Sunday, September 16, 2007

Upper port hull half laminated

The weather today was just total, absolute crap. Never got above 60 deg F, and it was raining from the moment I got out of bed. Despite these obstacles, I was able to laminate the upper port hull half.

As you're doing this job, many parts of the laminate are hard to reach, and the only way to reach them is to walk on the gunwale (or have some sort of gantry). Obviously I'm walking on the gunwale -- even had to stop using my plywood walkway, since there wasn't room for it and the new laminates as well. Since I was walking back and forth to the garage and it was raining, I started tracking dirt and grass into my hull! Arggh - ya gotta be kidding me I thought - is this a boat or a gardening project?!? Quite aggravating - I had to start carefully checking my shoes before entering the hull. It's like one of those Jeff Foxworthy jokes..."you might be a redneck, if there's grass growing inside your new boat"... :-)

Thankfully the gunwale laminate seemed quite able to bear my weight (so the rest of you should be fine).

I started up at the bow and worked aft. Right after the laminate went past past form frame 5, I added the extra A laminate that the plans call for (since I wouldn't have good access to it later):

Here's the forward half all done, including the strip of uni running horizontal below the center line:

I made sure there was plenty of overlap on all the joins. Right in front of the cockpit though, I cut a piece of glass too short and had to add a patch piece at the upper gunwale:

I did do one thing differently today: I wet-out the foam before laying down the glass on all sections, mainly as a new step in my bubble avoidance strategy. It turned out to have a beneficial effect on the large vertical deck areas: you hold the glass almost in position, fine-tune it, then start lightly pressing it down into the wetted vertical areas. The wet epoxy on the foam then grabs it and usually has enough grip to hold it in place. If I had done this the dry-layup way, the glass would have kept wanting to fall down.

My wife was helping me out today, lending an extra pair of hands for holding the glass while it was getting positioned; it took us about 4 1/2 hours from start to finish.

One final picture, with the halogen lamps turned on; I just thought it made things look cool:

Oops - that extra lighting does reveal some resin-rich areas though.

Well, that's it for today. I go back to work tomorrow, so progress will slow down to a more normal pace for awhile. At least I'm ready to start placing the bulkheads.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello Jay,

I was amazed at the progress on your project during your vacation. Thanks for the blog.

Depending on your sailing philosophy you may also elect to keep halyards on the mast itself. That reduces the complexity of mast raising, at the expense of having to go to the mast step to reef.


Jean-Alexis

Jay said...

Jean-Alexis

Thanks for your comment. To be honest, the F22 plans actually do specify cleating the halyards on the mast, and mention leading them to the cockpit as optional. I thought it would be fun to do the optional part, or at least make sure the inserts are in the deck so I can add them later. (I suspect as I get closer to getting done, my appetite for "extras" will diminish.)

Also I don't actually have a sailing philosophy yet, so most of this stuff I just have to study and make a best judgement.

Thanks,
Jay

DMTim said...

Well, ask yourself why they need to be lead back to the cockpit. The jib and screacher are roller-furling - you can put them up at the dock and then furl. The main would be nice to be able to raise while motoring from the cockpit solo, but if you're going to use the winch to raise it you can't steer at the same time anyways so you might as well walk up to the mast. I doubt the boomless rig is reefable, so you don't need access to the halyard for that either.

With a boomless rig, I'd guess that the lines you'll have on the mast are main halyard, jib halyard, screacher halyard, and a cunningham for the mainsail. Of those, I think only the cunningham/downhaul would be valuable to lead to the cockpit.

Do the plans have details on the sheeting of the jib and screacher? Will they be hand-sheeted or winched?

Congrats on all your progress - I'd love to build one of these but I think I'd lose enthusiasm after one float.

Jay said...

tjp,

Thanks for your comment. I guess I had this idea, that when I'm sailing around off the coast of Seattle in Force 11 winds, that walking forward on the deck to loose the main halyard would be a dangerous thing to do. Hence leading that halyard back to the cockpit.

Okay, I'm kidding a bit. I don't know how much appetite or opportunity I'll have for taking this little boat into heavy weather, but like I said above I'll probably at least do the deck inserts even if I don't lead the halyard aft initially.

While not 100% done yet, the plans seem to be going in the direction of a winch-less rig. I assume this will carry over to the screacher too.

I really appreciate your feedback and help - thanks much!

Jay