Dry run on boat levelling

I have had a nagging worry all along that my boat would be out-of-square to the point where I would not be able to install the beam mounts properly. Although I am not ready for these just yet, I decided to do a test run and see just how bad (or good) things really were.

The most accurate gunwale markings I have left are on the beam bulkheads, so I cut out enough of a hole so that I could screw or clamp a small piece of straight wood to each bulkhead. The wood is fixed so that it is even with the gunwale marking. Then I hung tape measures down from each piece of wood. This was so that I could aim a laser level (belonging to my neighbor Sean - thanks for letting me borrow this again) at each tape measure and get an accurate height reading on the gunwale mark at each beam bulkhead. Other builder have done similar things. I aimed the level at a point on the tape measures about 26" below the actual gunwale line; that way the level can "see" the tape measure at all four points.

Here's a rough sketch of the method, excuse the sloppy freehand drawing: Here's a tape measure hanging down; after awhile I scrounged for every tape measure we had in the house so I didn't have to keep moving it around:

The initial readings were actually very very close. When I made my boat cradles, I designed them so that the boat would naturally sit as close to gunwale level as I could get it. The measurements showed all four points within 1.5". Not too bad!

I used an automotive bottle jack to adjust the corners:

Then I'd screw some extra supports to the strong back to hold the cradle at the new position...

...and remove the jack. Yeah I have a big cleanup job under the strongback someday.

I couldn't get all four corners level after 1/2 day of fiddling with it, and sent mail to the F22 builders group on google asking how close the level needs to be. Ian himself replied offline and told me to check sheet 49 where he talks about this. Darn - hate to waste people's time when the answer is in the manual.

I did figure out that one problem was due to the strongback or the cradles "settling" after I'd remove the jack. After that, I was able to get three corners level and the fourth out by only 1/16". According to Ian and the plans this is plenty good enough. Now I'm no longer worried about my lopsided boat and am looking forward to starting the beam mount installs (but have a lot of work left to do before I get there).

R.I.P Scale #1

My old electronic scale seemed to be taking longer and longer to zero out. I hadn't been exactly super careful about keeping it clean either . So I decided it had to go to scale heaven; rest in peace, Scale #1:

Welcome to the world, Scale #2:

Rudder web reinforcement

Woke up to a strange sensation this morning: didn't feel like I had to be at work for most of the weekend. It was about time for a break anyway - "all work and no play", etc.

I wasn't able to spend all day on the boat unfortunately. Had to run some errands, and mow the yard, but then I got busy cleaning out the cobwebs from the boat tent. I had left a 1/2 gallon of S3 laminating resin in the garage over the winter and it had crystallized pretty badly, so I also had to do the hot water bath treatment to clean that up. Just to get back into things, I decided to do the additional rudder web reinforcement that Ian had sent out via email since it looked like a simple job. Here's the first three layers of uni over the top:

It's been so long that I had to look up the S3 resin-hardener ratios online before starting, since I couldn't be sure I remembered them accurately. Here's the job done with the final reinforcements on and peelplyed:

Not much to see in those pictures, I know.

I also caught up a bit last night with everyone else's building blogs - wow. You guys out there have been really productive - good job everyone.

It was a beautiful day today, by the way:

Finally, something slightly off-topic (but what the heck it's my blog right?). My wife and I are getting ready to build a new house, so that's another reason I've not been engaged on the boat as much as I would have liked. If anyone's interested, there's a link to a new house blog at the bottom right of the page that I'm going to use to track our progress and capture the experience. We should be breaking ground very soon, then construction is estimated to take 8-12 months. We will be sad to leave our current neighbors after nearly twelve years, but we're excited about the new location. Anyway, this gives me some things to keep in mind this year as I'm working on the boat: I need to be careful not to do anything that will make it difficult to move the boat, e.g. like starting on the beam mounts and not finishing them! I'll also need to research and buy a trailer this year. So....look for an unfinished F22 being towed down a local Seattle freeway, sometime around Christmas... :)

Beams, weather, distractions

Weather's been unseasonally cold for most of the Seattle area this year, and I haven't been able to summon the willpower to work outside in my boat tent in 30-40 degree weather. So, no major updates, folks.

Yes, I did get my beams out of "jail". Ian does a nice job of packing them:

I even have my very own customs inspection sticker:

I'm scheduled for a small surgery (tonsillectomy) in a couple of weeks. By the time I recover, we should be in mid-February and I'm expecting the weather to warm up enough by then that I can start making some progress again. Yeah, I know - excuses, excuses.

One of these days I need to post a picture of my floats...this is their second winter sitting outside, and while structurally they're fine, they look quite forlorn: dirty, surrounded by tall grass, huge weeds growing between the floats, etc. The paint is holding up well, sometimes I'll wash off a small section just to see the shine come back. :-)

Waiting for beams to get out of jail...

My trip to China went well. I spent a week in Zhuhai (quite humid even in October) and the second week in Shanghai. My first trip ever to China, and it was just a lot of fun overall. Air quality definitely was not as good as here in America, but otherwise you just really get a sense that China is just this really booming, growing place (I stayed in the cities, no rural visits for me). Labor and goods are darn cheap! - you can stuff yourself on an elaborate lunch or dinner for hardly nothing, like $6-8. My chopstick skills got pretty good too. Lastly, my work colleagues went above and beyond in taking me out to see stuff - thanks guys!

[Edit: thought I'd add a couple of pics and thoughts from my trip.]

This is some random street in Shanghai; note the long pole things used for drying laundry:

I was amazed at how many bicycles you see in China. Sometimes after people would get to work in the morning, you'd see a hundred old bikes all lined up and locked to a street fence. It was no big deal to see office workers pedalling down the street going to work (including women, in skirts and heels). This picture is actually of a bike rental place, but it gives you an idea:

People seemed very thrifty. Old bikes (and motorcycles!) don't get thrown out, they just keep getting fixed and used and fixed and used and.... Kinda cool.

Traffic was especially crazy in Shanghai...you don't want to drive there, and you have to develop some extra guts to be able to cross roads. Despite the craziness, I never once saw an accident.

One day I had the chance to take a Shanghai subway during morning rush hour...now I know what sardines feel like! :-) Amazing to see how hard the folks trying to get on the train will shove the people in front of them.

Last China thought: you don't see too many fat Chinese people, or at least I didn't. At least in the city they seem to get a lot more exercise than the average American's I'm used to being around. I joked a bit with colleagues about feeling "white food guilt" over there.

Anyways...shortly after I left for China my beams showed up in Seattle, but obviously I was not here to go get them through customs, etc. So when I finally got ahold of a customs broker last week, he was a bit alarmed that I had waited almost two weeks to get in touch. Apparently after two weeks the Federal customs folks get suspicious of the delay and may take possession of the shipment? He also said that infrequent importers (uh, that would be me...) tend to get more attention as well. Long story short, the Federal custom folks apparently decided to do some extra examination of my beams and I won't be able to pick them up until next week. I have this image of fierce German Sheperd guard dogs sniffing and drooling all over my new beams in their opened crate...hope they're ok.

The broker guy was also somewhat incredulous that any sailboat part could cost as much as the beams did...guess he's not much of a boat guy. And this led into the long explanation of "well, actually I'm building a boat" to "well a trimaran has three hulls..." to "so these parts I'm getting connect the floats to the main hulls..." It all seems obvious to me now that I forget a lot of normal folks don't even know what a trimaran is.

What's going on?

I have 99% of the exterior lamination done (just a little touchup work left around the bow web). Have started thinking about how to level the boat and have been studying the the beam mount plan pages. Interesting stuff - I hope it goes well.

Ian finished making my beams and they are somewhere in the middle of the Pacific right now, aboard some ship named the Cap Saray. The ship will offload in Long Beach CA and then my beams will be trucked up to Seattle. Should be here first week in November.

As usual :) work has been keeping me busy. In fact, I'm preparing to leave very soon for a two week overseas business trip to China.

It's clearly been a disappointing year as far as progress on the boat goes, but such is life I guess. I'll just keep working at it as best I can.