy filleting and lots of sanding could not fix. I rasped and sanded the oar handles and leathers (where the oar meets the thole pin) to cylindrical shapes. The oars are now epoxied and painted. I will fit strips of actual leather to reduce chafing against the thole pins, which are already in place. The end result is a hybrid between the blocky, square cross-section, narrow-bladed oars of the Mediterranean and the slimmer, round-shafted northern oars with laminated blades.

I also made and fitted the mast step. It is a square piece made out of iroko tropical hardwood, with a hole cut into it with a hole saw. I purposely made the hole slightly too small, and it took some rasping and sanding both the hole and the mast tip to assure a good fit. Then I glued and screwed the piece to a plywood base already in place on the bottom, resting on the keel and garboard cleats (I already described how I had to chisel channels for a good fit over the cleats).  Final trials of the mast need a lot of headroom and will have to wait until the boat is out of its sheltered terrace space. At that point I will fit the cross-piece that bolts onto the mast partner.

I also put two coats of epoxy on the spars (mast and sprit) and I am laying on several coats of spar varnish (photo). At some point I will lace the sail on and fit the snotter and brailing line. I also put on the gudgeons and pintles and fitted the moving part of the rudder to its top part, as well as the pivoting tiller to the rudder (last photo). It took some rasping and adjusting, so I will have t touch up the finish.

Meanwhile I inquired about an outboard motor, registering the boat and a trailer and hitch. I now know what paperwork I need, which includes certification by a naval architect, complete receipts for materials and a notarized sworn statement that I personally built the boat. I will pay a firm that specializes in all that take care of the registration. Between peak demand for trailers, trailer manufacturers closing for staff vacations and some car trouble, the trailer and hitch are proving more difficult to  procure. Since I am leaving Greece in about a month, I may have to postpone some or all of these for next spring. Until then I may use a borrowed trailer to test-launch the boat to see how she floats.

Centerboard, rudder and spars

Since the boat is right side up, I had to lift it off the ground by at least 45 cm (18") to fit the CB and put it in place when it was fully finished. I did it with the help of two people and several bricks (first photo). The CB pivots around a 6 mm (1/4 inch) bolt. The rudder needed a pivot bolt of its own so it can be lifted with a line. Gudgeons and pintles attach it to the transom. The tiller I made from pine lumber, and its jaws from two 12 mm pieces of plywood. There is a pivot bolt attaching the tiller to the rudder top, so the tiller can move up and down as needed, especially with the outboard I plan  to use.

Sandwiching lead shot inside the centerboard without mixing it with glue proved very ill-advised. The shot was small, and the gluing of the plywood layers was not tight enough, so the shot was swishing around inside.  I was force to prize the layers apart, not an easy thing given how strong epoxy is. Then I mixed the lead with latex caulk and reglued the CB. The result was an imperfect lamination that made the CB too thick to fit in the CB trunk without getting stuck. The next inevitable step was to use an electric planer to remove a couple of millimeters from one side of the CB. Not something I would recommend except in extremis. In any case, it was done with a lot of flying shavings and some gouging, but after sanding, a little puttying and more sanding the CB was ready for more work.

The work in question was fitting a block to a corner of the CB for raising and lowering it. It involved cutting a semi-circular piece off the top forward corner and chiseling channels for the two stainless steel straps that are bolted to the CB on one end and the sheave at the free end (photo). Both bolts had to be cut very short to fit inside the 24 mm-wide CB trunk. Another sheave is fitted on the corresponding corner of the CB trunk for the lifting/dropping line. Because of the extra 4.5 kg of ballast and its leverage, the fittings needed to be sturdy. The 2:1 purchase from the blocks helps. The CB was coated with epoxy but no paint or varnish, since it will be invisible and protected from UV rays. Fitting the CB into its trunk and putting in the pivot bolt were tough: imagine being on your back with a lead-weighted CB on your chest, under a boat on bricks that could come tumbling down on you, trying to thread a quarter-inch bolt through three holes that need to be precisely aligned. My wife watched over me just in case. I'm happy to say that the CB and its raising and dropping bock and tackle system were fitted well and work fine (third photo).

Before I finished assembling the CB block system, I made the spars. The mast I made from a 4 m long (13' 1") piece of fir, 75 mm (3 inches) square. As in previous times, I cut the corners off at 45 degrees (this time with a hand-operated rotary saw since I don't have a table saw) to make an octagon. I went surprisingly well. Then I used an electric planer and a palm sander to make the mast round. The sprit I made by laminating two 4 m long boards. I had to extend it to 4.3 m, which I did by gluing a lumber extension between two plywood jaws. The latter form a shallow slot for the snotter, the improbably named line that holds the sprit up and adjusts its tension. Planing and sanding turned the sprit approximately round too. Both spars are visible in the next photo.

Paint, centerboard and rudder

Once again, nail setting, puttying and sanding was followed by two epoxy coats on the decking. Three coats of white topside enamel later, the boat is gleaming and bright. I used a little paintable caulk to fill the edges of the decking purely for cosmetic reasons (the joints are solidly glued withe epoxy compound so no leaks are possible). I will need to sand the puttied holes and touch up the sheer strake paint on the outside.

For the centerboard and the rudder I calculated I needed about 6 kg (13.2 lbs) of lead weighting. I opted for lead shot which will be sandwiched between the two outer layers of each, placed in voids cut in the middle layer: a square of 30 cm a side for the CB (for 4.5 kg) and a 8.5 cm radius circle for the rudder (for 1.5 kg). The third photo shows the CB void packed with lead. In calculating the sizes I reckoned on a specific gravity of 11 for lead and a packing ratio of 78% for the little spheres (i.e. the voids between the little balls of lead will be about 22% of the space). I was a bit off and I had a little lead left over.

The fourth photo shows the top layer of the CB laid on with nails  and epoxy and weighed down with stones and a bag of cement. Nothing but the latest technology!

The last photo shows the two main parts of the rudder laminated from three layers. One of them is the pivoting bottom with its own lead ballast inside. I will need to put on the jaws and make a tiller. Both rudder and CB will be shaped hydrodynamically and finished with epoxy and varnish. More in the next post,