Back in action finally

Here's the port rear coaming, after a lot of trial-and-error trimming:

Unfortunately I made a minor mistake back when I was taping in the cockpit seats, by fiting & taping the seat all the way up next to the beam mount recess glass. Here's the part I need to cut away in order to attach the rear coaming panels per plan:

After I realized my mistake, I looked more closely at the various plan sheets, and sure enough the information was there had I just read things more carefully. That happens more often than I'd like to admit. RTFM! Anyway, the inner coaming side pieces are bogged into place, tomorrow I start taping them:

On the bright side, having to trim the seat (right next to the beam mount and outer hull) motivated me to invest in my very own Fein Multimaster. A very nice tool, but pricey - yet, it's really an investment that I can use on lots of other projects. :)

You can also see in the above pictures that the forward coaming tops are glued on, and you can also see that I have opted to trim the cockpit side to be flush with the seat; originally I was going to extend the coaming all the way back, but I had second thoughts after wondering where any water on the seat would go. This way hopefully it drains right over the side.

I have also formed the flat spot for the mast step, along with trimming\blending the last exterior beam mount.

I have the aft-cabin traveller almost done. Here I'm getting ready to laminate the blank:

I regret now, buying so much 4.2 oz/yd^2 carbon fiber uni glass, since the plans called for several layers of 13 oz glass. So for every plan-specified layer (four of them), I had to actually cut and laminate three layers of the 4.2 oz stuff, for a grand total of twelve layers. My 4.2oz uni came in a 12" wide roll, so I had to trim it up:

Laminating so many very thin and long (6') layers of carbon has other challenges too: really need to watch out for air entrapment, and it is harder to keep so many layers from moving around while you're working out any bubbles. Both sides of the traveller have their uni done now, moving on next to glassing the ends and the final carbon wrap. So far it's turning out really nice, will post a pic when done.

One thing: after laminating the uni onto the first side (bottom) of the traveller, I set it out in the sun to cure, on top of the black plastic covering my floats. I swear that the traveller was 100% straight and plumb before that - but when I went out to check it, the heat from the sun and the black plastic warped it slightly, resulting in a very slight bow in the middle (in the vertical direction). I am still scratching my head on this, it doesn't seem possible especially with the aluminum insert running the length of the traveller. Weird - but I'm not going to worry about it for now.

I've been working on the daggerboard too, trying to finish the fairing. Here I'm chugging away, drilling a knot-retaining hole on the wrong side of the board:

Not sure how I did that. Note to self: see comment above, under Plans: Not Reading Closely Enough. I repaired the damage by packing the useless hole with high-density bog, which will hopefully wear better than the cedar, so maybe it turned out okay.

Moving the boat into the garage

Our usual spring rainy weather continues on, and it has been depressing since it's difficult to work on the boat while it was tarped down. I can't setup my boat tent yet either, because the location needs to be graded for better drainage and then gravelled. I did get a quote for the grading and gravel work, but it was too expensive to consider right now. So although I can work on small jobs just fine, I was still feeling a bit bummed by all of this (our rainy weather sometimes doesn't cease until after July 4th). Luckily my wife came to the rescue and suggested that I just move the boat into the garage. She must really love me I guess :).

Here's my son standing in front of the boat after we pulled off the plastic:

Using my old neighbor Sean's dollies, it was a piece of cake to get the boat into the garage:

Working indoors on my boat...now this will be a treat! Once I let the boat dry out, and give it a good vacuuming, it will be ready to go.

I also glued together the blank for the traveller, dado-cut a slot for the aluminum piece, and glued the aluminum into the blank. This was mainly because it could be done in the garage, but I think I need to focus on catching up on small tasks that have been accumulating. In no particular order:

• Exterior glassing of beam mounts
• Finish cockpit construction
• Finish fairing the daggerboard
• Fit poptop hardware
• Fit the interior settee-backs and glass them in.

There's more, but those are the big items I remember. I have a busy summer ahead of me.

Finally, I also built six drawers this weekend for underneath my bench. This may not sound like much, but I have never built drawers before so I feel pretty good about getting them done. I glued and screwed them together this afternoon, will start installing them tomorrow. All in all, a productive weekend.

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!