Planing Around

Buzzing around Sarasota Bay

2011-11-09T23:48:00.000-05:00

Hugh Horton and I have been emailing back and forth about all sorts of boaty stuff ever since The Goat's debut at Cedar Key. We had not met in person and Hugh was interested in seeing The Goat so I was delighted when Hugh invited me to hang out at the Buzzelli Multihull Regatta hosted by the Sarasota Sailing Squadron. I was prepared to camp but when I got there I found out that Hugh had scored me a bunk on the Ball's brothers spectaculat Gerr designed trawler "Roseate".

Buzzelli Regatta is a diverse gathering of small multis like Windriders, Hobies, Wetas, F16s, F18s, Stillettos, F-boats and others.

The Goat was definitely the odd boat out.

Friday night, Jim Brown, the legendary multihull pioneer and designer gave a fascinating talk about the history of multis and his Outrig project. This was the first time I had heard Jim's presentation. He is a great story teller and the twinkle in his eye, when he recounts some of his numerous adventures, really shows that he's lived life to the fullest. My favorite answer that Jim gave to an audience question about if the ancient South Pacific light multis were so good why did the Europeans go with giant, unwieldy and slow ballasted monohulls. Jim's anwser: "They needed to carry cannon", Perfect!!

The clubhouse was full of young racer guys who, when Jim began his talk, were not paying much attnetion. Many of them had no idea who he was. But as the presentation went on more and more people were paying attention and by the end pretty much everyone in the room was enjoying Jim's show. The goal of the Outrig project is to chronicle the history of the modern multihull. This is a great effort as the early pioneers are getting on in years and, unfortunately they will not be around forever. Outrig will make sure that they are not forgotten.

Saturday we woke up to Hugh's awesome coffee and I was invited to have breakfast at Meade's RV. Meade makes a serious stick to your ribs and keep you fueled for a long day on the water bowl of cerial, nuts, berries and all sorts of other goodness. It was delicious and worked as advertised.

We got the Goat rigged and launched by pushing off the trailer onto the grassy shore and then dragging to the water's edge. This works OK but I noticed that the Weta tris have a super slick dolly and trailer arrangement which allow trundling the boat over roughish terrain with relative ease. Definitely will have to gin up something similar for the Goat. There goes project #1276. While I was rigging the Goat, Pat Ball came by with his grandson Markus. They had his Bufflehead in the back of the pickup truck and launched nearby.

Hugh and I went sailing on the Goat but never got to sail alongside Pat.

Eventually we met up on the beach and all of us took off in the Goat.

This was the first time I had more than two adults in the boat. The pleasent breeze was enough to give us a few exhillerating reaches and the occasional Yeehaah! With Hugh and I sitting on the rail and Pat driving we almost stayed with the windriders on the race course. The boat feels a good bit faster when I sail solo so will have to try and hunt down a Windrider one of these days *he says with an evil but not cocky grin*.

We had no fun at all!

Saturday night Meade Gougeon gave a presentation on how the modern multihulls evolved to be able to tack down wind. Once again I was fascinated by the history and how far we have come in a relatively short time.

I thouroughly enjoyed meeting a lot of folks and making new friends. Had to pack up and leave late Saturday night as I had to be home on Sunday. Fortunatley it's barely a one and a half hour drive to our house in St Pete. What a sailing paradise we live in!

Goat Camping on the Indian River Lagoon

2011-10-30T22:24:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago Kristi and I went camping for the first time in The Goat. We were late getting to Honest John's Fish Camp on Friday but were rewarded with a very pleasant sunset cruise down the Indian River Lagoon.

We arrived at spoil island IR1 as the sun was setting in an absolutely spectacular sunset and were greeted by the usual suspects from WCTSS.

We quickly made camp before total darkness fell. The hot dogs on the fire tasted much better than they should. It was late and we were starving. I did not sleep very well the first night as I kept being woken by strange rustling sounds. I finally got a flashlight out and discovered a rat had chewed a giant hole in our brand new soft cooler. Good news is that he did not get into our food.

Saturday we chilled at the camp, swapped a lot of sailing lies and took the Goat out a few times in the perfect 15knot winds. Sometimes I can't decide what is more fun - sailing or talking about sailing.

We had another campfire that evening and then crashed for the night. Slept great in the steady breeze. Glenda and Mel also took their time packing up and we had a great sail together back to the launch site. The weather was a perfect 15knots with higher gusts and made for a quick and exciting sail back.

We had the first of three reefs in the sail and it was about the right balance of speed vs capsize risk for warm weather. We would have reefed down to the second reef if the water had been cold but it's still warm enough that a capsize would not be too unpleasant.

When we got back to HJFC Jose, Ron and Terry were still there and along with Glenda and Mel we all decided to have a long and relaxing lunch at Sebastian Beach Inn before hitting the road. The food was pretty good and, as usual the stimulating conversation ranged all over the place.

Heres a little video of us sailing down the Indian River Lagoon

Lake Tarpon Daysail

2011-09-11T00:22:00.004-04:00

I took The Goat for a daysail at Lake Tarpon, with WCTSS (West Coast Trailer Sailer Squadron). Ended up having a great time but it took some effort to get out on the water. Early on in our sailing life we figured out cancelling trips because of iffy forecasts, more often than not, results in missed opportunities so we don’t generally cancel sailing plans unless the forecast is truly apocalyptic or below 60F. From the start, I think something was trying to tell me not to go on this trip but I don’t listen so well. Friday night I was rushing to finish some trailer mods which took longer than anticipated and then I had to jury rig the drain plug ‘cause I apparently lost it. The whole afternoon had felt like a bit of a fight to get ready. Finally around 10:30 pm all I had left to do was put a few things in the van. Our old van gets driven maybe once a month and I had seen a few ants in it last time I drove it. I open the van and immediately notice a pretty substantial ant trail. I follow it under some stuff and discover a giant ant’s nest. We are talking a writhing pile of ants a good 10x18 inches. Yikes, horror movie music playing in my head! I can’t drive the van like this. The ants are likely to devour me before even I get to the lake. So Kristi and I waged chemical warfare. It was midnight by the time we got done cleaning up the mess.

Wake up this morning and it’s pouring. Radar looks like a stalled front is going to sit over Lake Tarpon at least through mid day.

I was not about to give up, having fought so valiantly to get ready the night before. Driving to the lake, I was wondering how many folks would show up. As I pulled into the launch ramp it was great to see that a good number of like-minded damn-the-weather sailors were hanging out under the shelter. We proceeded to have a good time socializing and playing “who can pull up the best radar plot on their phone”. The weather was not improving fast but it was improving and we started to get hungry so a few folks jumped in Ron’s Sea Pearl "Whisper", Becky and Ed launched their Adventure Islands and they set off for lunch at the Dockside Sports Bar and Grill. There was not enough wind for the motor and oarless Goat to make it to the restaurant so I hopped a car ride with Jose and Dimitri. We had better wind along highway 19 and handily beat the sailboats. Eventually a bunch of folks showed up and we continued socializing and filling our bellies with reasonably decent food, for a sports bar.

After lunch Jose dropped me off at the ramp and I got ready to attempt sailing The Goat out of the weed infested, directly-up-wind, channel. As I was launching, Ron and the AIs came in so there must have been some wind on the lake. With renewed interest I proceeded to launch and attempt sailing up the channel. There was a faint breeze but no matter what I did I could not get The Goat to dig in and start sailing upwind. I don’t know what exactly was going on but I suspect that the huge amounts of weeds grabbing at the board and rudder combined with the pathetic, fluky wind conspired to thwart any windward progress. After making a general spectacle of myself, but not scratching the boat (thanks Ed!) I dropped the sail and resigned myself to paddling out the channel. The Goat has oarlocks but alas no oars yet, so all I have is an emergency paddle. Good thing this was not an emergency as the paddle is very ineffective at propelling the boat. After trying multiple techniques I settled on paddling The Goat as if it was a standup paddle board. I’ve tried real paddle boards and they are a good way to exert maximum effort for minimum progress. The Goat is the world’s worst paddle board. So after paddling what felt like the length of the Everglades Challenge, I finally got out into some clear air. Oh, I forgot to mention that the paddle has a hand grip hole in the blade and a funky T shaped handle so that you can use it as a boat hook, in a pinch. Well that hole would grab weeds and sling them into the boat every time I switched paddling sides. What a mess. Since I was on a lee shore and would not have time to drift and hoist the sail I dropped anchor and raised the sail. The wind was still real fluky so, for added sport, the boat sailed a couple complete circles around the anchor while I was hoisting sail – nevertheless, the hoisting went smoothly. I weighed anchor, which came up as a giant ball of muddy weeds neatly wrapped in some chain. As the shore was quickly approaching, I had to start sailing immediately – so, the muddy mess went into the already weed-coated boat.

John Chestnut park is a nice place with good ramps but lots of weeds.

Finally out on the open lake, I was rewarded with a pleasant breeze and spent several hours lazily messing about at 3-5 knot boat speeds. The weather had cleared up and it was glorious. Not having a means to effectively propel the boat, if the wind completely died, I stayed reasonably close to the ramp but still had a great time checking out wildlife in the reeds and just generally relaxing. Finally, I was forced to head in as the sun got low over the horizon.

Took my time packing up, watched the sunset and headed home. Had to work for this time on the water but, as always, it was well worth it.

Bobbing on a Saturday

2011-08-07T13:30:00.001-04:00

We spent the day at Ft De Soto bobbing and relaxing with friends from WCTSS . The day started out windless but the current was in our favor so we all drifted from the launch ramps over to the north side of De Soto beach and cooled off by soaking in the water. The usual afternoon storms started building but they looked like they were going to miss us so some of us decided to wait them out on the beach. Soon enough the storms cleard out and we were rewarded with a decent sailing breeze. Ron yelled let's go and we all jumped in our boats and sailed out Bunces Pass and into the Gulf. We chased each other around for a while, enjoying the light breeze. Ron, at one point skimmed over a shoal and we followed in a slightly different and shallower spot. Kristi pulled the bord up all the way and I had maybe 3 inches of rudder down. We skimmed right over in, maybe 6 inches of water. What fun! Fred, in his Sea Pearl mono "Deja Vu", followed behind us and had to get out for a second to shove over the shoall. Don't follow The Goat into shoals unless you draw 3 inches or so :-). We had a slow but nice run back to the ramps with us in The Goat and 3 Sea Pearls sailing in close company.

Planing Around Canadian Hole

2011-08-02T22:55:00.001-04:00

Just got back from a week long trip to Avon on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Kristi and I trailered The Goat 1800 miles round trip. Avon is a wind surfer's and kiteboarder's Mecca because the sound side is shallow with a strong, predominantly on-shore wind. You screw up and it blows you back to the beach. Very convenient. There are few boat launch sites because of the shallow water so the best option was to launch at Canadian Hole which is mostly a windsurfer's spot.

One is not like the others.

The first day out the winds were absolutely nuclear. A nearby weather station was reporting 20-30 knots. Since we had no idea how The Goat would handle such conditions we started out with the sail reefed all the way down. We launched and were wondering how wild a ride this would be as the boat was tugging pretty hard just holding her head to wind, in knee deep water. We should'n have been concerned. As soon as we got some crew weight in the boat she settled down and while the ride was very lively we at no time felt out of control or that a capsize was imminent. We had no trouble making way upwind. The water was essentially flat so that helped but it felt like we had enough drive to punch into bigger chop.

Discussing takeoff strategy.

Reefed sail shape looks good.

Big grin = big fun

The winds tended to be light in the mornings and picked up in the afternoons. This allowed us to give Goat rides to interested family members in the morning and flog The Goat in the afternoon.

Perfect 10knot breeze.

Bella, my niece, was interested in the boat so we went for a spin. She has been sailing since she was a baby but on a keel boat so the liveliness of The Goat scared her a bit, at first, but I kept the boat pretty flat and she soon was having a good time.

What does this do?

Lets go!

I think she is instructing us on where to sit.

Once we figured out that The Goat handles the blow with ease it was time to see what she could do. We never again had wind in the high twenties but we did get consistent 18-22. We hoisted full sail and proceeded to reach back and forth, behaving as if we were sailing our Hobie16. Solo the boat is amazingly manageable when severely overpowered. The yard and battens keep the sail from flogging so luffing upwind is quite civilized. By myself I had way too much sail to go well to windward, as I had to luff a lot but it was doable. The payoff was the broad reaches when the boat would easily get on plane and I was able to sustain 10knot boat speeds for as long as I had sea room. Two up we did much better upwind but the max sustained speed dropped to 9knots. I think my crew was too far forward.

All of this blasting around did come at a price. We capsized and bailed the boat out 4 times in one afternoon.

Righting the boat is easy. She is very stable on

her side so there is no risk of going turtle.

Bailing is a workout!

The first capsize was caused by the mainsheet getting tangled in the tiller on a tack. The other three were off the wind death rolls. I had read somewhere that if, when runing, you let the yard go too far forward bad things may happen with the boat rolling to windward. The first time it happened it was so quick we did not realize what happened. I turned down wind and sheeted out too much and the boat immediately rolled. There was no time to react. We made several more planing reaches and runs without incident and then it happened again. We had to figure out exactly what was causing this so we decided that the last run of the day I would sheet out in small increments and try to sneak up and manage the roll. The run started off fine, we got on plane and I started sheeting out while carefully watching the for the roll. As soon as the yard went a bit past where it should be we rolled. No warning, no way to counter, just a fast hard roll. We were pretty tired by then so we just hung out on the capsized hull and let the wind blow us to shore. Below is a very poor quality video of that last roll when we were ready for it but still got dunked. So the moral of the story is Do Not let the yard go too far forward of the mast when you have full sail up, in a blow!

Shelter skelter

2011-05-19T23:26:00.000-04:00

Was planning to do the third and final coat of epoxy on the gunwales, last weekend, but the weather had other plans. A severe thunderstorm (news said 70mph gusts) came through and blew my boat shelter to bits. This shelter survived a lot of thunderstorms last summer but the addition of the bug screen sides, in preparation for a bug free clearcoat session, must have added too much windage. Fotunately no damage to The Goat but the shelter tore and the boat filled up with a lot of water. A drain plug of some type may be in my future. Two weeks ago we had to delay leaving for Cedar Key by about an hour in order to not drive The Goat through a downpour. Boat with no drain plug is already getting old. After buying another shelter, cleaning the mess up and and setting up the new shelter I had just enough time left to install the oarlocks.

Barely missed the boat!

This is water from just hosing the salt off. I tilted the trailer back to make it easier to bail but still a pain. On the plus side, the deck plates did not leak a drop. I used vaseline on the seals which helps a lot.

The oarlock is located and temporarily screwed down to immbilize it so I could scribe an accurate outline onto the gunwale. I'm using stainless oarlocks from West Marine. Looked everywhere and these are the nicest ones I found. Many of the bronze ones look very rough, like they were cast using 1800's technology. While I like the look of weathered bronze it's not quite in line with the Goat's modern aesthetic.

After scribing the oarlock socket's outline onto the gunwale I set up my trusty Bosh router with adjustable fence and held my breath while routing out a pocket for the oarlock socket flange. This is a DO NOT EFF UP MOMENT. One spastic move and irreparable damage occurs. Thankfully all went well.

Router depth stop was set to the thickness of the oar lock socket flange. The corner radii, from the router bit, had to be cleaned up with a small chisel. I found an Xacto knife to be useful for this.

And we have flush mounted oarlock sockets.

Total time to date, not counting rebuilding the shelter: 440hrs

Launch!

2011-05-16T01:39:00.000-04:00

Don't have time to write much about the launch so here's just a quick update. We managed to get The Goat into saileable shape for the Cedar Key small boat meet. There's no clearcoat over the epoxy and the hull is just primer but all of the essential bits are there. We launched Saturday May 7th next to the Island Place condos in Cedar Key. Winds were less than 10 knots which was perfect for a first sail. On Sunday we got a bit more wind and had the boat moving nicely. This is going to be fun. Have much to learn about sailing these oldfangled rigs.

Lots of pics in the web albums and a quckie video of the first day out on the water. We're using the GoPro camera handheld which is a bit awkward without a viewfinder so the video is framed very poorly but you get the idea.

Photos of The Goat

Photos of the Cedar Key Small Boat Meet

Massive push to the finish

2011-05-13T23:02:00.001-04:00

Got behind on the blog as usual but this time it's because I was working on the boat every spare minute to make the Cedar Key maiden launch date. And we made it. Have lots of pics but first, in order to maintain chronological continuity and prevent any nasty temporal paradoxes, I will document how we got there in this mother of all posts.

Fitted and glued the inwales, knees and breasthook. Lots of fiddly parts to fit, trim fit again, trim again and again and again, for many hours. But the result is pretty rewarding.

Inwales trimmed to length and clamped in place ready for breast hook final fitting.

Breast hook halves ready to glue in.

Fitting transom knees.

Odd angles everywhere.

Was going to do the same semicircular cut as on the breast hook, to match the inwale spacers but the angles got the better of me and I gave up and cut the offending bit off. Another inwale spacer fills the space.

Used the deck plate frame as a template to trim masking tape. Keeps the sealant mess to a minimum.

I'm using deck plates which have low profile frames with no fasteners so spring sticks, made from ply offcuts, hold them in place while the goop cures.

Got a power plane to plane down the gunwales but it also makes short work of little scarfs like these for the mahogany gunwale caps.

Couple minutes later.

Gunwale structure glued up slightly above the ply, ready to be planed down to the ply.

After power planing and some hand planing and sanding.

With gunwale caps on, edges rounded with roundover bit in router and final sanded with 120 grit.

Bow sanded ready for epoxy coats.

Gunwales ready for epoxy.

First coat of epoxy attracts bastard bugs.

@$^%&*&&!!

Flipped boat over to finish bottom. The runners reveal a couple of flat spots on either side of the bottom ply joint. Ignoring them for now, will fair later.

Flush cutting bit in router makes quick work of cutting the daggerboard slot.

2" glass tape ready to epoxy on chines.

Glass tape epoxied to chines and bow. I used a plane with the blade set at an angle to trim down the tape edges while the epoxy was still green.

The fairing begins. I have hollows where the screws pulled the ply hull sides in and the tape has to be faired in.

It snowed in FL, in April!

First pass with fairing compound sanded and wiped clean. It's not perfect but it will have to do for now. Will coat with epoxy primer for Cedar Key then finish fairing later.

I used System 3 Quick Fair and it is awesome stuff. Will never go back to mixing microbaloons again.

Added a layer of 4oz cloth to the bow for extra beaching abrasion protection.

Epoxy coating the bottom, of course, attracts every bug in the hood.

While the boat was upside down on sawhorses, I used the trailer as a straight clamping jig for the yard and rudder case / tiller.

Total time to date: 435hrs

Inwales

2011-04-20T00:42:00.001-04:00

Took forever but all of the inwale spacers are glued in and epoxy coated and sanded, ready for inwales to be attached. I'm shaping the breasthook and knees before gluing in the inwales so that I have room to adjust things.

All spacers glued on ready to fit inwales.

All of the sidearm tops are hidden by strategically placed inwale spacers.

Trimming the inwales to length.

Fitting the breasthook. Took a while fitting the funky angles. No epoxy yet.

I was not crazy about how the daggerboard case top was looking so I made a ply cover for it that I like much better. Blue tape is masking for big fillets to hide the gaps in the butt splices.

Took a few hours off from building to go see all the cool boats at the annual Cortez Small Craft Festival. Click on the slide show to go to the Picasa web album.

Total time to date: 347hrs

Gunwales

2011-04-11T00:49:00.000-04:00

I decided to make the gunwales a bit wider (10mm to be exact) than stock. The stiffer gunwale faired out a couple of flat spots around bulkhead #3. The decision was also driven by material on hand. I had 3/4" thick doug fir and Dave gave me a few of his 1/4" thick mahogany kayak strips to cap the gunwales with. As a side benefit, hiking should be more comfortable on the bum. Before gluing on the gunwales I shaped the stem.

Used a piece of Dacron line soaked in epoxy to form the stem. Heard of this technique being used on the leading edges of dagger boards and rudders. Worked well and is tough as nails, except it fuzzes when sanded. Not an issue here as the whole thing gets a layer of fiberglass tape over it. Will have to experiment with other types of line, maybe nylon will sand nicely.

Covered the wet epoxy with clear packing tape to shape the rope as much as possible. Very little sanding was needed to blend the stem into the hull sides.

17 ft douglas fir gunwale strips laminating.

Went to Anderson Lumber in St Pete to get the gunwales milled to size. The guys at Anderson are super nice and real helpful. Here the laminated gunwale strip is going through a 1930's vintage 30" monster, cast iron, thicknesser.

That machine is amazing. Imagine 80 years in industrial service.

Fred and assistant cutting the bevel on the underside of the gunwale.

My wood shop, well maybe not. Anderson Lumber's main shop.

Got the gunwales home and clamped to the sides in order to shape the bow. Used a string line to find the location and angle of the gunwale cut. Feels good to see the string line, attached to the center of the transom, bisect the dagger board case and end up in the very middle of the stem. Maybe the boat is turning out straight.

Marking the cut.

Clamped a block of wood to act as a fence. I stick a bit of sandpaper to the block so that is resists moving around and does not have to be clamped tightly.

Pull saw does the trick. I eyeballed the vertical angle.

Cut and cleaned up. You can see the sanded rope stem here.

Since the gunwales will be capped with mahogany, I decided to run a strip of it down the middle of the breast hook.

Fitting up the mahogany strip.

After the gunwales were cut and fitted at the bow I screwed them to the hull sides making sure that each temporary screw hole would later be hidden by the inwale spacers. This let me eyeball everything for fairness without the clamps getting in the way. It also decreased the alingnment drama during gluing.

Can you guess what is going on here? Gunwales gluing, but the very last inch or so, aft of the clamps, was slightly pulling away from the hull due flex in the ply. So this rig applies just the right amount of pull in the right direction to close the gaps. Note the dead blow hammer used as lever arm weight adjuster. Very proud of this rig.

Mmmm me likey!

Total time to date: 311hrs

Inwale spacers

2011-04-03T22:34:00.001-04:00

The router is getting a workout. I used a flush trim bit to trim the seat tops flush with the bulkheads then hit them with a roundover bit. Set up a jig on my plunge router to cut the inwale spacers with a semicircular cut on each end. Took most of the afternoon to do it but they look good.

Router with 3/4" bit screwed to wooden jig that centers a 3/4" wide piece of cedar under the bit.

Six foot long, 3/4" wide cedar inwale stock slid into jig.

3/4" thick cedar strip in jig. Note stop that sets the proper length for the spacer without crushing the fragile tips.

Plunge cut begins.

A lot of noise and dust later we have 52 spacers, + a few spares.

A quick sanding with 120grit wrapped around a 3/4" dowel cleans up the cutouts.

Boat shed in full swing.

Total time to date: 287hrs

Center case, and seat top fillets

2011-04-03T00:25:00.001-04:00

Glued the reinforcing gusset to the front of the center case before attaching the center case to the hull. The gusset helped hold the center case square.

Center case smeared with thickened epoxy, ready to set in hull.

Only one bar clamp was needed to hold it in place.

Masked seat tops for filleting.

Center case glued in. Center seat side cleats are also on. Leaving the center seat off for now for easy access to some finish work I need to do underneath.

Total time to date: 278hrs

Moving day

2011-03-31T00:27:00.000-04:00

Once the seat tops were glued on the Goat got moved out of Dave's garage and under a temporary shelter in my back yard. Hopefully now that it's at my house progress will be much faster. Of course we have had one deluge day after another since the boat came home. It's F#$%Q@#$ing pouring as I write this. The shelter keeps most of the water off but still need a tarp to protect the boat. Ah the joys of shade tree boat building.

Leaving Dave's garage

The new boat shed.

Fitting the seat tops

2011-03-30T21:58:00.000-04:00

Aaargh I'm really doing a bad job keeping this blog current. Boat building is inching along. Finally got to fit and glue the seat tops. Having the boat on it's trailer from early on has been a great help. First of all the boat can be moved around easily but also the trailer is a rigid frame that allows for easy leveling of the boat. It came in handy while fitting the seat tops as I was able to square the boat up using the trailer frame as a strong back.

Inside of forward buoyancy tank epoxy coated and ready for seat top.

Rear tank epoxy coated and ready to be sealed

Mid seat shaping to hull side contour. I used the same basic procedure for the front and rear seat tops. The front was pretty easy but the rear took a while because of the notches needed for the transom corner framing.

Butting the oversize seat top up against the hull side and transferring the hull contour by using a small scrap of ply as a guide. Once one side is done repeat on other side but sneak up on it to not cut the seat too short.

I levelled the dagger board case top fore and aft by adjusting the trailer tongue jack. Once the dagger board case top was level I clamped the seat top to it and levelled it at the hull side then drew a pencil line on the hull side under the seat top. This line is a guide to gluing on the mid seat side cleats.

Ziplock filled with thickened epoxy depositing a nice fat bead onto seat top supports.

Took more weight than I thought to get the seat top to lay flat and in contact with all of the supports.

Front seat top being glued down.

Overview of the mess.

Total time to date 270hrs

Mast step

2011-02-20T21:53:00.000-05:00

I'm behind on updating this blog but the good news is that building is progressing. I've done a fair bit of final epoxy coating and touchup sanding. None of which makes for interesting pictures.
In preparation for gluing the seat tops I had to make the mast step and partners. These are simple bits of douglas fir with appropriately sized and located holes to receive the mast. A while back, while browsing the isles of oddball "tools" at Harbor Fright I stumbled upon an adjustable hole drilling rig that would be perfect for drilling the mast holes. It appears that this tool is made by drunk monkeys as I had to go through the whole stack to find a straightish one. But it was something like $4.99 and if it worked it would save a ton of sanding the holes to size. The tool is awful to set to the desired diameter and so that both arms are equidistant from the center but once set up it does a surprisingly good job.

First I wrapped a couple layers of 2" glass tape around the mast base and at the partners to protect the mast from chafe. The diameter of the wrapped and sanded areas was used to size the hole in the mast step and partners

The el cheapo but pretty functional rig drilling a slightly larger hole than the mast diameter..

Just because it looks cool on the Subie.

Total hrs to date: 260

Framing Hull Details

2011-01-23T22:06:00.000-05:00

Daggerboard case is finished and fitted to hull but not glued in yet. All of the front and rear seat support framing is in place.

Two halves ready to be bonded together. I epoxy coated the crap out of the insides as repair in there will be difficult.

Shaping the bottom of the cedar framing down to the curvature of the ply sides. The curve cut from the plans matches the bottom curve perfectly so no fiddly fitting required.

Daggerboard case fitted in place. The top needs to be trimmed down to mid seat height and I'm going to do it with the router or table saw rather than hacking at it once already installed in the boat.

I used two extruded aluminum rulers to transfer the seat bottom to the hull sides. This would have worked great if one of the extrusions was not bent. Did not notice that until later but caught it before gluing in the seat cleats. Had to do it over.

Front seat cleats gluing. Marking the hull sides was a royal pain also the cleats did not want to lay against the hull sides with just clamp pressure so I used a couple of screws from outside to pull them in place. Hope that did not distort the hull.

Rear seat cleats installed and seat support framing clamped in place.

Front seat support framing being glued in.

Clamps everywhere! I'm using two ratchet straps to pull the hull sides in slightly ahead and behind the mid seat bulkhead in order to fair the gunwhales. This is tricky as just a bit too much tension and you get a nasty flat spot but without the straps I get a nasty flat spot at the side arms.

Total time to date: 249hrs

Daggerboard Case

2010-12-18T19:26:00.000-05:00

The daggerboard case got framed up today. Inside of the case will be lined with outdoor carpet to make the board slide with slight friction. The hope is that the board will stay at any height you put it and that the carpet will protect the daggerboard finish. I mocked it all up on the bench first, with oversize spacers then took a bit off the spacers until the friction felt about right. Don't know how this will behave once wet and after the carpet ages a bit but I'm planning on gluing the carpet in only at the top and bottom so that it can be cut/chiseled/beaten out of the daggerboard case if tweaks are needed.

Test fit to get the inside clearance for the daggerboard just right.

Closeup of the carpet.

Daggerboard case interior framing.

Total time to date: 229hrs

Cleaning up the bottom

2010-12-12T23:56:00.000-05:00

Now that the bottom is on, we turned the boat over again and trimmed the bottom to the hull sides then rounded the chine to a nice radius. The hull is starting to get a bit to heavy for Kristi to turn over in the air so we carry it into the yard set it in the grass then roll. It's still pretty easy for the two of us to carry around. The bottom trimming and rounding took a good bit longer than planned, yeah I know what's new. First of all, I could not find my laminate trimming bit for the router so instead of stopping and going to the store for another one I decided to just man up and hand plane the bottom to size. In retrospect this was a mistake as it took way to long. And by the time I got the the last mm, where you have to be a bit careful to not gouge the hull sides, serious fatigue was setting in. Fortunately Sanding Queen (queue ABBA) had just gotten back from a Christmas party (no spouses yey) so she was able to come in and help finish the job :-)

You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life

See that girl, watch that scene, dig in the sanding queen, oh yeah.....

Hull bottom trimmed, sanded and ready for epoxy coat.

Closeup of radiused chine. I find it tricky to hand sand a nice even radius in solid wood but it's a lot easier in ply as the layers act like gages. If the lines formed by the ply layers are parallel and not wavy then the radius is reasonably constant.

First coat of epoxy is on. Only one coat for now. I wanted to have the wood sealed so that it would be ding resistant. Plus I can work on the boat outside and not worry about a lttle water splashning on it. The last two coats will go on at the same time as the chines get fiberglass tape.

Total time to date: 225hrs

The bottom goes on

2010-12-05T22:52:00.000-05:00

The bottom panel butt splice epoxy cured overnight. Today we cut and installed the bottom panel but first I had to cut limber holes in two bulkheads.

Clamped on a piece of scrap ply with a pilot hole in it to guide the hole saw.

Cutting limber hole.

All done, just a bit of sanding to clean it up.

Marking out the hull profile on the bottom panel.

Taking a break while the hull bottom outline is lofted.

Hull bottom cut out.

Hull and bottom ready for dry fit.

We propped the bottom up over the hull before applying the epoxy in an attempt to keep as much of the goo from getting all over the bottom, while positioning. We started screwing down at the bow and proceeded to the stern removing the supports as we went. This worked well.

Bottom is on.

Excess epoxy squozeout got cleaned up to minimize sanding later.

Through the transom.

A glimpse into the skunk..er..gerbilworks.

Total time to date: 217hrs

Craack!

2010-12-04T23:33:00.001-05:00

So you remember that little crack that formed in one of the chinelogs as we were assembling the hull? Well it got bigger. I think it happened as we were flipping the hull, since it gets stressed in different directions when you do that. This crack growing may actually be a good thing as it allowed me to fix a little unfairness that crept into the bow area. The side of the hull that had the intact chinelog had a bit of a kink where the stem ended and the chinelog began but the cracked side is beautifully fair. Since I like the fair side better I induced the same crack in the intact chinelog and now both sides look great. A big dollop of epoxy makes it all OK.

All of this is a result of me thinking I was being clever and not following the plans. Michael Storer, the designer, specifies that the chinelogs should end 50mm short of the bow-end of the hull sides. But I noticed that the stem is significantly less deep than that so you end up with a gap. Silly designer, says I, I'm going to extend the chinelogs all the way to the stem and make it all pretty. Well, if you do that what happens is that the two chinelog ends hit each other as you bend the hull sides around the first bulkhead, doh!

I took the pull saw and viciously hacked away chunks of the offending chine logs. THAT will teach them and nobody will see the butchery since all this is inside the floatation chamber. The hull went together beautifully. Except now with the chinelogs not touching each other the hull sides are not quite fair just aft of the bow and the gap between the chinelogs allowed the chinelog to split away from the hull side. How much do you want to bet that if I had cut the chinelogs 50mm from the hull end, as instructed, they would have come together and just touched thereby preventing that slightly unfair hollow and since they would be touching each other they could not separate from the ply. Silly builder.

BTW, the chinelog that pulled away from the hull side was a secondary joint since that hull side was epoxy coated all over, without masking the joint areas. The epoxy was well sanded with 60 grit, in the glue joint. It looks like it's mostly the wood and not the epoxy that failed but it's a little hard to tell. The side which did not fail had the joint areas masked before epoxy coating so that joint is wood to wood. Coincidence or is that side a stronger joint? You decide.

The chinelog on the left has separated from the hull side while the one on the right has only a bit of a crack. It is mostly hanging on but is causing an unfair hollow just aft of the stem.

So the solution is to separate the other chinelog from the hull side by the same amount. I used a small steel scraper, as a wedge, to shear the cedar away from the hull side.

I taped the underside with some packing tape to form a dam and filled all of the cracks with slightly thickend epoxy. It's ugly but stout.

Total time to date: 207hrs

Planing the bottom and Goat meets trailer

2010-11-28T20:40:00.000-05:00

The epoxy had set nicely overnight so it was time to flip the boat over and plane the chinelogs flat to accept the bottom panel. We turned the boat upside down and placed it on two sawhorses. Rather than trying to support the hull by the still somewhat flimsy hull sides we placed the saw horses under bulkheads. This put the boat at a perfect height for putting some ass behind the plane. The plane does not like hitting the epoxy joints between the bulkheads and hull sides. I first used a coarse rasp to knock down the epoxy goobers so that the plane would not get hung up on them.

Up on sawhorses

From the stern

The deckplate cutouts provided the perfect place to clamp the boat to the sawhorse for stability.

Having at the chinelog. Cedar is so easy to work with a sharp plane.

Planing around

Used a long level to check that the bevel angle planed into the chinelogs was just right for the bottom panel to lay flush.

I decided to plane down to the outside edge of the ply rather than planing to the inside edge. I did this mainly out of laziness but also because the bulkheads were aligned with this edge so it saved a lot of planing of the bulkheads. The little void will be filled with thickened epoxy which may, as a side benefit, toughen up the chine some and help prevent denting from rocks etc...... maybe.

We trial fitted the boat to it's trailer. The trailer is our old kayak trailer so now we will have to load kayaks up onto the roof rack. That's no fun but we can't have any more trailers in the yard :-) I'm planning on replacing the tongue with a slightly longer one and extending some wooden bunks aft to support more of the stern. The boat will live on this trailer for the rest of the build which makes it easy to move around.

Total time to date: 205hrs

Gluing the bulkheads

2010-11-27T20:15:00.000-05:00

We left the hull dry assembled overnight and began the epoxying of all the bulkheads this morning. Rather than working hunched over on the floor we elevated the hull onto a sawhorse and a folding table. This worked well and gave us easy access all around the bulkheads. I noticed that a couple of the bulkheads somehow, despite all our precautions, crept up by about 1/8 of an inch during the dry fit. This is not a big deal but it opened up the gap between the chinelog and bulkhead cutout making it look bad. Because of the wedge shape of the bulkheads they really want to move up. We repositioned the misbehaving bulkheads and screwed them back in place using new screw holes. To epoxy everything together we started at the stem and removed the stem then each bulkhead, one at a time, smeared it with thickened epoxy then slid and screwed it back in place. I was worried that this would be a nightmare with the hull sides spronging apart while I'm trying to drive screws into place with the screw gun slipping out of my epoxy coated hands. It turned out much less traumatic than that. Removing any one bulkhead does not cause the hull sides to move significantly and when they did, like at the transom, the ratchet straps prevented significant springback.

Hull blocked up off the floor, ready for epoxy.

Still have a couple ratchet straps from chine to chine to keep the hull sides from springing back too far when each bulkhead is removed for epoxy application. This was not absolutely necessary but I was worried that some of the screws would strip out going back into the same holes in the soft cedar

My theory that a lot of the stress at the stem is relieved once all of the bulkheads are in place is proven by this picture. I was pleasantly surprised that the hull sides did not spring far apart once the screws were removed. In the picture above, the red clamp is holding the gunwhales from spreading further but there is very little tension on it. The bottom of the stem is completely unclamped! The two blue clamps are just holding the gunwhales to the hull sides.

Today Clamp Girl became Epoxy Vixen and helped tremendously by taping, mixing, squozing and generally getting into the thick of the assembly.

The hull sides wanted to spring apart a bit too much for my liking, once the transom was unscrewed so we used two ratchet straps, top and bottom to keep things under control.

Total time to date: 201hrs

3D!

2010-11-26T22:27:00.000-05:00

Today, the hull got dry fitted in preparation for final assembly. It was lots of fun seeing it take shape for the first time. Kristi, my wife, spent most of the day acting as clamp girl which was a huge help. The last thing I had to do before the assembly was to cut chinelog clearance notches in the bulkheads. This was a bitchy little job as the angles get a bit crazy. The cuts are not perfect but an epoxy fillet will hide the sins. I used an offcut from the chinelog as a template for the cuts. Since the bulkhead sides are bevelled the cut has to follow that bevel.

Using chinelog offcut to mark bulkhead.

Clamp Girl preparing to fit stem.

We found it much easier to attach the hull sides to the stem with the hull sides spread apart to the stem angle. Had to move outside to get the room.

Stem screwed on and bulkheads ready to go.

First bulkhead is in. It required considerable force to curve the hull sides around it. We first screwed the bulkhead to one hull side then brought the hull sides together by using a ratchet strap from chine to chine. We clamped a clamp to each chine and then attached the ratchet strap hook to each clamp. This worked extremely well and allowed the hull sides to be slowly brought together with little drama except for some scary creaking sounds from the stem. Some folks reported having trouble with the hull sides cracking a bit just aft of the stem during this procedure so we left two clamps around the base of the stem to help the screws hold things together. We got a small crack in the first two inches of one chinelog but it closed back up once the rest of the bulkheads were installed. A bit of epoxy will take care of that.

Screwing bulkheads in.

You can see the clamps and ratchet strap used to pull the hull sides around the second bulkhead.

The bulkhead bevels specified in the plans are dead on perfect. I have to touch up one bevel but otherwise they all fit great.

It is amazing to watch the flat ply take on such a graceful curve once persuaded around the bulkheads.

We ran out of daylight but the dry fit is complete.

Transom required the clamp and ratchet strap treatment.

Total time to date: 195hrs

Chine logs are on

2010-11-21T20:22:00.000-05:00

It never ceases to amaze me how something always takes 4x the time I estimate. You would think I'd learn by now... I was hoping to get the chine logs glued to the hull sides, cut all of the bulkhead chine log clearance notches and maybe do a dry fit of the hull. Yeah right. I got the chine logs shaped and glued on, thats it. But it's progress.

I bevelled the top of each chine log so that the joint between it and the hull side will not collect crud, besides I think this will look cool. The mandatory 3 coats of epoxy were added and then a light sanding to level bumps etc.

The chine log is glued to the hull side with 10mm overhang which is later planed down to a bevel. A line drawn 10mm from bottom of the chine log will serve as a guide when attaching to hull side.

Chine log being dry fitted with wood screws and ply anti-crush pads. This is a perfect example of why things always take longer than anticipated. I had forgotten that I need a kryllion of these ply pads so had to stop and cut them, then wrap each one in packing tape to prevent them from becoming a permanent part of the boat. The screws are removed after the epoxy cures and the holes are then filled. Since the outside of the hull is painted no evidence of the holes will show on the finished boat.

Hull sides with chine logs epoxied on.

Total time to date: 185hrs

I'm Baaaak

2010-11-18T19:49:00.001-05:00

It's been a while but I'm slowly getting back to building. I was pretty close to hull assembly stage when the build got put on hold so it won't be long before we go 3D. I just got done scarfing the chine logs and shaping the stem. The plan for this weekend is to glue the chine logs to the hull sides and cut the chine log clearance notches in the bulkheads. Hoping to do a dry assembly run real soon. I'm so out of practice blogging that I forgot to take any pictures. Instead here is a video (it's in HD) from last weekend's 3 day sail trip to Cayo Costa with the WCTSS.

And the picture album from the same trip. Click on the slide show to see it big in Picasa.

Total time to date: 175hrs

Fitting bulkheads to side panels

2010-03-02T00:27:00.000-05:00

The bulkheads and side panels are almost ready for assembly. Everything has 3 coats of epoxy and I spent a lot of time sanding all visible surfaces to a nice uniform flat finish. I'm hoping the effort to do it now will pay off by not having to sand a lot at awkward angles once the boat is assembled. I think I have this epoxy coating down. It takes a bit of practice to lay down thin and unifiorm coats. Working at above 70F makes for a much nicer surface due to the epoxy flowing more easily. Normally that's not a problem here in FL but, as I have complained before, this winter we have only had a handful of days even close to 70 so some of the panels needed a bit more sanding. This one turned out well, almost a shame to sand it.

Looks like this once sanded, the final coat of varnish will bring back the shine.

The hull assembly has given some folks a bit of trouble when it comes to aligning the bulkheads with the hull side panel bottom edges. The alignment is difficult once the chine logs have been glued on. So I decided to mark and drill the side panels and bulkheads before the side panels are glued together. Panel marked with bulkhead locations.

Temporary screw holes drilled.

I aligned the bulkheads and used the pre-drilled holes in the side panels as guides to drill the bulkheads.

Now when the time comes to assemble the hull all I have to do is line up the drilled holes and everything should go together correctly. The curved and beveled sides of bulkheads 1 and 2 were impossible to clamp in place for drilling so I just drilled one locating hole per side.
Once marked and drilled the side panels got glued together with a splice. The ply has a bit of curve to it and it's amazing how much weight it took to get the ends to lie reasonably flat.

Total time to date: 165hrs

Yard construction

2010-02-14T01:42:00.002-05:00

It is taking forever to get all of the bits and pieces coated with 3 layers of epoxy. This is mainly because it's still COLD. I'm hoping to be ready for hull assembly in a week or so.
The Goat has a balanced lug sail. This is a bit different from your typical mast and boom arrangement in that the top or head of the sail is held up by a stick called a yard. It's somewhat like the top batten on a modern square head main sail. Just not nearly as high tech.

Here is the designer, Michael Storer showing off the lug rig:

The yard should be made of strong, light wood like Douglas Fir. I could not find a suitable piece locally but did find a nice piece of Cypress. I found out later that Cypress has a tendency to warp when cut so it's not the best choice for a long straight stick. I must have gotten lucky because this piece remained straight after ripping to size. I ripped the final piece in two and glued the two pieces back together with the grain reversed. This should prevent any warpeage in the future as the two pieces will fight each others warp.

You can't really tell in the pictures but the yard is tapered on both ends. The designer provides offsets at measured intervals to define the tapers. After laying the taper out on one side I ran the yard through my little band saw. Then I rotated the yard 90deg, marked the taper on one of the cut sides and cut to shape. The resulting tapering square cross section is planed to an octagon and then rounded. I did not round the yard in order to make it a bit stiffer to compensate for the Cypress being a bit more flexible than the specified Douglas Fir.

The sail maker needs to know the bend characteristics of the yard in order to build the proper shape into the sail. The bend measuring procedure involves hanging a weight, in this case 35lb, from the center of the yard and measuring the amount of flex relative to a string line. Measurements are taken at 3 points along the yard since it's tapered and therefore bends unevenly along it's length.

As with all pieces, the yard gets 3 coats of epoxy. The #*@!! contaminANTS (thank you Doug) were out in full force while the epoxy was curing.

Total time to date: 152hrs

Epoxy coating continues

2010-02-02T23:02:00.001-05:00

Making slow progress getting all components coated with 3 epoxy coats. I bought slow epoxy hardener because it's often a fight to keep the epoxy from going off too quickly in the FL heat. But this winter has been unusually cold with temps rarely getting out of the 60s. This slows down the coating tremendously as it takes hours for each coat to kick.

The weather has been bad but not too bad to take the mobile boat building van to a pleasant spot.

Total time to date: 140hrs

Epoxy coating and framing bulkheads

2010-01-25T22:47:00.000-05:00

I'm epoxy coating all of the hull components before assembly. It's much easier to get a smooth run-free coat while the ply is horizontal. A lot of the sanding will also be done before the parts go together. Michael Storer recommends skidding a foam roller to smooth out the epoxy. It worked so well that I used it to spread and smooth the epoxy. No need for a squeegie. It lets yo put down a very thin uniform coat which does not seem to trap bubbles and does not run much. I did the interior faces of the buoyancy tank bulkheads first to practice on parts which will be hidden. I read somewhere that if the air temperature is rising significantly during the epoxy cure, bubbles can form as air trapped in the wood expands. I tried this on one piece by coating in the morning and sure enough it's the only piece I had any bubbles in.

The areas where framing is bonded on are masked. I'm not sure this is necessary as the secondary bond between cured and scuffed up epoxy surfaces is really strong.

After the 3 coats of epoxy cured I glued framing to the bulkheads. To keep bugs and dust out of the wet epoxy I'm putting the pieces inside our van and closing it up. I can't do this with the mast and it's a constant battle with the bugs. Why do these things like wet epoxy so much??

In order to minimize waste I cut the rollers into 4 quarters. Each quarter can be flipped over and used twice if you don't slop epoxy all over it during the first use.

I spread the leftover bit of epoxy from each coat on the underside of the fore and aft seats which will never be seen so any uneven epoxy is not important.

Total time to date: 131hrs

Epoxy Coating Mast

2010-01-18T12:52:00.000-05:00

Did some final sanding on the mast and laid down the first coat of epoxy. I was planning to use the wet-on-wet technique Mik recommends but with temperatures in the low 60's the epoxy just would not go off fast enough so a bit of sanding in between coats will be necessary. It was easiest to hang the mast from both ends but the swinging proved to be a nuisance. The next coats will be done with the ends of the mast resting on something rigid. Spreading the epoxy with a foam brush was slow and cumbersome. I also tried skidding a foam roller as per Mik's instructions and that was slow as well and the swinging mast made it infuriating. I ended up just slathering the epoxy on with gloved hands like greasing a pole. It was fast and worked surprisingly well.

I did not bother to shape the base plug accurately since it is bedded in thickened epoxy and the mast base is not visible with the boat rigged. But it looks ugly and I just realized that with the mast de-rigged on the trailer the base of the mast is very prominent. Oh well next time the base plug fits better.

Total time to date: 120hrs

Ply Parts Kit

2010-01-17T22:08:00.001-05:00

Spent most of today laying out and cutting all of the major ply parts. Things went smoothly since I already did this once during the China ply debacle. This time around I used Joubert brand Okoume and it is much better looking stuff.

These are all of the major ply parts other than hull sides and bottom.

I'm going to epoxy coat the individual pieces before assembly as it is much easier to spread and sand epoxy on flat horizontal surfaces. I drove the wrong car to move the pieces to my garage from Dave's (where the boat is being built) but they fit, kinda sorta.

Total time to date: 115hrs

I have an excuse

2009-12-11T23:12:00.001-05:00

Still no progress on the Goat. But there is a reason. We have completely lost our minds and acquired a MAJOR boat project. We bought a C&C Mega30 in need of .... well everything. The plan is to use the hull as the basis for a maxi-trailerable, tropical, shallow water cruiser. Nothing is firmed up yet but it goes something like this: cut the deck and about 8" off the sheer then build a pretty new deck and cabin. Throw on a free standing cat ketch rig and enjoy. Yes there will be a blog documenting this multi-year project. The Goat has to get finished before any real work starts on the big boat but it already has been a huge distraction so between the new "boat" and the holidays coming up I don't expect to get any GIS building done until January.

It'll buff out .....

No building progress

2009-11-20T20:40:00.000-05:00

I'm still alive just have not had a chance to do any building. We have done a bit of sailing, click on the "Cayo Costa Nov 2009" under the pic for the full gallery from our latest trip to Cayo Costa.

From Cayo Costa Nov 2009

Our Seaward Fox Proton

From Cayo Costa Nov 2009

Rounding the Mast

2009-10-21T22:43:00.000-04:00

I cannot believe it's been a month since the last update. It feels like barely a week has gone by. The mast is almost ready for epoxy coating. I planed the ridges off to turn the mast section into an octagon. Then I planed the octagon to a sixteenagon. All this planing was pretty easy to do by eye. Then I switched over to sanding. I was not sure I would know when to stop so I penciled a wavy line on each of the 8 original octagon faces. This acted like a guide coat of paint when fairing a hull in that I knew to stop as soon as the pencil line disappeared. This worked very well.

I made a semicircular sanding block to make sure I was sanding a round mast. In order to get the right diameter I used a piece of 3" PVC pipe and wrapped a few sheets of printer paper around it to bring it up to the mast diameter. Then I wrapper it with wax paper and laid up a few layers of scrap fiberglass mat over that. (Cheap wax paper is porous. Guess how I found that out. Use name brand stuff.) Once the resin kicked I cut it apart and used a light coat of 3M 77 spray mount adhesive to attache the 60 grit sandpaper.

I think I could have planed some more wood off the mast before switching to sanding. The first sanding strokes were a bit tight but it got progressively easier as the mast became rounder. Picture below is before the handle was glued on.

By stroke number 12387663346 the mast was getting pretty round. The handle is made from the triangular scrap cutoff from the bottom of the dagger board.

Getting there.

Me likey round mast.

The tapered sections were sanded with the same curved block and as long as I did not sand too long in one spot the mast became nicely round, although slightly less perfectly round than in the un-tapered section. Surprisingly the mast warped a bit during all this sanding. It was very straight to begin with and now it has about 1/4 inch of bow in it. This is insignificant but .... The sanding conicided with our summer heat and humidity breaking so maybe it is the lower humidity that is responsible.

Total time to date: 108 hrs.

Mast is Assembled

2009-09-22T21:43:00.001-04:00

Removed the mast from the gluing jig Monday night. It's a pretty substantial stick. Looks a lot bigger once raised vertically. Of course I had to run around the yard with it making vroom-vroom sounds.

It'll look a lot better once rounded over but the taper is already looking good.

Final Mast Assembly

2009-09-20T19:32:00.002-04:00

So far so good on the mast assembly. It looks like the mast is straight to +/- 1/8 inch or so. The two halves separated nicely and there was ample epoxy squoze out from the joints.

I made plugs for the base, partners and tip. The practice mast section I made earlier came in handy as I just traced the interior octagon onto some scrap timber and bandsawed the plugs slightly under-size in a few minutes.

The mast base plug is a bit smaller due to the taper but I did not bother to lay it out accurately, just eyeballed it and it fits fine. The mast tip plug started out as a tapered octagon but I quickly gave up on that and just hit it with a belt sander to get a tapered roundish shape. All the plugs are set in thickened epoxy so the shapes and fit are not critical. The base plug is about 1.5 inches thick. The partners plug is two 1.5 inch thick plugs back to back. And the tip plug is about 6 inches long. That should be strong enough. I drilled holes through the partners and base plugs for ventilation if need be. I might make a little screw in plug for the base hole to use while sailing and leave it out when mast is in storage, maybe.

Base and partners plugs dry fit

Looking at the partners plug from mast base, dry fit

Mast tip plug dry fit

Mast interior coated with epoxy prior to assembly

Lots of thickened epoxy on plugs

I keep being surprised at how much epoxy this is taking. I used about 12 oz total for the interior coating, bedding of plugs and joining of the two halves. That brings the total epoxy used on the mast so far to about 26 oz. That's 2 pounds of epoxy, lot of weight!

Total time to date: 93 hrs

Fire the Lasaah!

2009-09-19T23:35:00.004-04:00

Assembling the 8 staves into something resembling a straight stick would be pretty easy if the mast was untapered. Since the GIS mast is tapered at both ends it's a bit difficult to eyeball straight, although probably doable with practice. I tried using string and I think it would be OK but I'm allways in favor of applying maximum technology to solve a problem. So out came the laser level and why limit yourself to one when your buddy has one too. We set up two laser levels shining down the mast length at 90 degrees to each other. This worked well but there was one complication. The staves are tapered on only one side, opposite the bird's mouth cut so it appears that you can't just mark off a centerline down a stave and use that as a guide because each stave actually twists a bit as it bends to accomodate the taper. At least that's what it looks like to me. Trying to think through this geometry makes my head hurt. Anyway the aparent twist is not a lot but may be enough to cause a bend in the mast if a stave centerline is used as a reference. To get around this we set the two laser beams to cross at 90 degrees in the center of the mast base. The horizontal beam was set parallel to the straight work surface that the untapered section of the mast was lightly clamped to. The mast was then wiggled around such that the center of the opening at the mast tip coincided with the intersection of the two laser beams. The actual intersection is not visible but can easily be eyeballed from where each laser line hits the mast tip. Theoretically this setup aligned the base and tip concentric to each other. The rest of the mast was eyeballed straight following the laser line. Tomorrow, after the epoxy is set, I get to find out if all this goofing around with lasers made for a straight mast. By the way I think just clamping the untapered section to a straight workbench or whatever and then eyeballing the rest of the mast would result in a maximum bend of probably not more than 1/4 inch at the tip. At least it seems that way because the mast did not have to be moved much to align with the laser lines.

Epoxying the mast is a 2 person job, minimum. At Michael Storer's suggestion we glued all but two opposing joints. This will allow the mast to be split open for thorough epoxy coating and installation of base, partner and tip reinforcing plugs. The two unglued joints were covered with brown packing tape to prevent any stray epoxy from bonding them. We turned all the staves bird's mouth up and spread epoxy, slightly thickened with wood flour, on each stave. It took double the amount of epoxy I thought it would. We started with 6 oz of epoxy with enough wood flour to increase the volume to maybe 7oz. And ended up mixing a second batch. Probably could have used a bit more as there are a few spots where barely any epoxy squeezed out. Once all the staves were assembled I used brown packing tape to wrap the mast while Dave, my helper, held it together. The packing tape worked pretty well. The nicest thing about it is that it's thin enough to not interfere with the mast laying down flat on the staright reference work surface. We also wrapped the mast with thin line and I liked the way that pulled the staves together.

One thing I would do differently is to cut the staves a bit long, maybe an inch or so. I cut my staves to the exact length shown in the plans. After all of the tightening and wrestling with the mast it ended up with about 1/8 inch of stagger between stave ends. The ends started out well aligned but the process of clamping the mast slid a couple of the staves a bit. No big beal the mast will just end up about 1/4 inch shorter than specified after both ends are sanded flat. This could be easily avoided by starting out with slightly over length staves.

Dry run aligning mast. I used my foil shaping jig placed on the table saw as a flat reference surface.

Two laser levels 90 degrees apart used as reference lines to ensure a straight mast (I hope). And yes, I removed the one clamped to the garage door before opening the door but forgot to remove the bit of ply it was clamped to .......

The laser lines set up to intersect at the center of the mast base.

Lasers are cool.

Even cooler with the lights out.

Total time to date: 90hrs

Bird's Mouth Mast

2009-09-14T23:08:00.002-04:00

This bird's mouth mast business is cool. Below is a picture of the trial sample mast section I made while setting up the table saw for cutting staves.

A bird's mouth mast is constructed by gluing together multiple wood strips (usually 8) to form a very strong and light hollow tube. I chose to use douglas fir because it's readily available at Home Depot and 10 foot 1x2s happen to be slightly bigger than the stave dimensions needed for the GIS mast. The pieces are scarfed together to yield eight 15.5 foot long staves. The fir strips range in weight from 1.5lbs to almost 3, yes I weighed a bunch of them while suffering many a strange look from other customers. If I had picked the heaviest wood the mast would weigh well over 30lb. I was tempted to use all of the lightest pieces but they were significantly more flexible than the heaviest ones so I split the difference and got half medium heavy and half medium light.
A free standing mast is basically a cantilever beam which means that the stress in it decreases from base to tip. The mast can therefore be progressively weaker and lighter from base to tip. This is often done with a taper. The GIS mast is very slightly tapered along its length but the majority of the taper occurs near the tip. In order to maximize strength and minimize weight I used the heavy stiff wood on the bottom sections and the lighter on top. Scarfs are distributed over a 5 foot long section about half way up the mast. I'm hoping this will provide a smooth transition resulting in a mast which is plenty strong where it needs to be but as light as possible and with a low center of gravity.

Very simple but effective 10:1 taper jig set up on the table saw. It's made from an appropriately tapered piece of 3/4" MDF with a block of wood glued to one edge. The wood block allows clamping of each stave to the taper jig then the whole works is fed along the fence.

Gluing up the scarfs. I let the epoxy absorb into the end grain until it looked like no more was soaking in and then lightly clamped the staves together using a long straight edge for alignment. The joints fit so tightly that I did not feel the need to thicken the epoxy.

After ripping the staves to the correct dimensions the table saw is setup for cutting the bird's mouth. For an 8 sided construction the bird's mouth is a pretty straight forward 45 degree cut. 45 x 8 = 360 cool huh? Each stave is run through once, flipped end for end then run through again. It is critical the the stave is not allowed to move up or away from the fence. Feather boards insure this does not happen. (what's up with all the bird references?) My vertical feather board is far from perfect but it worked well enough.

Now comes the tricky part. The mast is tapered at both ends therefore each stave has to be tapered accordingly. The side opposite the bird's mouth is planed to the profile specified in the plans. The mast base taper is slight and I just marked a straight line on each stave and planed to shape. The designer recommends lofting a curve for the taper profile but the difference between a straight line and a curve is minimal in this section so a straight line it is. The tip taper is much more pronounced and a lot more wood has to be removed. I made a template for the tip taper by lofting the specified profile on a long piece of 1/4 inch ply. Then it's just a matter of tracing the same profile onto all 8 staves and cutting to shape. I used a small band saw for the cuts and followed up with a hand plane. I found it exceedingly difficult to maintain the planed edge at 90 degrees so a scrap of wood clamped to my plane made a reasonably good guide.

Stave marked and being cut on bandsaw.

All staves tapered.

Mast tip stave shapes.

I have read that bird's mouth mast construction is harder to explain than do and I think it's true. All the steps went quite well and the staves almost self-assembled into the mast shape, a very rewarding moment.

Mast weight at this point is 19.5lb (8.9kg) including all the line holding it together.. I'm pretty happy with that. Final planing to round will remove a bit more weight but the epoxy will add some so I should come out around 20lbs. I did a mock stepping and it's very manageable at this weight.

Total time to date: 85hrs

Foils Epoxy Coated

2009-09-07T13:16:00.004-04:00

Coated the foils with one coat of MAS Flag epoxy resin. I did one side at a time with the foils horizontal. This eliminated runs and allowed for a fairly thick coat of epoxy. A quick sanding and maybe one more thinner coat if needed and the foils are ready for varnish. The rope handle holes are already drilled in the rudder. The dagger board still needs to be drilled. The holes got filled with leftover epoxy and will be re-drilled for the rope. This seals the cedar core preventing any chance of water intrusion. I drilled the rudder before fiberglassing and the drill bit tore out some of the very soft cedar. The clear epoxy has made the tear out all but invisible, nevertheless I think it's much safer to drill after glassing since the glass should prevent any tear out. We will see when the dagger board is drilled.
A couple of tear out gouges I had in the rudder, from inept planing, disappeared almost completely under the epoxy and I have to look real hard to locate them so am real happy about that.

Total time to date: 73hrs

Finally making some shavings

2009-09-03T21:15:00.008-04:00

The foils are planed to shape. This went better than expected but I had a couple of problems with the plane tearing out bits of the soft cedar. Maybe my plane is not sharp enough but it's as sharp as I can get it. The clear epoxy will hide the nicks, I think. A bit of sanding to finish off and the foils are ready for glassing.

Daggerboard ready for glass

Rudder ready for glass

Dropped it on the trailing edge #$%@#$!!!

Scarfed in a tiny piece of cedar to fix. I'm sure this wont be the last ding repair.

I decided to vacuum bag the glass onto the foils. This is not necessary at all but I have all the equipment from when I used to vacuum bag composite model airplane wings and the process is pretty fun. One big advantage is that the vacuum forces the glass around the tip contours of the foils and you don't have to do hardly any sanding before the final epoxy flow coats. I did the rudder first and found out that cedar will absorb a lot of epoxy under vacuum. While the layup turned out nice and tight, the glass is a bit dry. This will still work just fine but it's not perfect. I coated the centerboard with epoxy and let it kick before vacuum bagging the glass and the resin ratio was good.

Rudder remover from bag. Just need to trim the edges with a sharp box cutter, sand the remaining ridge and it's ready for the final epoxy coats. No sanding of epoxy lumps and drips and runs.

The glass is formed tightly around the edges of the foil.

Total time to date 70hrs.

Foil Shaping

2009-07-28T23:07:00.018-04:00

Finally some progress on the Goat! After the plywood setback I decided to work on the foils and will probably also build the mast before getting back to the hull. In this way I'll have most of the various bits ready to go once the hull is complete.
The dagger board and rudder are made by first ripping cedar and hardwood boards into staves. Then gluing the staves into blanks. The blanks are then thicknessed to 22mm. And then they are planed to a hydrofoil shape. Since my planing skills are at rank beginner level I decided that the foils were not a good first project. I want to finish the foils clear and therefore need the wooden blanks to be shaped as perfectly as possible since I will not be able to use filler to fair out any imperfections after glassing. I would love to have them CNC routed to shape but did not want to invest in the considerable shop time for a one off project. So I came up with a jig which I call the SMC router. SMC for Simon's Manual Control. The jig is made from 3/4inch MDF and it allowed me to mill the blanks to a very precise thickness. I then used it to cut most of the hydrofoil shape, finishing up with a hand plane. As a bonus I'm going to make an angled carriage for the router and use this same jig for scarfing staves for the birds-mouth mast.

Cedar 2x4s from Lowes ripped and ready to glue.

Rudder blank being glued up. I had a bit of trouble keeping the staves from sliding around while the epoxy was curing so I used the table saw table extension as a flat surface to help clamp the gooey mess into submission. Wax paper kept the table saw from becoming a permanent part of the rudder.

Rudder blank on jig ready for thicknessing.

Router carriage over rudder blank. The carriage is free to slide around but is guided by the T shaped bit on the lower left. As long as a little pressure is applied to keep this T in contact with the fence everything moves smoothly with no binding.

Router carriage.

Router on carriage. The carriage is a bit wider than the router base. This allows the router to be "locked" in position by twisting it slightly so that the flat edge of the router base wedges itself in the carriage. This worked well and sped things up considerably since the alternative would be to clamp or screw the router to the carriage for every pass.

Video of dagger board being thicknessed.

I'm very happy with the resulting blank surface finish and thickness.

Thickness of one end of blank.

And the other end. This level of precision is not too hard to achieve but the jig has to be absolutely straight. Any warp in the base or fence of the jig will be faithfully reproduced in the blank. The first pass with the router showed that I had a .5 to .75 mm warp in the middle of the jig base. I placed the jig base on the table saw assuming that it was perfectly flat. Well it's not and the slight hollow on the table was transferred to the blank. A bit of shimming got that taken care of and the next pass with the router was near perfect.

Once the blank is the correct thickness, width and length a template is used to draw the foil outline on both ends.

Then back on the jig but this time the cutting depth of the router is varied to remove wood up to the pencil line. Then the leftover ridges are planed down with a hand plane. It is pretty easy to get a very straight and uniform profile the full length of the foil since the grooves left by the router make perfect depth gages. Stop planing as soon as the groove disappears and you are at or very near the correct profile.

Trailing edge being routed to shape. I left a lip on the end of the trailing edge to support the thin section while routing the other side. The lip is easily planed off afterwards.

Rudder blank ready for hand planing to final shape. Oh almost forgot, the blank is held down to the jig with sheet rock screws. Two are located where the rope handle holes will be drilled later. The other end of the rudder was left about 1 inch too long to allow for the clamping screws. In this way there will be no sign of the sheet rock screw holes in the finished rudder.

Total time to date 56 hours.

Bad plywood

2009-06-08T21:20:00.007-04:00

The learning curve has reared up and smacked me in the head. I know you are supposed to use BS1088 rated Okoume marine ply. So I ordered 6 sheets of the stuff from a very large, local, supposedly reputable distributor. They had a fantastic price on the 6mm at $50 a sheet. I double checked with them that it is BS1088 and they assured me it's the right stuff. I picked it up and it looked fine as far as I knew. Once I got it home I realized that one side was A grade but the other had some footballs here and there. At this point I should have realized that this ply was more BS than 1088. But the footballs were few, the real stuff is $80 a sheet and returning this lot would be a pain. So I decided I could lay out the parts such that any football was on the inside of a buoyancy tank or underside of a seat. I forged on and cut out all of the pieces. Everything went as planned and I did not find any voids in the ply, so far so good. I was always a bit puzzled by the look of the grain but never let that get in the way of cutting out parts and making progress. While staring at the pile of cut parts I decided to do a test on some scraps to see what this stuff will look like once epoxy coated.
Well, this is what Tank thought of it:

Some of the sheets are a red-brown with nasty splotches and others are closer to the golden color I expected but still do not look all that good. Long story short I'm scrapping the whole lot and starting over. The boat would be perfectly sound if built from this stuff and would look great once painted, but it's not acceptable since I'm finishing the interior clear.

After doing much research it appears that the ply I have is a China imitation of BS1088 and like many products made there, buyer beware. The glue is probably made from dog poo. To be fair it is pretty OK stuff, especially for the price. Five ply with no voids, the outer veneers are a bit thin but OK, just don't expect to finish it clear. The search is on for a local or within reasonable driving distance supplier of Joubert brand BS1088 Okoume or equivalent.

Cedar Key small boat meet.

2009-05-08T22:11:00.006-04:00

At the rate I'm going the Goat will be built in 2020. There is just too much fun stuff to do on the weekends that gets in the way of building. Last weekend was the West Coast Trailer Sailing Squadron's Cedar Key small boat meet. The only small thing about this affair is the size of the boats. There must have been at least 70 small sailboats, kayaks and UFOs (F for floating). We met a bunch of fascinating people and had a great time. I even passed a tough test when Mike Leneman, who I had just met, set me up by asking which epoxy I had used to do a repair. Fortunately I answered West System Gflex not realizing that the other gentlemen listening to our conversation was Meade Gougeon Of West System fame, whew good answer :-) Anyway more boat building to follow soon but for now some piccies from Cedar Key. Oh, and the Canon is still dead so these are from iPhone and an ancient Olympus. Click on the Cedar Key 2009 link under the pictures if you want to see the whole album.

From Cedar Key 2009

I got a water resistant pouch for the iPhone so we took it out on the water. Below is our GPS track from the iPhone superimposed on Google Earth. MotinX, the $3 GPS app I use, generates a .kmz track file which can automatically be displayed in Google Earth. I just email the track to myself or anyone else and its done. No more forgetting to download your trip track from the Garmin. The track starts on the beach at Cedar Key goes to Atsena Otie island and back to Cedar Key. Then I forgot to turn it off so it logged my walk back to the hotel.

From Cedar Key 2009

Planing hull sides to shape

2009-04-27T23:22:00.005-04:00

I used a jigsaw with a metal cutting blade to cut the 4 hull sides to within a mm or two of the lofted pencil lines. The instructions say to plane to the line but to not remove the line. Makes sense since once you plane off the line you really have no idea how much material has been removed. The whole process was a lot easier than I expected. I adjusted my plane for a very fine cut and easily removed the high spots and then worked down to the pencil line. This is my first time working with a plane. It's now my new favorite hand tool.
Once the two left sides were planed to size, I used them as templates to mark out the right sides. Then cut and planed to size. A tiny bit of final planing was done with the two sides stacked. This way they are essentially identical in shape, and hopefully very close to the plan.

You can just barely make out the pencil line.

Time spent: 3 hours
Total time to date: 16 hours 30 min

Stern stems laminated

2009-04-23T21:57:00.006-04:00

The inside and outside stern stems are laminated at the same time but separated with some poly. The inside stem remains on the form and is shaped before the strips are laid down. The outside stem is installed after the stripping is done and then planed and sanded to shape. That's 12 strips laminated together with epoxy. Dave says it was a messy job but manageable.

Great Florida Gulf Coast Small Craft Festival

2009-04-22T22:22:00.008-04:00

Slow progress on the Goat. Took me a lot longer than expected to loft the hull sides. There is a slight hollow in the bottom just in front of the transom which I did not expect so I held off on cutting the sides out and checked in with Michael Storer and the helpful crew on the forum. Turns out I was doing it right but better ask than waste a lot of ply. I'm a relatively new iPhone owner and that little device never ceases to amaze me. I was in the workshop browsing the forums and posted a question. An answer, from Michael, was waiting for me when I got home, amazing. Did not have a whole lot of time to build anyway as there were lots of interesting things going on like:

The Great Florida Gulf Coast Small Craft Festival at Cortez.

From Gulf Coast Small Craft Festival

What a fantastic little harbor and a perfect setting for small boat messing about. Just in front of the docks is a large shoal which is exposed at low tide. It makes for a perfect beaching area for numerous shallow draft boats.

From Gulf Coast Small Craft Festival

Cortez is a unique fishing community with a working waterfront including a fish house and all of it's associated salty charm. Let's hope this little spot never succumbs to the condo-locust hordes. Click on the photos to go to the photo album of the event. Most of the pictures were taken with my iPhone 'cause the trusty old Canon PS finally gave up the ghost with one last spectacularly distorted image.

From Gulf Coast Small Craft Festival

The iPhone images are horribly low quality but considering it is a phone, not too bad. They remind me of aged Kodacolor 400 prints. Oh and since the iPhone pictures are geotagged with the photo location they automatically show up on the map in Picasa. Yes I know, nothing new but it always impresses me when this stuff just works.

Time spent: 4 hours
Total time: 13 hours 30min

Table saw setup for ripping kayak strips

2009-04-19T22:59:00.005-04:00

This worked amazingly well. Absolutely perfect strips every time. Two horizontal featherboards and one vertical kept the very flexible 16 and 20 foot strips completely under control. Faster and easier with two people but even single handed it is remarkably low drama, as Dave demonstrates below.

Dave's stripping

2009-04-18T21:59:00.014-04:00

cedar that is.....
No progress on the GIS but Dave has been busy making cedar and redwood strips for the kayak. He's managed to cut 16 and 20 foot lumber down to 1/4" strips, all by himself. A very thin kerf 7-1/4" blade mounted on the table saw and a couple good feather-boards did the trick. Next step is to saw each strip in half yielding the 1/4 x 3/4 strips, then it's on to beading and coveing.

All of the stations are now mounted and aligned on the strong-back, ready for the first strip.

No building this weekend

2009-04-10T15:02:00.002-04:00

Bulkheads, seat tops and centerboard case are cut

2009-04-05T17:55:00.002-04:00

All that's left to cut are the hull sides and bottom. Amazing how few
ply parts there are to this boat. The work frame is worth it's weight
in gold!

Time spent: 3 hours 30 min
Total time: 9 hours 30 min

First cut

2009-04-05T14:34:00.002-04:00

Chesapeake Light Craft demo day

2009-04-04T23:37:00.001-04:00

No boat building today since CLC was in town with their trailer full of boats. We spent several hours test paddling all sorts of lovely wooden craft. A pair of nice wooden kayaks are on the builder's list. Both Kristi and I really liked the 18ft CLC Night Heron. It's #1 on our short list.

In the beginning there was just some wood.

2009-03-30T23:55:00.002-04:00

My friend Dave and I decided it was time to do a bit of boat building. Dave is building a strip kayak "The Return" by Redfish Custom Kayaks and I am building the Goat Island Skiff designed by Michael Storer. This will be a log of our building adventures.

Dave had to first build a strongback for the kayak stations.

I started by building a work frame to make handling the plywood easier. It's a great idea I picked up somewhere on Australia's Woodwork Forums.

Tank the shop cat made sure we did things right.

Total time spent: 6 hours