A better post for a new month!

The below was a crummy post for the first of June!  Heres to a better start to the first month of summer:

This is a Luna moth I found at a gas station fluttering uselessly against the lights.  I jumped out of the car and took off my shirt and chased it around the station until I caught it and brought it home (much to the amusement of my wife).  A beautiful specimen of a Giant Silk Moth (approx. 6" wingspan).  This one is a male, you can tell because it has well developed antennae.  It lives for about a week and does not eat, it lives only to mate.  I found a Polyphemus last year on Nantucket, but lost the pictures... boo.  But this is beautiful, my first one.  Another good way to start the summer! 

Daggerboard case intallation spars

WELL Im on a schedule where Im home about 48 hrs a week, which means 47 hrs of boatbuilding, and 1 hour of laundry.  Not really.

So during my past 48 hrs home I got to it and was able to install the daggerboard case and I hit on a major find for my spars.

For starters, I dragged my boat out of the garage into the driveway and noticed a pronounced twist in the stern.  This.was.bad.news.  If the intrepid reader remembers, I glued down my rear seat last time, and gluing down the rear seat definitely locks in and twist into the hull.  Because of this I was super super careful to make sure there was no twist when I glued it in, using a level and some strategically placed buckets.  I ran outside and moved my boat... and the twist was still there.  There was no way I was going to get any work done if the boat was twisted.  Using some brute force and a rigid vacuum tube I rolled my boat to the pond and threw it in the water.... and she floated straight as a die.  No twist.  PHEW!!!  HOLY HOT HEART ATTACK BATMAN!

Back out of the water, I did some sanding in the interior of the hull to make it easier in the future, and went around installing the daggerboard case.  What is most important is that the case is straight.  If it comes off-kilter, Ive got a giant blade dragging me off into some obscure direction that Im going to counteract with the rudder, and its going to be drag city.  In order to make sure that the case is straight, I stretched a string from the center of BH2 to BH3 over the top of the case.

So here it is, mocked into position with my centerline string.  I tried at first to do this on the ground, but I got much better results up on the buckets.  I think the runners are slightly different and offering tweaked ground handling characteristics.

I cut the ribs for the front of the seat amidships.  They actually came out ever-so-slightly larger than needed- a mistake- that ended up helping me out in the end.  When I put the case into position it would slip around with the oversized rib, I could gently cajole the case into position which was verified by the string.  When everything was straight, I carefully clamped everything into position.  Youll notice the square behind the ribs next to the case to increase gluing area.  The port rib is a little higher than it should be (remember, they were a tad oversize) and Ill plane it down level for the seat installation.

This whole skeleton will be glued together by the center seat.  This, with BH3 and the forward ribs will create the lever that will hold the case in place.  Remember, when I capsize, Im going to be standing on the daggerboard to right the boat, with all my pressure on the case.  This massive gluing area will keep it from ripping out when Im in the water in the middle of nowhere.

Here are two shots of my daggerboard case lined up with my string.

In other news, I went over to Goose Bay Lumber to grab some Doug Fir 1x4s so I could glue up some spars.  I had come up with some crazy idea to put the spars together as a laminated structure since I didnt think Id find blanks that were large enough.  I did.  I found some finished 2x6 DF boards that were 20 feet long.  I had them cut to 12 feet.  A quick rip on my table saw, and I had two skinny blanks and one fat blank.

The spars are on average 40mm diameter.  I get 37mm with the blanks.  My spar is about 37mm x 40 mm or so.  Ill keep it like this for the length and not taper it.  Its kind of bendy, and I need some bendy up at the top of my sail, since I hear that the Duckworks sail can be a little flat.  This should help.  My boom will be 37mm x 50mm or so.  If these are too bendy, I can laminate some ply at key areas to stiffen it up.  This was a quick, easy, and totally suitable solution.  Easy!

Until next week, intrepid reader!

On the metaphorical road again heading for more small boat sailing adventures

The brotherhood of the travelling boots.

Its occurred to me that the hikers boots that I’m wearing have been to seven different countries so far, they’re good friends the two of them, get along well even though they’re almost twins. One of course is a lefty and the other a righty but even so they seem able to co operate and generally arrive wherever it is that they’re going at about the same time.

I’m on my way again, this time to Chile,  will arrive in Santiago in about 18 hours.

Right now I’m sitting in Auckland International airport, within a few metres of the Percival Gull aircraft that Jean Batten flew from England to New Zealand in 1936, setting a number of aviation records on the way.  That flight took 11 days and 45 minutes to cover a bit more than 14000 miles. 

I’m going to be travelling in an aircraft that barely resembles that tiny single engined spruce and canvas plane.  In fact it would be no real problem to fit the “Gull” into the cargo hold of the big Boeing that I’ll be imprisoned within for the 13 ½ hour flight across the Southern Pacific Ocean. We’ll be travelling at around 590 nautical miles per hour, how different it is from Jean in her little light plane t125 mph.  I bet she didn’t complain about the cabin service in her tiny cockpit .

Jean Battens Percival Gull airplane, as I write this Im sitting about 2metres away from the wingtip on the left of the picture, its a graceful little thing, but a real reminder of how much aviation has progressed since then, remember too that Jean Batten was with us until 1982, so most of this amazing progress has happened within the space of a long lifetime.

This trip I’m making is by the way the longest uninterrupted stretch of ocean that there is north of the five great capes about twice the distance that it is across the North Atlantic from USA to UK.

Which brings me to why I’m travelling.  I’m to meet up with friend and co teacher Howard Rice, and we’re going to be setting up for the big voyage of exploration that he is undertaking next southern summer.

That voyage, in a modified SCAMP, all of 11 ft 11 in long ( 3.575M ) will leave from Punta Arenas in the Straights of Magellan, carry him out through the channels and straights into the Pacific where he’ll turn left, and head south toward Cape Horn.

That latter is not necessarily the objective of the voyage, but rounding “The Horn” is a possibility.  The real purpose of the voyage is to explore the least populated and most rugged coastline on the planet,  riven with steep sided fjords, many with glaciers at their heads, backed by mountains, many un named as yet, and battered by the incessant gale force winds of the Roaring 40s this is an extraordinary place, and one which Howard will be exploring, and documenting.

There will be cameras on the boat, as well as within his support crew back at Punta Arenas, there is already some video “in the can” and the intention is to make a comprehensive video of the voyage, a video which will be available to anyone wishing to see the grandeur of the wildest place on the planet from the viewpoint of a small boat sailor.

There is more on the boat and the voyage in Howards Facebook page here

https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=howard%20rices

Yes it costs by the way, and if you’d like to support this, check out the directors website here. http://www.below40south.com.  There is also a lot of information on the voyage there.

  Any donations would be very gratefully received, we’re covered for the actual filming but the production costs will be significant and even a small amount would help to get what will be one of the great small boat adventures out where people can share it.

So I’m sitting here in Auckland airport with several hours to wait until the big silver bird roars down the runway and turns out eastward over the sea.

Its not boring, I’m in a quiet corner upstairs, this is one of the better airports that I travel through, and I’m alongside a glass wall where I can watch the people flow like a gently stirred anthill.  It’s the arrivals area just below me, and there are friends, parents, siblings and visitors arriving, it’s heart warming watching the enthusiasm and emotion with which they are being welcomed.

But I’m going the other way, I’ll be among that crowd downstairs in 20 days.

Made the spars for SEI today

The spars for SEI are simple rectangular sections with rounded corners, sure theyre tapered but only in one plane. Easy stuff.

I’ve already got the mast done fiberglassed with a glass sleeve material from Duckworksmagazine and painted, it just needs a leather piece around it where it goes through the partners and the fittings for lazyjacks and halyard bolted thereon.

Heres the glass sleeve link, I did a comparison between a mast of the same size and SEIs mast with the glass sleeve and its markedly stiffer.  Good stuff.  http://www.duckworksbbs.com/supplies/cloth/sleeving/index.htm

So now its time to make the yard and boom.

Yes I know, “Boom” is a noise used for starting yacht races, English is a wonderful language isnt it.

I’d a piece of Fijian Kauri, nice wood, this one seasoned for several years in my stack of interesting and useful pieces of wood, so it can be relied upon to be stable and not warp. Agathis Vitensis is an easy wood to work , not quite as strong as New Zealand Kauri but slightly lighter in weight, both are stable, both strong for their weight.

First job, the piece I had was 50 x 250, ( two by ten) by 4m, (just over 13 ft) which is plenty long enough for that job.  The “Long Steps” build is not far off getting serious and I’ll be needing stringers, so while sawing the lengths for the SEI spars I cut the rest into 25 x 32 stringers for that project. When scarfed up that will give me four stringers long enough for the lower ones on LS.

The two pieces on the right are the boom on the right, the yard on its left. The pieces cut from the ends will come in handy somewhere in the next build, youd be suprised at how much wood you can soak up in small pieces when making up cleat stock and grounds for frames and seating.  

The rest will be stringers for Long Steps, Ill need about three times whats there but its a start.

Having cut the blanks for SEIs spars, I then used the lovely Leuco sawblade I have in the sawbench as a planer to take the roughsawn grain off, it leaves a near planed finish, beautiful and much easier than dragging the thickness planer out and making a heap of shavings ( note to self,  fix up the old single phase dust extractor system and bring it up to this shed, it’s a pain in the low back region having to manually clear the sawdust from within the saw cabinet).

That done, the spar blanks down to dimension, I marked out the tapers on both, and cut those on the saw.  You don’t get quite the same finish when cutting freehand in comparison to running along the fence so I clamped the blanks to the bench and hand planed them smooth.  Note the Record number 5 plane, the longer the plane the straighter it will make the work.

 

Note, I cut the taper from the near end toward the middle of the spar blank, dont  try it the other way.
The sawbench by the way is an MBS 250. These are sold under various brand names but always have the serial number plate marked MBS 250 or 300.  I get to work on sawbenches among other woodworking machinery, and these are the BEST Ive come across and that includes the European and USA built ones, Ill do a review on it soon.

Out comes the elbow grease powered planer, in this case a Record number 5 of about 1930s vintage, very good tool.

Having done that, out came the old Ryobi Router I inherited from my elderly joiner uncle, it’s a beauty, heavy, simple, robust and way better than anything that Ryobi make today.

With a 12mm radius bit I ran along all the corners of both, then got the sander out.

 Rounding the corners off, the router makes the job very easy but I am always seriously careful with them, they bite.

Measure, mark length and trim. It pays to leave the pieces a little over length until you are in the last stages of finishing. The saw is a Japanese Razor saw from Duckworks, Id be lost without it.

With 120 grit paper and a soft pad on the old Bosch PEX 125 random orbital sander set on slow, I went along and sanded the ends rounded then took out any defects along the full length of the spars. A couple of places had faint sawmarks still showing and my hand planing had left a couple of visible marks which the sander coped with in short order.

With that done I hand sanded the two with 240 grit, laid them out on stickers and after a wipe with a tack rag gave them their first coat of varnish.

Varnished, they will get another two coats tomorrow. Im using an exterior grade spirit based satin finish varnish, Ill be able to tell you how it lasts in a year or two.

Two more coats of varnish then I can put the leathering on, and the fittings, lace the sail on and we’re getting close to sailing.

West Marine Thieving Scumbags

I ordered some small parts (gudgeons for my rudder) for my boat from West Marine.

I received an email stating that the items have shipped.

I received an invoice in the mail stating the items have shipped.

After 10 days I called, looking for my parts.  "Theyre coming."

After 20 days, I called, looking for my parts.  "Call back next week."

I call back today, and they tell me that the items have not shipped.  They dont even have the items in stock.  There is no timeframe available when the items may be in stock.

They have my money, and I dont have any parts.  Need to find alternative plans now.