Payson Joint repair

Ok, intrepid reader!  Sailing season is soon upon us!  Before you know it I will be sailing around in my Goat Island Skiff and rocking house, and maybe you will feel that kick in your pants to get outside and do some adventuring of your own!

As presented in my earlier post, I have some repairs that require my attention.  One of them is cosmetic by nature, and thats the pesky buckled buttstrap joints on my sides.  This buckledness was born from my inadequate gluing job many moons ago in my garage when my Goat was but an infant in many different pieces.  That being said, I am attempting to make correct this blemish.  I have posted this picture before, but here it is again:

Note joint

Boo buckled buttstrap joint.

I have been advised by Mik Storer (Goat Island Skiff designer you should know that by now) that the best way to tackle this issue is through the use of a "Payson Joint" which basically entails fairing the buckled portion, digging a trench to lay down some fiberglass tape and epoxy, and then sanding smooth and repainting.  A Payson Joint is a way to join two pieces of plywood together, and usually the trench and fiberglass tape are used on both sides of the joint.  It is a flexible, strong, and cosmetically innocuous way to join two pieces of ply together, since the tape lies in the trench that was hollowed out and doesnt bump up and out and sticks out.  It is strong, like bull, joint repair technique.

My repair only needed it done on one side, since I have a buttstrap on the inside of the joint.

First, I needed to sand away the paint from the bumped areas:

Starboard, note ghetto torture sanding board!

Port

Youll notice that on the port side I already have done some work, this was last spring before I painted.  I noticed the buckling before I applied the paint and I just ground it flat with my ROS and painted it.  It was suitable, but not ideal by any means.  The starboard side didnt show up until halfway through the season.

After the ridge was faired smooth it was time to "dig the trench" that would accept the fiberglass tape.  Here is the Starboard side trenched out.  The trench should not be more than a veneer, but after the fairing the first veneer was almost gone anyway, so it didnt take much to get down to the next layer.  The glue between veneers offered a good guideline too, visually offering the trench as opposed to feeling it out with my fingers.

Starboard trenched

 After the trenches were dug it was time to apply the fiberglass tape and thickened epoxy.  These would fill the trench and make everything smooth and fair.

Port side with fiberglass tape in trench

After this whole shebang cured, I have it a light sand to see if I had any hollows or ridges.

Starboard

Port

Obviously, I needed to do some filling, so QUICK FAIR TO THE RESCUE!

Starboard

After the Quick Fair set, I sanded it down until I got back to the epoxy.  Everything seemed smooth as a babys bottom, so tonight I applied the first coat of primer.

This is the real test, the paint, because ones fingers can only feel so much, but glossy paint will show every flaw in your boat for the world to see!  Ugh.

My port side came out as good as it was going to come out.  I am pleased with the results.  My starboard side, ever my nemesis, came out almost just right, except on the bottom of the tape on the aft side.  Theres a little ridge there than didnt get filled.  I mean, I have to be looking to see it.  My lovely wife basically told me to forget it.  My enabler told me to fix it.

Starboard

Also Starboard

Now please take note that this imperfection is actually almost impossible to see in any real world scenario.  I have to shine the flashlight "just so" to see it plainly.  On the water or on the trailer, no one will ever pick this up, I actually have to move about a bit in the garage to see it under normal light.

But I know its there.  Its going to bug me, I did all this work, Im going to have to fix it.  Its only one coat of primer that is meant to be sanded off anyway.  UGH.  So close.

My only fear is that I screw it up worse!

Oh, I also put in a plug in my daggerboard:

Check out the leaves that finally coming out! WOOT!

Other Storer boats

As many of you know, Mik Storer is the designer of my Goat Island Skiff.  As popular and as awesome as the Goat is, Mik has also designed other boats as well, all of them excellent.  Obviously my mind wanders to boat building as the days get shorter and water colder.  While I am Zinea, Pterodactylus and I will sail well into the cold season, Im getting a hankering to trying some new boats, if only to demonstrate my new hard won building skills.

For instance, I have had a real hankering recently to get a canoe so I can do some paddling on the local ponds and rivers, freeing me from the 1hr. car ride I have to make everytime I want to go sailing.  Its my water fix, and I need it.  Since Im not working now due to my two ruptured discs in my spine (Im fortunately mobile, but I cannot sit for any appreciable amount of time-- this is why the Goat is so awesome, I can easily stand and sail), Id love a canoe, but it needs to be a cheap canoe.

Voila, el answero:  The Quick Canoe.  Goes together quick and dirty and cheap for fun on the water.  Of course, one could also make it nice.  Csaba in Hungary just put one together, and put together this video for it.



I mean, how much more fun do you want, in 5 hours and a couple of hundred bucks later?  Already Ive seen sailing versions, narrow versions, white-water paddling, a motor-QC conversion, amongst numerous other builds, some really spanky nice, some really cheap.  Get on the water!

Another boat that really has my Goat *joke* is Miks sailing canoe yawl, Beth.  This is a beautiful boat.

  Please see Miks Beth Flickr page and peruse around.

Mik sells this plan with the caveat that you are going to capsize, get wet, go fast, and then capsize again, but boy!  She pulls at my heartstrings she does.  She may not be the best boat for my back right now, but shes on my hit list.  No kidding.

In the meantime, my good friend and adventuring buddy is working on his own Storer design, the elegant and multipurpose Eureka canoe.  Stay tuned to see this boat in person, vicariously through me.

Another boat perhaps on the Storer drawing table is the fabled "Son of Goat," a smaller yet just as capable version of the Goat Island Skiff, except mainly tuned to one person and the occasion passenger.  A thread here, describes the concept. 

A nice stable of boats, if I may say so myself.

Little Chebeague Revisited

Hello intrepid readers!

Last year Al from Brooklyn and I made a camping trip out to Little Chebeague Island in Maine.  Al in Brooklyn constructed his own Goat Island Skiff, and he drove up to do a little camping.  As the intrepid reader will remember, it was blowing great balls on the way out, and it took us all day to sail back.  On Little Chebeague I realized that my precious camera had been soaked through and through-- ruined by the salt water.  Fortunately, we met two MIT (maybe Harvard? whatever-- one of those awesome schools in BOS) students doing an economic study of the MITA, and they graciously took some pictures for us.  I received them today.  Here are two:

Goat and campsite

Intrepid heroes-- author (left) and Al from Brooklyn (right)

This was a great trip.  We compared the differences between Bourbon and Rum on a nautical adventure, and explored the cosmos from our beach looking up into a starry sky.  The Bourbon/Rum debate needs more analysis, and the cosmos are awesome.  What more should I say?  Additionally sailing is quite cool, we decided.

Sailing season is almost here, intrepid readers, so bottoms and up and get your boats ready!

Wooden Boatbuilding in Castro Chiloe Chile!

Well, the Boot brothers have been doing a lot of walking, together of course, you’ll rarely find them apart from each other.  I went along with them, it keeps them out of trouble you know.

We’ve been exploring part of Chiloe Island just off the coast south of Puerto Montt which is well south of Valparaiso, one of the more southerly of the major ports here in Chile.

We took the ferry over, perhaps a 30 minute ride on a drive on drive off ferry which was an amazingly slick operation. There were at least a dozen of these ferries working when we were crossing, they carry around 30 vehicles each and  operate across a straight where the tidal streams run at ( guessing here, but not exaggerating) up to 8 knots.  This means that they’re going sideways as much as forwards, and the skippers know where all the major eddies are and work them just the same as a white water canoeist does.

On our travels on Chiloe we found a couple of boatyards and stopped with the camera. No problem with walking around in there, the “boatyard” where these pics were taken is the bank between the road and the waters edge, no more than about 20 metres wide, some very simple roofs on poles, and a few truckloads of roughsawn lumber in stacks.

There are repairs going on, and several new builds, I took pics of the biggest, and one of several small boats in frame, and you’d be amazed at how rough, and how basic these are. “Lofting”? All by eye!

Fitting? Axe and adze, and absolutely no more than just enough to get two pieces of wood close enough to get a bolt through. Those bolts? Hardware store mild steel hot galvanised, no fancy stuff here.

This is how the old square riggers were built, no frills, and way cheaper than the current way of building replicas. The fastest and cheapest path to the water, built under a very simple roof on poles with a monster bandsaw and a thickness planer being the only power tools,  axes and sledgehammers being the preferred tools and muscle being the main prime mover.

Have a look!

This little ship in build is about 20 ft long, shes partly planked, the frames are bent in using two temporary ribbands between the keel and the gunwale on each side, shes fastened with galvanised nails bent over on the inside. Some of the material appears to have been salvaged from older boats, and that monster piece of wood in the foreground is a stem removed from a much larger boat which has been demolished and saved for another build.

 About 70 ft by 18, the stem is more than a foot square, shes of much the same shape  and style as the boats weve seen everywhere along this coast.  Raked stem, very full at deck level, fine on the waterline and strong sheerline.

 Another view under the roof. There is a second ship in, shes been stripped out, engine and shaft removed and is being reframed. There are new garboards and some more plank replacements in the forefoot area, those planks being about 1 1/2inches thick, and as with all the others fastened with galvanised mild steel nails.

 Wed stopped to see what was happening in Ancud, the town at the northern end of Chiloe island  and down by the waterfront came across a maritime museum.  Sadly it was closed but this was visible through the fence.  Ive no idea as to what or why but shed be 80 ft, and I suspect typical of a type which would have serviced the coastline in this area. Shes a big heavy lump of a ship, cargo carried in a midship hold and on deck, shes no cruise liner but has a certain elegance.
Shed be built in very much the same manner as the ones in the boatyard and the bow end of her is much the same shape and style as the big motor fishing vessels, just the stern being straightened and squared off to cope with the higher speeds given by the big diesel engine.

Painting her bottom and other places

Owning any big boat is like a race, more or less like the tortoise and the hare in fact.  The hare, that’s the owner, is trying to stay ahead of the maintenance of the ship, while the maintenance needs of the ship are like the tortoise in that the deterioration of paint, varnish, antifouling and such goes on 24/7 all year around.

In winter when sensible people are snugged up in front of a fire reading  cruising stories telling of while coral sand beaches, turquoise waters and tropical sunshine, the race is still on with the paintwork still deteriorating. In summer when out sailing and enjoying the boat, yep, still goes on. Never resting!

If allowed to go on for too long the material underneath, whether wood, steel, aly or fiberglass is going to deteriorate as well so there is no choice but to be a part of that race, and the “hare” had better keep up.

I’ve owned my old ship for about 2 ½ years now, have done quite a lot of small paintwork, varnished much of the interior of the main cabin, filled a million little holes where fittings have been moved and the old screw holes not dealt with, have painted the inside of the cockpit, and  put her aground an hour or so before low tide so she’d lean over enough for me to wade around just more than waist deep reaching under and scrubbing her bottom with a hard broom. 

That latter has been fairly effective, and I don’t get much in the way of marine growth anyway as the water here at my dock is often quite brackish.  But the mud cakes, the antifouling paint wears away, and its past time it was renewed.

That plus the topsides paint has been flaking some, its thick, heavy and now that I’ve been in and sanded it some it would appear that whoever did the paintwork ages ago has short changed the owners and not used a proper priming paint.

More work to be done.

On Tuesday last I did the dreaded thing, entrusted my home to the tender mercies of the travel lift at Gulf Harbour Marina.

She’s up on blocks in a cradle, seems stable, but gosh, when I go up the ladder to go aboard it’s a very long way up, probably 5 metres to eye height when standing in the main cabin, when  Im in there I try not to look out the window!

 The end of day one.  There is not quite standing room under her, enough so that with a slight stoop and a roller on a 4 ft handle I can reach in to paint quite quickly. 

I get very nervous seeing my home up in the air like that, shes a long way up, and Im very keen to get her back in the water where she belongs.

Day one, rumbled off down the river, through the moorings and out to sea, along the coast and into the marina.

The workberth where the travel lifts operate ( there are two of them) is quite tight to get into, and there was a decent sized catamaran aongside in there which made it an “interesting”  task getting the ship against the dock and tied up.  No bow thruster, or even twin screws, or crew for that matter.  So, just me, 15 tons of ship, that big propellor hooked to old Henry ( the ship is powered by a 6.5 litre 6 cylinder Ford diesel,  135 hp and about 450 nm of torque at about 1800 rpm) and the dock.

As it happened, there was no wind, we made a perfect approach, prop walked  the stern across just before the bow touched the pontoon and I stepped ashore with fenders already deployed, picked up the mooring lines already flaked out  ready for use, and tied her up.

The half dozen spectators were just far enough away so they could not hear my sigh of relief!

The Marina crew waterblasted her to get most of the  rubbish off her underwater sections, which was very effective.  Once perched up on her cradle, it was” into it“ with the tungsten tipped scraper and sandpaper.   By the end of day one I had most of the bottom scraped off,  had wet sanded it to tidy the surface up, had begun the application of the underwater primer paint, and had shoulders that felt as though Atlas had been using them to hold the planet up.

I was a bit preoccupied here, so had let the time run on some, and only just made it to the bus stop to catch the bus back to my home, or where my home is usually docked so I could pick up my pickup and drive out to the local geothermal hot pools for a well deserved soak.

Made it, but had to sprint 500 yards or so to get there, it’s the first stop on that bus route so it doesn’t pay to count on the bus being late!

As a by the way, the public transport system here is a vast improvement on what it was a few years ago, and I find that I use it fairly regularly.  Well done whoever did that!

Day two, sanded off the topsides, applied more primer paint to the underwater areas. I thought my shoulders were sore the night before? Double that.  No, double double that.

Back to the hot pools, had a looooong shower and a soak, remember that my shower is 15 ft up in the air having her outside painted! Came home. Slept like a log.

Underwater primer coat on, topsides sanded off, Im about to put the masking tape on. 

Note that its all hand sanding here, power sanders spread too much dust and that would upset others painting, a very good reason to find somewhere else next time I want to haul her out. That plus usurious costs, the guys in the yard are great, but they dont set the prices.

Where am I staying?  Aha, the marina does not allow people to stay aboard their boats when up on the hard, so I have set up a hikers tent inside the shed, I’ve a portable head, good mattress, cooker, the icebox from Spook, my little gaff sloop, and of course have lighting and electricity.  My senior card gets me into the hot pools very cheaply and I’m a regular there anyway.  Nice place.

Day three, whooboy!  Sore shoulders! Double treble that.  Finished the primer coat underneath, filled the seeveral dings in the topsides with epoxy filler, ran the masking tape around her and managed to get a full coat of coal black antifouling on.  Another coat tomorrow and that’s done.  I’m hoping that I’ll get through the antifouling by lunchtime and have time to put the undercoat on the topsides so I can get two coats on over the weekend.

First coat of antifouling on, prop and rudder polished ready for its special coating. Note that has to be applied to a heated surface, so there is a paint stripper gun in my near future ( tomorrow morning, dont let me forget!) 

There is a second coat of antifouling to apply, that will happen tomorrow.  The weather forecast is for showers over the weekend which may scotch my efforts to complete the topsides paint, but if I can get the undercoat on I can do the rest at my dock. One way or tother she goes back in the water on Monday next. 

Note, this is not concours standard painting, its roller and brush, it will look fine from a few yards away, on a dark night, with sunglasses on! But it will protect the wood underneath which is the aim.

I had a thought that Diane Salguero ( did I spell that correctly Diane? If not, my apologies) might have liked to be here, she’s the best boat painter I know, a Port Townsend WA USA resident, and if you need your boat painted, she’s the girl to do it.)

Diane, I know about the weather in WA at this time of year,  its shorts and bikini top weather here and I need you and your paintbrush!

So I’m painting, 12 hour days with sandpaper, roller and brush.  In the meantime, there are many things I’d rather be doing, drawing boats, sleeping, sailing boats, sleeping, building boats, sleeping, visiting friends, sleeping, reading good books, sleeping, watching the sunset, sleeping.

I’m off to bed, even a sleeping bag in a tent set up in my shop is a very inviting prospect right now.

So its goodnight from me.

Christmas greetings and a couple of other things

With Christmas still happening in many parts of the world, Id like to wish everyone all the best for the festive season and a happy new year.

Advertising, this blog is running at about 10K page views a month, thats astonishingly good, thanks all who are interested enough to come and read. But its attracting increasing numbers of people posting advertising, anyone wishing to do that should first contact me so I can vet for appropriate content and work out what its worth, or Ill pounce on each post with the delete button.
Too many, or off subject ads are a distraction that we dont have to put up with.

Me? Ill be bathing the dog, he found some interesting things to roll in while we were out for a walk yesterday, then Ill be using my new sawbench to make the boom and yard for SEI. I want to be out sailing her very soon and will report as I get on with that project.

So all the best from summertime in NZ, its a near perfect morning here with the temp at about 20 deg C and rising, perfectly calm and clear weather and its looking like a perfect day.

Trekkies will know this one "Live long and prosper".