Sailboats Fair and fine, # 47 : read older posts first

Hi folks, Well here is where we are with the boat I am building today. Thought you might like to know what I do when I'm not on the keyboard. When the little boat is finished we will embark on high adventure. Now you have to know that at 70 couple of years old getting out of bed in the morning is somewhat of an adventure.

Picture at the top is the just glassed topsides

Next is the Rudder

Below it is the rudder hatch and hatch slides laying with them

The tp picture show the glass with onr coat of epoxy. With one more coat of epoxy on top then a little sanding and I'll start putting hatches and trim on her. One job I'm kind of dreading is bending a toe rail around the deck and bending half rounds on the hull as rub rails.. I will probably have to steam bend them and nail on to the hull to dry. Then drill the holes and counter sink for screws take the strips off and butter them up with epoxy and screw back on. I will likely have to have help doing the bending and nailing on when I take the strips out of the steamer as it has to be done fast. The good thing there is, that job is a ways off as I have to roll her over and glass the sides first. As with most things I dread doing, I start thinking about them way in advance so I'll have plenty of worrying time before I start.
I am really anxious to get the topside trim on and a coat of white primer, so the hull work will have to wait a little bit. I want to see what she will look like with hatches trim and a coat of white. Most if the trim is shellacked and it looks pretty good but will take on a darker amber color with several coats of varnish. I really hope the pine trim holds up well. It's a new thing for me ,varnish over pine but it will give me the color I want and so it will be a while in the weather before I can call it a success. I think it is so much prettier that teak or mahogany. Some of that is that I like the terpentine smell of working in pine.
Doug

Saiboats Fair and Fine: Read oldest posts first

The cabinets and bunks was all aluminum and were built in as strength members to the whole mono coupe design. With the centerboard trunk going all the way through the deck it became the partition between the head and galley. An excellent use of a centerboard trunk if I ever saw one. With a wide and comfortable birth forward and two seat berths in the saloon she was comfortable for four. We even managed to sleep two on the saloon sole one night.

The engine arrived. And we set her on the engine mounts and it was a fit. The engine was a single cylinder Yanmar horizontal cylinder. There was an awful lot of questioning about the size of the engine. The general consensus was that the little diesel would not push the boat in anything but a dead calm. But I was optimistic. Just a little too optimistic a twelve horse engine would have better. But she pushed Woftrap hundreds of miles through canals both with and against the wind sometimes 25 knot winds and she always made at least some headway. The engine was under the cockpit sole and had a hatch for access to it. If I were to build the boat again I would build a bridge across the front end of the cockpit. It would add strength to the boat though it wasn't need. The big advantage would be it would give good access to the engine from inside the cabin and no leaky hatch would be required in the cockpit. It would also give enough height over the engine to allow for a vertical cylinder engine. I don't think horizontal engines are available today. A bridge would greatly reduce the cockpit size so there would not be laying down room on the seats. The worry over the big cockpit taking two tons of water would be reduced though. On coastal runs out in the Gulf Stream where waves could get huge in twenty knots of wind out of the North that was a concern.

The ½ inch thick rudder needed to be faired on the leading edge back to about half the rudder width. Here I learned something about Epoxy. Not having used it before I was ignorant of it's heat generating ability. I read the directions but didn't believe it could catch on fire if put on too thick. Man was I wrong I plastered it on filled with micro balloons which of course helped to hold the heat in. In a moment it was smoking and the whole shop came running. It didn't catch on fire but it heated to a dark brown and cracked wide open making a believer out of me. That's the trouble with being the boss and trying to do something tedious. There is never the time to do it right. I gave the job to a machinist apprentice who did and excellent job.

Foam was sprayed inside and then the outside painted with Emron. We needed a shed to polish turbine blades in so we bought the trailer off an old tractor trailer. We brought it to the shop, jacked it up on blocks and took the rear axles and wheels and made a four wheel trailer for, Wolf Trap, and took her so miles to Gwens Island to a boat carpenter to have her wooden interior put in. We worked on the spars and painted them. A local sailmaker made us a set of sails and we waited for our boat to come home.