The "NANCY G" a surfboat /lifeboat to motorsailer conversion build in progress

Floor timber caps

To overbuild as I usually do, I had stainless steel channel custom bent to fit over my laminated floor timbers. I pre drilled them for the keel bolts and leg screw fasteners to pull them down on the bedding compound. For a beddng compound I used the same glass/resin mix that was used in the floor timbers bottoms. I applied about a 1/2 in coating of this to the tops, sit the stainless channel caps in place and bedded them down with the leg screws. Next post drilling the keel bolt holes.

A yacht is not defined by the vessel but by the care and love of her owner

 

Nancy G

Best of luck, George! When I was about 5 my Dad coverted a lifeboat for our familiy to live on. We did for about two years at the Dinner Key marina in Cocount Grove(Miami). I learned to swim and sail there. He designed and built it as a center cockpit motorsailer-aft cabin for the parents-forward cabin for the rug rats. Very fond memories.
I will follow this thread-looking forward to watching your progress!

 

So basically your status was "Collision bulkhead"?

 

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Right-and that explains a lot of things now that you mention it.....

 

Thanks Doug this is lifeboat conversion #3 I think. This one and the last one I did a 21 footer, are far superior sailing form hulls than the first one a standard ships 26ft. lifeboat, however I have to admit that old 26footer did serve me well for some 9 years thru thick and thin. Don't know why I do it as I could at any time buy a used sail boat and re furbish her but i'm kind of hooked on the challenge of it all I guess and in the end I know I have a good solid sea boat. --Geo.

 

Seredipity!

Surprise! There I was pondering used fiberglass lifeboats in the sub-continent and wondering about the paucity of current conversions when this thread shows up in a google image search. Given your conversion plans are very similar to my ponderings I will follow this with interest. I've looked at your previous post and conversions and you seem to have a good idea of what is possible Vs what is practicle and you eye for looks seems aligned with mine. When does this book appear? Keep up the good work I look forward to many more posts from you.

 

McHale- Welcome aboard don't know wheather to encourage you or discourage you ( re conversions)but it's one hell of a lot of fun to buy something for next to nothing and with scrounging, bartering and ones own fabricating build a superior seaboat for 1/4 the price of 99% of the junk they mass produce. The book schedule around 1 1/2 yrs. If you decide to go for it prior to this and need input i'm as close as my e mail after all we Newfoundlanders you Australians and New Zelanders have a history of working together thru thick and thin for King and country, not that i'm a Royalist far from it but it's payed off in most ways.( Ref. Royal Newfoundland Regiment). So my good man thank you for the reply and get at her.--Geo.

P.S. I'm doing a little research now on the possibility that your prime minister could be a relation. My mothers family are Gillards and in the early days alot of Newfoundland settlers we re-settled (kind word) by the British to Australia.

A yacht is not defined by the vessel but by the care and love of her owner

 

Boring The Keel Bolt Holes

Since i didn't have a drill with a built in level I aligned it by eye in one direction and used a square for the other. I bored the holes one size over, a 3/4 hole for the 5/8 keel bolts. After coating the keel bolts with a non stick coating, wax-silicone, I can pour in thinned epoxy resin around the bolt to seal the bare wood of the white oak laminations that have been drilled thru.
My postings on the build will become inactive for the next couple of months while i prepare and work on installing the new keel which will be the next part of the build to be posted ---Geo.

 

Keel Male Mold Design And Build (proto Type #1)

Ok after some months of research and with great help from the forum I felt comfortable to take on the design of my keel. My idea was to build a long keel skeg combination but with the windward benifits of a foil rather than just a slab sided full keel. My challenge was to blend the existing 9 in. wide 6 in. deep keel into the new design. My first experiment was to taper the existing 9 in. width to a 7 in. width and continue with the 7in. to a dept. of 14in. but in a foil shape sitting on top of and blended into th 7 in. wide tapered section. In other words do it all in one step. My first big challenge was to locate an X-Y graph of a suitable foil which i could plot onto ply. Once again the resorse of the forum came to my aid and thru some very basic math i was able to get the job done as shown by the photos. The foil is a general purpose NACA 63A 010 having D max. .35 x C aft. of the nose. Since my max. new keel width was to be 7 in. I chose a 10% ratio of D to C (cord width to cord length) which resulted in a cord length of 70in. However my keel required a root and tip length of 120in. and 96in. respectively, longer than my carefully measured and cut foils.(I made two identical) I simply cut the foils at their max. width points, inserted a 7in. parallel section in each to make up the necessary root and tip lengths. This reduced their lift specs. but still resulted in a keel that will be superior to windward than just a straight slab walled design. Recall that "all in one step above" well, after some 50hrs. I got that unhappy gut feeling, tore it all off, threw it against the fence and am now into proto type #2, the same design but an easier and more accurate two step building approach. The moral of the story--even old experienced builders have a learning curve, so if you get that unhappy gut feeling with your work and part way thru you can see a better way--DO IT.--

 

New Construction Approach On The Keel Male Mold

As in the previous disgarded construction I use two different sized foil. The root foil having longer and wider cord dimensions than the tip cord but both being of the same family of NACA foils( naca 63A 010). As previous I again used the cord width to length ratio of 10% on both and simply cut them at their widest point at 35% back from the nose and inserted parallel sections to get the lengths required. The difference in this build is there is no tapered section between the foil shaped keel mold and the origional keel. The result is the new keel will not have a two step but a constant cross sectional taper from root to tip. My plan here is to build the mold, take off a fiberglass shell, remove the mold and fasten the fiberglass shell to the boats origional keel, taper and blend the remainder of the old keel into the new foil keel section forward and aft. Previous to tearing off prototype #1 I made a model of this new approach and it worked out quite well in terms of ease of construction and better accuracy. The photos show the work thus far.

A yacht is not defined by the vessel but by the care and love of her owner--

 

Thank you for posting the updates and photos viking north. Following this thread is one of the best!

 

And thank you for the kind words FMS -- if you have any questions feel free to post or e mail me thru the forum-- Geo.

 

Nancy G

Good to see your progress ,George! How to you plan to add ballast?

 

Doug, It's a secret . Once the fiberglass keel sheel is glassed up on the wax release coated male mold. I remove the shell from the mold then remove the mold from the hull and install the keel bolts welded to a longitudional stainless pipe to create what I term the ballast cage. I then glass the shell to the hull--cut holes into the bottom of the shell and fill it with automotive wheelweights encapsulated in polyester resin level with the the inside edge of the hole cut outs and simply glass the cutouts themselves back in place and cover it all with a teflon shoe. (slides easily off the rocks I encounter) On another thread I started some time ago "Reverse engineering" there are some photos on the later pages in the thread that show how i set up the keel bolts welded to a longitudional pipe to create the ballast cage to better hold the ballast and allow final torquing of the bolts once the whole encapsulated ballast is cured and set. Such a system places no load on the glassed on keel shell.---

A yacht is not defined by the vessel but by the care and love of her owner.

 

Modified Foil Keel Male Mold Contd.

I installed a center longitudional strip in the mold frame and using a straight edge vertically plummed, shimmed it (fine tuning) to match the outer edges of the top and bottom foils.(photo) I then sheeted with 1/8 mahogony ply. I stopped short of the sheeting at the nose and only sheeted to a point where the ply was not so stressed as to deform the foils shape. I then rough formed the nose with plaster of paris but I am not yet convinced this is the right route to take.I am also going to try forming it out of thin alum. sheet. If successful this will do away with the tedious task of filling and sanding using the ratio of upper cord to lower cord size and resultant diagional lines as references.If successful it would be a simplier and more accurate for the average builder. With foil work it is important the first 25% of it's shape be accurate with the first 8% being very accurate. So we will have to be extra patient here to come with an accurate and fairley easy to do system for the home builder. By the way I chose 40deg. as my leading edge angle to rid entanglement in floating fishing gear of which I have a few nightmare stories.