The Melatelia: light wind dinghy

there is a time you have to stop designing, redesigning, and fretting over everything and start building. If you do not, you will never build it.

the design is as good as any for your intended purpose, time to start building.

Often when I start in a new design I do not have all of the details worked out, and am confident that when I get to that point with struture in front of me, a solution always presents itself. You will also find that as you go along you will think of ways to make it better, lighter or easier to build, if you are not too far along you can make those improvements as you go. I think that the building is as much a part of the design process as anything else. There is no substitute for having a real boat under construction in front of you to complete the knowledge you will need to make further improvements.

No boat does everything well, but will do most things well, and you can adjust or compesate for it's minor shortcomings. The design is solid, it will sail well and be easy to handle. No need to worry about that, you can always make adjustments after you get it in the water.

Get started now with the confidence that you have everything you need to start cutting wood, and what little bit of information still needed with present itself as you are building it. It is time to stop designing it, and get started on the build. Have fun with it, do not rush, and stay focused on getting the boat in the water.

good luck.

 

I also would not worry too much about stiffness. I have sailed in and paddled very flexible light hulls, and also heavy rigid hulls. the flexible hulls were not a problem, and were even a bit easier to control since you were not knocked around as much by rough seas. light hulls are much nicer to sail in light wind condition and a lot easier to paddle or row around in if there is no wind. wood has excellent fatigue properties, so as long as your connections are solid, the flex will not present any problems. in a lightweight boat you would not want to be out in really rough conditions anyway, so there is not hazard to making it light to meet your other design considerations as long as you know the limitations of the hull. do not worry about it, it is a fine design.

 

The actual boat

Hello everybody,

I owe you all an apology. A lot of you have helped, supported and advised me during the planning stages of the Melatelia. I promised that I would share photos and stories of building and sailing. I said that the beginning of the build would be 6th of June, and will take a month. By now, I guess those that haven't forgotten about this boat has assumed that some horrible disaster had stopped me along the way.

It did not.

The boat has been successfully built and launched, just today. Up to this day, I have been working my *** off, day and night (sometimes literally). Almost every step was been haunted with numerous problems, and the schedule was impossible to meet. I have poured all my time resources into finishing the boat as soon as possible, and did not have enough time left to post updates on this forum. For that, I am sorry. Now that the boat is finished, I'll try to make up for it by telling the story. There will be photos. For your convenience, they are downsized. At the end of this post, there will be a link to a full album with more photos at higher resolution, should you wish to view them.



The building

It would be impossible to tell when the work left the computer screen and relocated to the small garage I had to work in. When I began, I had nothing, not even a screwdriver. One by one, I gathered numerous tools and materials needed for this "little" project. The first milestone was to build a workbench with integrated table-saw. This baby took me at least 4 days. It had rip fence, feather board, miter gauge, several push sticks. Safety first.



Most of you live in US, I guess. I imagine few of you would know what it means to get some specialized materials and tools in East European country like Lithuania. Just try to get something like a block plane. Or fiberglass cloth. Or okoume plywood. And you'll know what it's like. In my case, it was honing guide. This little, simple, yet essential tool is simply not available in my country, no matter what money you could offer. As shipping overseas was too expensive to me, I decided to make one myself. Pretty proud of it. Actually makes tools sharp, if combined with proper sandpaper.



Then, there were some sawhorses to make before the real work began. Once they stood, the plotting and cutting of the plywood took place. Lots of big and small pieces. Easy to make an unnoticeable yet catastrophic mistake. Luckily, I managed to get without those. Or so I thought.



My initial design called for scarfing the plywood joints, but I discovered that it would be very, VERY time consuming to do it accurately without proper tools such as belt sander. I made some nasty experiments experiments, and decided to scarf next time. Butt joints will do.



Stitch and glue... Few things seem so un-boat like. While I knew how it works, I just couldn't believe that these creaking pieces of plywood and wire would ever become a boat. And yet, it was starting to look like it. While horribly flexible and unstable, it took the right shape after some convincing. Then, epoxy fillets, which I messed up (in terms of aesthetics, not strength), despite receiving advice from one very good friend, and tedious job of clipping the wire.



The next stage was installing the gunwales. And here I learned what every boatbuilder learns on that day - there are never enough clamps, never ever...



Assembling the daggerboard case was like a jigsaw puzzle. Assemble, clamp, screw, mark, disassemble, saturate with epoxy, glue half of it, clamp, let cure, unclamp, disassemble, paint, glue, assemble... All the time, keeping track of what is what and where it goes in relation to other pieces. My head was really hurting that day. I'm still not sure how did I manage to go throughout it without gluing wrong parts or in wrong orientation, or simply enclosing everything too soon...



There are few moments as terrifying as cutting a hole in the hull for the daggerboard. It just feels so... wrong, to cut a hole in a boat. Instinct tells that boats are not supposed to have holes. But it was subsequent job after laying the keelson, no way around that. Luckily, the hole turned out to be just right.



Days were passing by, and the boat started to look like an actual boat. Installation of daggerboard box didn't go without fuss, as I discovered that it is slightly, just slightly too large for the slot in the keelson. Well, an opportunity to try out my skills with a chisel. Then, side decks. Now, people been warning me that with my design it will be very, very difficult to install them. I should have listened. I really should have. To say it was difficult is to say nothing. These damn things just didn't want to stay in place while I wanted to apply epoxy and glass. There were moments when I almost went into a hysteric fix. Finally, somehow, with questionable accuracy and ton of epoxy to fill major gaps, the side decks were installed, along with the mast partner beam and some random plywood pieces to join everything together.



The making of mast partner itself could be summarized in title named "life without a drill press". I never though that drilling a straight 6.5cm hole could be that difficult. If I remember right, that damned hole nearly took me half the day. But hey, here it is. Looks so simple, doesn't it?



Covering the side decks was the moment I realized that my design has a major flaw. It is impossible to spread the hull into the right shape when side decks are being installed because the hull spreader beams would get in their way. They had to be removed. And without them, the hull isn't in the right shape so that the carefully pre-cut side deck pieces would fit like they were supposed to. It took me a lot of thinking on how to solve this problem. I had to narrow the side decks a little (as much as 2cm in some places) so that the covers would fit. I could have cut out new cover pieces, but there wasn't enough plywood for that.
Simultaneously, a king plank, some mighty strong bolts and random pieces of wood were installed to strengthen the joints and to save some epoxy.



Did I say "life without a drill press" before? Okay, add a "life without a band saw" to that as well. How in the world am I supposed to cut a 6° bevel in a large mast step piece, which is needed so that the step is horizontal on the boat? A Japanese pull saw... And some very, very tiring cutting. Do I really want my boat to be good?, - I asked myself. Yes - and kept on grinding the saw.



After some sculpting work, the mast step was given a pretty shape, and together with bow deck, finalized the mast stepping system. Belaying pins were tested for fitting. The inside of the bow deck was painted before enclosing it, because it would be very uncomfortable to paint it afterwards.



My pride and joy, on-spot re-designed daggerboard knees with some timber connecting them with side decks, which, by some accounts, serves no reason at all. But they are pretty, and that is reason enough for me. I almost ruined one of these knees by trying to install a woodscrew in a pilot hole too small. Just a not-so-friendly reminder that tiny mistakes are still mistakes. Also, a transom reinforcement pieces were added for rudder hinges to give them more meat to grip to. After all, this whole boat is built with 4mm plywood.



With so many problems along the way, the fates have finally smiled upon me. Plagued by constant trouble with a very poor quality lumber I have used up to now, I have discovered a guy who imports super-high quality pine from Finland (why didn't I find him earlier?). He agreed, for a very low price, to supply me with timber for spars and bilge runners. As I later found out, this was a very good decision. Here you can see the yard, laminated from two pieces of pine. Every single knot or defect (there were very few of them) was chiseled out and filled with epoxy.



Rudder blade and stock design was one I stolen from some random photo from google image search, so I won't take credit for that. But please admire the foil shape. Not NACA, but properly rounded and tapered leading and trailing edges, in that order. The daggerboard was done in the same way. If you look closely, you can also see that by this time, the boat was already covered with epoxy. I didn't have enough funds and spare weight to allow for fiberglassing, so I just enclosed everything in a thin layer of epoxy to extend the lifetime of this little boat.



Now, if you think I had it too easy, let me show you one of the "common type" problems I had everyday. Like mast timber de-layering and warping while I tried, carefully, to plane it down. There was a lot of blood on that day. I won't go into details. Just believe me when I say that if it were a movie, it would easily earn an R rating.



Hand planing spars during tapering and rounding is a job I will heavily consider if I ever make another boat. There was a ton of wood to remove. When I was almost done, someone offered me to use his power plane. The definition of "spoons after lunch"... Anyway, the spars turned out nice. I took the boat out on the grass, stepped in the mast, tried sitting inside the boat, and capsized on dry land. Not my proudest moment.



After this and that here and there, the outside of the boat was covered in blue urethane 1-part alkyd enamel paint. And it revealed my very poor job at sanding the hull smooth. Well, something to fix sometime in the future. Couldn't go back now.



The varnishing job had a Spider-mans' signature. The whole workshop was covered in lines and strings, suspending the varnished pieces above the ground as they dried. 5 coats in total. Some would say that is more than enough, some would say that it doesn't even count as varnishing, but the middle road is acceptable for me.



Finally, the inside was painted, and the name was slapped on. Melatelia, or Mėletėlė in Lithuanian. A Baltic goddess of colors and dyes, who, as per legend, was blue. Gave it some yellow as well, just for a nice contrast.



This was the moment when I thought that I was nearly done. All that's remaining is to sew the sail. What could be easier, right? Even if only what I have is Tyvek, I wanted to make it like a real sailmaker. Not some cheap darts. Proper broadseaming. Slit the fabric, layed out the panels, sticked with tape, re-cut...



...and then discovered that the sewing machine refuses to sew Tyvek. Maybe it's the fabric, maybe it's the double sided sticky tape, maybe it's the machine. Or maybe lack of skill on my part. I had a very good friend advising me all the time, helping to solve this problem, however, it seems it was destined not to. For two weeks, I fought the damned thing, only to give up after. So I just sticked it with some more tape, the traditional Tyvek way. But still, it is a sail that, except for the fabric and sticking instead of sewing, follows every single sailmaking tradition that is applicable to lugsails. Broadseams, edge hems, corner patches, luff tape, grommets... Everything per Emiliano Marino's book. The only pity is that I had these problems with sewing machine. Except for that, the sail only took 3 days to make.
Everything was then taken to the countryside, where the boat, for the last time on dry land, was fitted, sail was bent, minor problems were fixed.





Now, of course, all this is just nice eye-candy until the boat is actually thrown into the water. That happened today. I'm now preparing the rest of the story and photos. Stay tuned!

In this post, I only shown selected and downsized photos. If anyone, for any reason, wants to view building photos in higher resolution, and to see more of them, I'm uploading the whole album. There is a bunch of random stuff which is perfectly okay to ignore. Here is the link to the album:

Full building photos of Melatelia

If anybody has any comments, criticism or questions, I will be waiting!

 

Congratulations!

You did it!

You soldiered on through the problems and now you have a boat of your own design.

And it looks good too.

Your post has made my day.

 

Nice work laukejas,

I hope is sails well, as you hoped. have you weighed your hull to see if you met your weight goal?

building is the most important part of the learning process, it will serve you well on any future designs, and even in your career. It helps you anticipate building problems you may have when you are still in the design phase.

 

Nice. That looks like a lot of fun to sail. Of course it will take some tuning and adjusting but hey, that's where most of the fun is. I would add a strop to be able to dip the lug, so it will set nicely to leeward of the mast on both tacks. It will be fun playing with where the lug crosses the mast, mast rake, and lug rake. I would add a vang for sure, and a downhaul, but the strop on the lug could also be used to haul on he lug without hauling on the luff. Gotta love four corners. Keeps the sail design software out of your business.

 

Thank you all for your compliments. You people have helped me immensely along the way, and I am forever grateful. Let me just now tell the rest of the story.

The first launch

The first launch took place in an artificial lake, near my hometown. It is small and shallow, people usually go there for a swim or to get a tan. I invited some of my friends over, my brother too. Was first on the site, so I had to remove the boat from the car's roof rack by myself. Wasn't too difficult.



I prepared the boat and waited for the rest of my people. The winds were pretty calm, but the skies looked like it soon turn sour.



My friends arrived, and so I took off, at first alone, and then, taking on them together one by one.







The sail was setting pretty right, and even in light winds, the boat was flying really fast. On downwind, I realized that a boom vang might be actually a good idea.



The advantages of standing lug rig were obvious. In lake so small, the wind was very unpredictable, often gusted from random directions. Standing lug is famous for yard twist, allowing to spill the excess wind instead of capsizing the boat. May not be so very good for performance, but a huge plus for safety.



When my brother came onboard, we tried capsizing the boat near the shore, just to see how it will handle that, how difficult it is to recover, climb onboard... And believe me, with no wind at that moment, it was very difficult to capsize this boat. It had more stability than I anticipated.



The capsized boat, with no one onboard, was actually only very slightly submerged, just a little above side tanks - thanks to it's light weight.



So it was very easy to recover it, and there was only a few buckets of water inside - enough to stabilize the boat while climbing onboard from either side (yes, it's possible, even alone), but not too much to prevent sailing right away. As you can see in the following photo, the displacement didn't increase too much with that water onboard.



Here's what it looked like when we reached shore. While I'd prefer there would be even less water, it is perfectly acceptable.



After everyone had it enough, I took the boat out once more to try it in somewhat increasing wind (there was a small storm approaching). Hiking was very comfortable and fun. The only problem is that it is not very comfortable to sit in light winds, when there is no heeling moment - you just have to duck in the middle of the boat, or sit between side decks with very little leg room. It is tiring to jump forth and back from these side decks when weather is unpredictable and gusty. But hey, sailing is a sport, right?



The only sad note to this launch was 5 groundings at high speed. Water was muddy and dark, so it was very difficult to spot these shallows in time. And I have daggerboard, not centerboard... So the leading edge took some grinding in the bottom sand, but the worst damage was where it impacted with daggerboard case. It left some nasty dents and tear outs, which I later easily fixed with epoxy.





All in all, the launch was a major success. The boat handled far better than I anticipated. Balance was perfect - very light weather helm, boat kept moving even in conditions where I couldn't feel any wind. Despite being a lugger, it could point pretty high up in the wind - can't tell exactly without instrumentation, but it was almost as easy to go upwind as it was to run down. Recovery from capsize was super easy. Speed was actually pretty high for a boat this short. No planning, of course, but it doesn't take a lot of wind to hit hull speed. And, as you can see from the photos, the sail wasn't even tuned properly yet - there is a lot more power that can be squeezed from it.

Believe it or not, there are even some videos. If you only wish to view one, I recommend the last one:

1
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3
4

If you wish to view full photo album at high resolution (and sometimes very bad quality, sorry about that), here's the link:

First launch

This launch was on the 26th of June. From then, there were a lot of new adventures, which I will describe as soon as I can.
And I thank everybody here once again!!!

 

I'm so glad to see the boat sailed properly.

The scariest part was whether the balance under sail would be correct. It appears that it is almost perfect.

Congratulations again on a successful design and build.

You now belong to a small club even I don't belong to. That is the club of designer/builders.

 

Well done. As you have found out a kicking strap (vang) is pretty useful!. You would also be advised to put an extra sleeve round the boom to stop the main sheet from trying to lasso your head.....

 

Congratulations! Looks really good.

 

Alright, the next few sailing trips did not go without a fuss. Sadly, these will go without photos, as there was no one to take them.

After trying the boat out on that shallow pond, I took it to another part in my country, where I'm now having a vacation. It is a deep, branch-like lake with very unpredictable winds and narrow passages from one part of the lake to another. Those who have followed my adventures with my previous boats, should remember this location. It is a true challenge: 90% of the time, the winds here are below 2 knots, but you can always expect a 25+ knot gust out of nowhere. Often, in the evenings, the wind drops to an absolute zero. Basically you get a nice stable wind only before a storm.

The first sailing attempt was a cautious one - I didn't go very far, just tried out various things and techniques. The boat was designed for two sailors, but because of relationship mishaps, I had to sail alone. On one hand, the boat is lighter, there is more space. On the other hand, the waterline becomes too short, and since this boat does not plane, that means reduction in speed. But the biggest shortcoming is that since there is no thwart, you have to duck/sit between the side decks in light winds, as there is no heeling force. Sitting on either deck would make the boat capsize. If there were two sailors, each could sit on opposite decks in light winds - the boom is high enough to allow that. Still, the CE/CLR balance was perfect, the leeway was negligible (thanks to the massive daggerboard), and the boat could actually go to windward quite well. I was kind of afraid it wouldn't, as people say lugsails are very bad at beating. Well, it was beating higher and faster than any sailboat I've ever been on.
The only serious design flaw of this boat is the sail, namely the head round. It is WAY too big. Following recommendations by a lot of people who know far more than I do, I added head curve to have some push-in effect which creates camber, then some more curve to compensate for the yard bend. That comes to a 3% round. And then, the yard itself is tapered, so that, relatively speaking, gives a sail even more round. In practice, I realized that the push-in camber is not really necessary that high up, because since standing lug sail tends to twist, it makes more sense to have flatter profile high up - it wouldn't luff so early. And, in light winds I'm sailing most, the yard bend is totally negligible. As a result, there is a "bag" along the head of the sail, which really doesn't do any good for performance.
Following advice by my very good friend who is also present here in this forum, I have lashed the head to the yard with individual lengths of string, adjusting them in a way to compensate for excessive head round. It helped somewhat, but there are limits of how much can be compensated this way, because if the loops are too loose, the yard becomes too short to properly tension the head.
So, if I ever re-make this sail, I think that 1.5% head round would be totally sufficient!

The next trip was a bold one. I saw a storm passing by, so there should have been no danger, but some very nice winds. And so I sailed, upwind from my home port, quite far away. The wind was getting stronger and stronger, and soon, I had to hike out all the way. The speeds were incredible, and I knew I'm doing everything far from perfect - after all, my sailing experience with proper boat is actually very poor. Then, suddenly, the storm changed direction, coming right towards me. By the time I thought of reefing, it was too late. The storm hit me with all it's might, 30+ knot winds with gusts. Even in lake so small, the water started turning white. And there I was, in the worst possible location, with no shelter nearby, with a full 6.5m sail. It became impossible to fight the heel, and so the boat would acquired unmanageable weather helm no matter what I did. I just couldn't gain any forward speed. After third or fourth attempt to regain control, I finally capsized. Nothing hurt, except my pride. Knowing the drill, I freed the mainsheet from the tangle of lines, swam around, stepped on daggerboard, climbed back in, and trying to keep the weight low, started pouring out the water, while the sail was horribly flapping above my head. By the time I was done, I realized that with the mainsheet and rudder free of any control, the boat stabilizes itself on a 90° angle to the wind. So I centered the rudder, pulled the sheet slightly, and voila, in control again. I saw a nearest shelter, several hundred meters away, dead downwind. And so I tried reaching it, before the storm became any worse. I didn't go dead downwind, but at an angle, to prevent accidental gybe, and to have more control. For 10 seconds, the boat was flying, possibly exceeding the hull speed a little. And then...

...A horrible crack that no sailor should ever hear. Before my eyes, the boom broke in two, right on the spot where the vang and mid-boom sheeting block were attached. Frozen by the unbearable horror of the sight I just witnessed, I fell into the cold water again. "I'm in deep sh*t now", - thought to myself. I had no idea what to do now. So I just righted the boat again, grabbed the broken end of the boom, and with the sail horribly flapping, trying to tear the sharp end of the boom and send it into my eye, I started drifting towards the shelter. As I reached it, finally in calm, un-rigged the broken boom from the clew, improvised a boom-less setup (which didn't work well in my boat, because the sheeting angle was no right), I sailed the crippled boat home, half-wind course.

It was shocking that a boom, made from quality lumber, with dimensions following the recommendations of Skene's "Elements of yacht design", could break so easily in a storm. After all, the boat was supposed to capsize long before anything broke, even with two sailors onboard, and I was alone at that time.
Only after an extensive research, I realized a horrible flaw in my design: with a loose-footed sail, having a mid-sheet block is a very bad idea, as it acts as a lever, in a perfect location, to put the most stress on the boom. The tack and the clew are pushing in one direction, and the sheet is pulling the middle of the boom in another. Add some forces from the boom vang at the same spot, and you have a recipe for disaster.

However, the break was "clean" - wood wasn't damaged too much, and the angle of the break was shallow, like a 1:10 scarfing joint. So, following the recommendations by several good friends, I dried the boom with electric heater for the night, then stuffed as much epoxy into the joint as I could, matched the broken ends as a scarfing joint, clamped with several woodscrews, and wrapped with polyester twine, covered with epoxy (I had no fiberglass with me on this vacation). After 6 hours of curing, I left it in a small room with electric heater again. The next day, boom was back in business. I'm not sure if it is as strong as it was before the break, but now I won't take any chances - only sheeting from the clew.

Okay, enough for now. There are a lot of adventures still waiting for when I have time to tell them. Most of them will have at least several photos. Stay with me.

 

Adventures! Did you consider dropping the sail to find shelter downwind, you have a halliard right?

 

Well, I have considered it, but until the boom broke, I thought that the sail still was my best chance. After all, I do not have any means of auxiliary propulsion - at that time, I didn't even have an oar. The only way would be to scull with rudder, but it is extremely slow, and would make no difference in a storm.

 

Hello, everybody. My adventures with Melatelia this summer has caught eye of some newsletters and online blogs in Lithuania, so they asked me to write an extensive article, telling all about building and sailing.

Finally, I found time to translate it to English. Those who have helped me designing this little boat (and maybe others) might find it interesting to read. I have already told some of it in this forum topic, but now you have a chance to review the whole story from the start to the end. There are plenty of photos, detailed descriptions, and a video.

Please take this link to start. At the bottom of each part there is a link to another part.

Let me know if there are any issues. Comments would be appreciated.

 

Congratulation guys