Shelter skelter

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!

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

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