My 3 Spars

Aha! This has been a day of discovery for me.

Last night I tried posting the yard deflection data by formatting it in the forum "Reply" window. It looked fine until I previewed it... I mean the data was there but the formatting wasn't.

I don't have Excel on the Mac but I did prepare a Google spreadsheet with the data. But copying and pasting into a post did not work - the formatting was lost in the pasting. A couple of guys on the forum suggested creating the table and saving it as a PDF. While I knew I could read PDFs I didn't realize I could save documents in the PDF format. A little more exploring and, ta-da, I figured that out (really, really simple - I should have looked harder).

The other night I wanted to include a photo with my blog post but Flickr wouldn't do it and indicated I had to reset something or other. But tonight I tried posting a photo to the blog to see what needed resetting - and the photo posted.
So, today I learned a couple of things that ought to help me share thoughts and ideas.

And, here is the photo that would not load last night - My 3 Spars.

My 3 Spars, originally uploaded by bob.wessel.

Spars and boat bits

I am making good progress on the mast, yard and boom. Boom? Hey, didn't I finish that in December 2009? I thought so but yesterday, while I was measuring the yard deflection, I decided to recheck the boom.

Originally, the boom deflection measured 20mm when 10kg was suspended from the mid-point. Yesterday - with 12kg hung from the mid-point, the deflection measured 16mm. Did the boom become stiffer with age? Did I use a better method to measure the deflection yesterday? Is there some other explanation? I think it may be a combination of all these factors. Also, originally the boom had a slight kink in it resulting from misaligned scarph joins. But yesterday I noticed the boom is definitely straighter than it was when first built.

The boom has been scratched a bit from my travels so I decided to refinish it.

The yard and mast are nearly ready for varnish, too. I filled a few small gaps in the glue lines on both spars. I am planning to start varnishing tomorrow.

The Interlux Brightsides (yellow) paint I ordered on Friday arrived today. The bits of hardware ordered from Duckworks should arrive tomorrow.

I moved the spar bench up to the garage. This will allow me to varnish the spars and prep the hull (lots of dust) for painting concurrently. This is pretty exciting.

Now if I can figure out why my flickr photos won't post to this blog I'll be able to once again illustrate these posts.

Yard Play

After a good visit to the East Coast I am back in Central Michigan and working on the boat.

One of several concurrent projects is building the yard. It consists of four 15mm x 35mm x 3600mm staves lapped joined with 19mm blocks/spacers in the ends and at intervals along the length of the yard. The cross-section of this "blank" measures 50mm x 50mm. Tomorrow I will weigh the blank and measure its stiffness before and while trimming it to its intended cross-section of 40mm x 40mm. I plan to use multiple weights to measure the stiffness, as described on the Storer forum, so I should generate multiple data points to share with other builders on that forum.

I was too tired and the camera was too far away when I finished this evening. I'll have more photos tomorrow.

Holes in the Hull

Well, okay, maybe not "holes" in the hull although one remedial repair did involve the one intentional hole in the hull - the slot for the dagger-board.

In late January of last year I was fighting against a self-imposed deadline to get the boat ready to launch by the second of February. I rushed some of the work and am now repairing the results of that hurried work.

When I taped the seams along the chines and the transom, I applied fiberglass tape to those seams but did not have enough time to fill the weave of the FG tape. The boat leaked along the chines the day of the launching. In the weeks following the launch I filled the weave along the chines but did not pay any attention to the transom seams. I thought I had "fixed the leak." In mid-March I took the boat rowing in Richmond and had no indication of any leak. I was convinced I had fixed the leak.

Later in the spring I cut the dagger-board slot in the hull. This is always nerve-wracking - cutting a hole in a perfectly fine hull! What was I thinking? Well, the boat needs a dagger-board and the dagger-board needs a slot, so the hull had to be cut. Hey, this is all part of the design, right?

In mid-June I returned to Richmond for a day of rowing and a sail with a borrowed rig. Mike and I launched the boat. I pushed the boat toward the dinghy dock, maybe 15 yards away from the ramp. In the two minutes that it took for Mike to walk over to the dinghy dock, the boat was taking on water through the seam between the dagger-board case and the hull because the case had not been properly installed. The water was coming in at an alarming rate. We took a couple of photos for posterity and promptly pushed the boat back toward the ramp and pulled the boat out of the water.

I didn't complete the repairs last year because I decided to focus on my upcoming retirement and move. The boat has dried out and is now stored upside down in a very nice, dry barn in Central Michigan. Work has resumed.

The edge of hull where the slot is cut was eased with a router, a round-over bit and some sandpaper. The gaps between the case and the hull were filled with thickened epoxy and overlaid with 4" FG tape. The tape was well wetted out and allowed to cure. After washing with warm water, dried and sanded, a second coat of neat epoxy seems to have filled the weave of the tape. The seam between the case and the inside of the hull will be sanded and filleted with thickened epoxy to finish the repair. I am reasonably confident the slot will not leak once the repair is complete.

The tape on the original transom seams was showing signs of poor installation: Unfilled weave, obvious gaps and bubbles where the tape had not adhered to the hull, and unfilled gaps in the joins - particularly between the hull sides and the transom.

I sanded away the original tape. Rounded-over the edges to give the new tape a softer contour for a better fit. The gaps in the joins were filled with thickened epoxy followed by 4" FG tape (the original seams were done with 2" tape). Once cured, the epoxy was washed with warm water, dried and sanded. A second coat of epoxy filled the weave. These repaired seams will be sanded and faired before the hull is repainted.

While I do not know for certain the transom leaked before, I am now confident it will not leak with these repairs.

The holes in the hull have been - until proven otherwise - have been repaired.

A Week's Progress

The mast is assembled. Not without difficulties but, finally, assembled and nearly ready for varnish.

Beginning with four 16' pieces of radiata pine, I cut out the two narrow staves and prepared spacer blocks for the ladder frame, which went together easily enough - but it had a definite asymmetric taper to it. One of the staves was straight (un-tapered) and the other was decidedly more tapered than intended. While I wasn't happy with this, I continued with building the mast.

That the exaggerated asymmetric taper was not going to work easily was apparent when I fit the first wide stave to the ladder frame. The ladder frame would not line up within the 1x4 dimensions of the wide stave. I tried forcing the ladder frame into position - and I could do that. I could even do that with both wide staves. But my concern with forcing the fit was that I would induce some additional twist or bend and end up with a pretzel mast.

The solution I opted for was to remove all but one of the spacer blocks from the ladder frame, cut new spacers, and reassemble the frame paying attention to its alignment in the process. I did not cut out the long block at the foot of the mast. One other possible solution would have been to cut one side of the ladder frame free from the spacers, realign the frame and re-glue it. The happy ending to this step of the process was that ladder frame came out evenly tapered.

After shaping and squaring up the edges of the ladder frame, I was ready to glue the wide staves to the ladder frame. However, I found the assembly method described in the plans to be clumsy, messy and just unworkable for me. That method is to, beginning at the bottom of the mast, align the pieces, clamp the assembly together, wrap it with two or three wraps of packing tape, move the clamp up the mast, reclamp, tape again, and so forth until the entire assembly is clamped/taped. I struggled with handling the three 15'6" pieces while test fitting and dry practice runs of the process. I couldn't imagine trying to handle this process with epoxy added to the mix.

I built a set of stands or props to hold the assembly off the spar bench and to allow room for bar clamps used to hold the mast together. These supports were 75mm x 150mm pieces of 6mm ply screwed to short pieces of 19mm stock, which in turn were screwed to the spar bench. I placed a wide stave on the supports, placed the ladder frame on the stave and then placed the remaining stave on top of the ladder frame. Several dry fits and minor adjustments were needed to get the alignment right.

Once satisfied with the alignment I went ahead with the gluing. I mixed several small batches of epoxy as needed because I did not want a large batch going off before I could finish the gluing sequence. Glued up and held together with 16 bar clamps, the mast was, in rough form, assembled.

When the clamps came off, the wide staves were planed to match the tapered shape of the ladder frame. Hand planes and the ROS were put to good use to bring the assembly to its nearly final form. After trimming the mast to the proper length, I planed the taper in the foot of the mast to fit the mast step. The small router was then used to round-over the edges of the mast.

Those four 16' pieces of 1x4 radiata pine I began with are now a mast! I am waiting for the fiberglass cloth I ordered to arrive so I can reinforce the ends of the mast as described in the plans. Once reinforced with FG, the mast will be ready to varnish.

I am pleased that I took the time to correct the obvious problem with the ladder frame. There was a time not so long ago I would have shrugged and plodded forward - forever unhappy with the results. I am happy with how I built the mast.

In the meantime, I am working on repairing the transom seams, the dagger-board slot in the hull and preparing the hull and foils for paint.

Springtime! Reality re-established.

Much has transpired since I suspended reality last September.

I retired in December.

In January I left Sacramento and hit the road. Since then I have visited or driven through California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas (man, that is a BIG state), Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio. Whew! I've thoroughly enjoyed myself visiting family and friends (and wondering why I haven't done more visiting over the years).

Central Michigan has become my home base. Thanks to my sister and brother-in-law I have a great place to stay, house the GIS and WORK on the GIS. This is also a great place to plot and plan new adventures - and that next boat.

As for the GIS, I am building the mast, working on the yard and getting ready to re-paint the hull. I ordered a sail kit from SailRite so over the next few weeks I expect to be building the sail!

Well, this post ought to serve the purpose of breaking out my self-imposed hibernation and re-establish reality.

Reality Suspended

The time has come to face reality and make some choices.

I am retiring in less than four month. My plan is to leave California in early January to drive cross-country visiting friends and family along the way to Virginia. In Virginia I will pick-up a 13' Boler camper trailer and truly begin the adventure.

In the meantime I wanted to “finish” my Goat Island Skiff, take it to Paulina Lake in Oregon and enjoy sailing this beautiful boat I built.

I have been experiencing increasing levels of anxiety as each day fell away from the calendar. I need to pare my possessions down to a bare minimum. The goal is to leave California with what I want in the Jeep and to not have anything in a storage locker in California.

I cannot do both – prepare the boat for Paulina Lake and get rid of those possessions I do not want. I have chosen to focus on the big picture: preparing to leave California.

The boat work can wait. I have been offered space in central Michigan to store the boat and to stay as long as I like. I will take the boat to Michigan in January or later in the spring depending on the weather. Space and time will let me finish the Goat Island Skiff in proper fashion next spring.

So, the bottom line is, I will not be building the mast or the sail this month. I am, in effect, suspending work on the GIS to give me the time to prepare for moving out of the apartment and storage locker on January 1, 2011.

As work resumes and progresses, I will post updates.