Shop is about good enough

Well, another weekend where I didn't do anything but unpack, organize, and clean the garage. The good news is that it's just about done. My son and I built a 16' bench against the back wall, put up some Elfa shelves, moved lots of miscellaneous stuff up above the garage, and made multiple trips to the dump for all of the other crap I decided to get rid of. This isn't quite as organized as I would like, but at least it is a workable space now:

Boat stuff is on the shelves to the left of the window, regular tools and garage stuff on the right. I set up an epoxy station underneath the window to the right. I'm thinking about building some drawers underneath the bench too. One thing I don't have yet is a fiberglass rack on the wall - not sure if I am going to do that, because frankly there isn't much fiberglass work left on this project.

Starting shop cleanup and prep

We're almost settled into our new house. Not everything is perfect, but enough so that I'm feeling the need to get my rear in gear on my F22 again (finally!). I had thought I might be mixing some epoxy this weekend, but instead I spent the entire time working in the garage (and attic over the garage) trying to get things organized and free up space. Not a whole lot to tell here, just hard work. I did free up some space though, by hanging my rowboat from the ceiling:

And all the way up:

The 2x4's on the ceiling are screwed into joists with 4" Spax lag screws; the boat was then hooked up to heavy-duty eye-bolts, and I layed the oars inside the boat as well. Pretty sure it will be strong enough. I tried to check the pull-out strength on the Spax web site, but they only had shear strength listed.

These pictures also give you a good idea of the regrettable state of disarray in my garage. I am missing the garage cabinets & workbench in my old house, for sure; but I'll be getting new ones here eventually.

Boat move to the new house

Now that we're pretty much moved into our new house, it was time to move my F22 hull and floats to the new location. I had planned this almost a week in advance to happen today (Sunday, January 3rd) at 9am. The exact time was important because I was asking several of my old neighbors for help with the move, and I didn't want to waste their time by not being 100% ready to go. Fortunately, everything went like clockwork and at 9am today, the boat tent had been completely cleaned out and I had disassembled enough of the side fence to get room to move the boat through.

As you may remember my F22 had been left sitting on its cradles, which in turn were sitting on top of the strongback which I had yet to disassemble. My initial plan was to simply man-handle the hull off the cradles, then lift-slide it forward until we reached the truck ramp. One of my neighbors had a better idea: use some dollies to maneuver the boat on. We switched to this method shortly after getting the boat completely off the cradle and it worked great: we were able to dolly the boat completely into the truck, then lift it back up to get the cradles back underneath. During unloading, we left the cradles in place and dollied the boat down like that.

Okay here's some pictures; squeezing the hull through the hole where the fence was:

The view from the other side (bow is sitting on a baby mattress which is on top of a dolly):

Then we added the second dolly under the aft end, and simply pushed the boat along the board "runway" we had laid down:

Starting to head up the ramp:

The dolly wheels bumped pretty easily over the ramp-truck bed join, and it wasn't long before we had the hull in the truck. We put the cradles back under the boat and strapped it down tight:

Note, I have submitted a trademark application for "Tri in a Truck" - if you wish to use it, email to arrange royalty payments :).

The rental truck was a Nissan diesel box van; the box was 26' long, so plenty of room length-wise for the hull, but it was pretty tight width-wise:

Driving such a behemoth of a truck was quite the adventure though, I must say. Really gotta watch the corners!

Unloading at the new house:

Unloading was a breeze with so many hands! I really cannot thank my neighbors enough for being willing to give me a few hours of their Sunday morning; thank you Bill, Sean, Scott, and Jim!

After the main hull had been moved, my son helped me move the floats. No dollies for these, we just carried them right up the ramp. Here they are all strapped in:

I also got a good start on disassembling the boat tent; the main cover and the end covers were taken off and taken to the new house. Here I'm removing the pipe clamps that hold the end panels on (yep, I'm sporting my winter beard again too):

Last picture for now: spreading the main boat tent cover on the ground so we can carefully fold it up:

The area next to the garage where I was going to set up the boat tent proved to be too marshy according to the grading contractor, so he is coming back out this week to re-grade the area (and provide a new drain path for surface water), then gravel it. I should end up with a really nice "pad" to work on. In the meantime, the floats and hull have been left on the driveway under a large piece of black plastic. We're obviously swamped with all of this moving stuff, but I hope to get started on some boat stuff again in the next couple of months.

Cockpit hatch and compartment work

Sorry for the lack of progress lately everyone. It turns out that I am human after all - I cannot simultaneously hold down a job, build a house, and build a boat. The job and the house are high-priority right now, so boat progress has been suffering.

This is the jig I made for locating the poptop support-arm pivot holes:

The jig was made as square and level as possible, so that I could get all of the pivot holes in the same plane. That part actually worked as intended, except that the holes were located too low in the coaming - the bolt heads wanted to dig too far into the surrounding deck next to the coamings. So I ended up filling the first set of holes and will need to re-drill them a bit higher.

The pivot arms themselves are pretty easy to make:

I also already have the UHMW plastic and the jib track+slides, to complete this work. I bought a large block of plastic and have been using the table saw to cut it into the appropriately sized chunks, per the plans (jig-saws don't seem to work for this, so far all I get is a dull blade and messy cut with melted\bubbled plastic):

I've also been working on the cockpit coaming compartments. As mentioned on other blogs, these compartments seem intended to drain into the under-seat compartment and then out. Well on my boat I wanted the under-seat compartment to stay dry. To fix this I decided to laminate some foam across the back of the compartment all the way to the coaming top:

The above compartment is obviously in primer - I did my best to fair out the interiors, but again it will be a workboat-only finish. Since taking that picture I've finished painting them and am now considering how to use some plexiglass for use as a mold, for the pre-formed flangs. The above picture also shows you the "curve" I did for the inner compartment wall. I don't think I'm perfectly per-spec on this, but it's close enough (and it looks nice, which is important). And both port and starboard compartments are nearly identical in appearance.

Finally, I had a visit today from Thatcher (lives in Seattle) and his dad John (lives in Montana). We had a nice visit talking boat stuff; they also brought along a six-pack of Moose Drool beer, a Montana-brewed beer. While bringing beer is certainly not a requirement, I enjoyed it very much. Thanks guys!

Outboard engine

After more investigation, I finally settled on a Tohatsu 6hp 4-cycle outboard engine: the "MFS6BUL SailPro" model, with a 25" shaft. I bought mine online from Online Outboards; they had a good price to start with; combined with free shipping and no state sales tax, it was the best deal I could find.

My nephew Daniel and I slapped together a storage mount for the engine when it's not on the boat:


I will order some casters to make it easy to move around.

I am also investigating outboard brackets. My goal is to know, well before fairing or painting, exactly how my outboard will be attached so I do not have any problems later on, e.g. with extra reinforcement. Adventure Marine has a simple but expensive fixed bracket, and I am also looking into the various Garelick models.

Regrettably I have some deadlines hanging over my head at work, so today was a short day on the boat, and tomorrow I will be at the office. I did finish taping the settee stiffeners in place. I spent a lot of time studying the settee seat back arrangement (see my post on the google F22 group), and also spent a lot of time dry-fitting the fwd coaming panels before finally settling on an arrangement; I then laminated the backsides of coaming panels and should be ready to start installing them next time. Oh wait, shouldn't I fair, prime, and paint the coaming compartments first? :-)

Cockpit seats glued on

The poptop hatch got an extra layer of A around the top outside edges:

I'm debating whether to put an extra layer of A on the top part. I also have collected all of the raw materials to start assembling the poptop hatch mechanicals (aluminum bars, bolts\nuts, plastic, jib track & slides, etc). I will start on that part of the project as soon as I have finished up most of the smaller jobs going on.

Yesterday I finally finished painting the cockpit compartment interiors; it took me all week to finally get down to 400 grit (yeah right). The weather has been crazy-hot lately, and it was a few degrees above System Three's suggested max temp for paint application. I compensated by thinning the paint with some slightly chilled water. I think it turned out ok:

Definitely a "work boat" finish, but plenty good enough for me. Here's another view in better light:

Here's the strategy I came up with to glue the settee stiffeners at a nice square angle to the settees: The fwd-most clamp does not have a piece of wood, since I didn't think I'd be able to get the screw out once the stiffener was glued in place. Here's a cross-section of one of these stiffeners:

I over-built the stiffeners a bit; two layers of A on each side, then the layer of A around the bottom curved edge, then another layer of A on the top edge (after routing a nice curve onto the front edge):

Eventually after I flip the hull upside down, I'll use A tape along the bottom inside join. So far, the results are quite satisfying: the settees have become nearly rock-solid places to sit. I am still however at a loss as to whether I should enclose the space beneath or not; rather than torture myself further, I decided to just leave the settees as-is for now. (With the limited space in that area, I shudder to think about if\how I'm going to fair the area fwd of the daggerboard case...)

With the compartments painted, I was finally free to glue the seats on:

Not shown in the above picture, but the initial perimeter taping on top of the seats has been done as well. I also dug out the foam from the extra layer on the aft-cabin hatch and filled it with bog (man I hate that job).

Last but not least, I began making blanks for the settee backs.