I need some advice on a sailboat

Forget the silly boat, lets see some more pix of the go kart!

-jim lee

 

I have no idea why you are asking me to lighten up when you BEGAN this disagreement.
My response was no big deal. Why not leave me alone instead of painting me to be so negative?
I often encourage people to treat a boat rebuilding project as a learning experience and not to worry about ultimate efficiency. Experience is worth more than money if things are being learned.
In this case, my initial advice was to at least do a cursory analysis of missing parts that one must buy with money that would go a lot further even on a boat that cost a lot more initially.
Don't be so judgemental about my motives. I really have the best interests of the commenter in mind. Let's let this go, okay?

 

SunFish rigs are a dime a dozen and easy to come by if you live near a coast or big wet spots. I'm not big on complete novices picking up basket cases on the side of the road for less then the trash guys can haul away the oversize curb "deposit", but everyone has to learn some how and this is about as inexpensive a lesson as you might expect. Maybe he'll be one of the very few that actually get it back in service, which is a good thing in the end.

 

i saw that red frame to jim lmao

 

Haha the go kart hasn’t worked in about 5 years. Can I make just about any sail and rig fit the boat sense I have to replace all the anchors on the deck anyway?

 

Judging by the distance between the mast and the dagger board slot, my guess is this boat once had a single sail and that sail was most likely a boomed lateen sail, like that of a 'Sunfish'(r).

The biggest problem I see is that the top rudder hinge strap is missing. Some means of replacing it must be devised. I'm wondering if this boat is made out of plastic covered foam. It appears to be. If it is, replacing the top hing strap will be a bit complicated, but doable. You said you have experience with epoxy. If this is so, replacing the top hinge strap should be little challenge. Here's my take on how it could be done:

1.) Make the replacement hinge strap. It can be a piece of angle iron with a hole drilled in one flange, to take the rudder hinge pin, and four holes drilled in the other flange for the bolts that will hold it to a plywood transom plate. The transom plate should be big enough to cover most of the transom above the lower hinge strap. The bolts should have tapered heads that can be counter sunk into the plywood. They should be bronze, as they will be difficult to replace, once the job is finished. I would use 1/4 inch bolts. The plywood should be good exterior grade, just thin enough and small enough to conform to the curvature of the transom. The plywood should extend above the hinge strap by at least an inch. You can cut back the rudder pin flange and drill the hinge pin hole closer to the bend so the top hinge strap hole will better line up that of the bottom hinge strap. The hinge strap length should be about half the width of the plywood. The hinge pin hole should be no closer than 1/2 pin thickness from the edge. Much of the hinge pin flange will have to be removed. I would remove 1/3rd from each end and put my bolt holes there, evenly spaced.

2.) Drill lots of evenly spaced, counter sunk holes through the plywood, as none of the screws used later are going to have a good deal of holding power. The strategy is to distribute the load.

3.) Epoxy coat the plywood, including the bolt holes. Clean and sand blast (if possible) the hinge strap, then coat it with Rustoleum(r) brown primer. I wouldn't bother painting it. If it rusts away, it can be replaced, providing the bolts survive. Let both thoroughly dry and cure.

4.) Using roofing cement, or other good bedding compound, bolt the hinge strap to the plywood, with the counter sunk heads on the plywood side.

5.) Put the transom plate on the transom, lining up the top hinge strap with the bottom one as best you can. Use the two screw holes closest to the center of the hinge strap. Drill pilot holes then use wood screws. The idea is to best hold possible without cracking the material the screw is going through.

6.) Draw an outline around the transom plate with a magic marker, or something else that is highly visible.

7.) Remove the transom plate, bed the hell out of it and put it back on, using the outline to line it up and the two original screws to hold it on.

8.) By now you should know what size your pilot holes should be. Put that size bit in your drill. Working your way out from the first two screws, drill one pilot hole and install one screw at a time, as the plywood will move as it conforms to the transom shape. The idea is to keep it from bunching up and cracking.

9.) There should be a lot of bedding compound oozing from the edge. Using your finger tip and lots of rags, remove the excess, leaving a nice bevel.

Your top rudder hinge plate should now be the strongest structure on the boat. It needs to be. You will be hanging the rudder on it and may be attaching sheet end to it as well.

Now that I think about it, maybe it would be best to replace both hinge straps. That would probably be stronger and a lot easier to get right.

Your rudder and dagger board can both be made of good exterior grade plywood 1/2 inch or thicker. Make sure the dagger board can fit through its slot freely, with some room for swelling. The front edge of your dagger board and rudder blade should be rounded and the back edge should be tapered with the taper being about two board thicknesses long.

You can make your own sails too. A good place to go to find out how is: www.pdracer.com.

I think the boat can be made useable with $200, or less invested, even at today's inflated prices. More can be spent later to make it look better.

 

You really should simply buy a gudgeon (my best guess as to the part you described). I have a big bag full of them, but you can find a supplier out there. You can buy them for under ten dollars. They are polished stainless steel.
Your boat is probably a Snark judging by your description of the foam core.
Regarding your repair strategy, it seems you have a cockpit going all the way back as you mention the transom being accessible from inside.
Pictures would help before judging the best way to reinforce the transom. You sound like you can confidently tackle the job in any case.
This is the Snark website:
http://www.snarksailing.com/

 

Hey Alan. Did you look at the pictures? Check out the deck.

Nowhere does Mopp mention what the boat is made of. I just made a flying guess.

I suppose an inspection port could be cut in the aft deck near the transom, which wouldn't be too bad an idea anyway.

Gudgeons are designed with the assumption that you have something solid to mount them to. Not the case with a foam boat.

Besides, only the shadow knows what's under that aft deck. Could be a huge block of foam.

 

A gudgeon fastener could be bonded to an epoxy plug inside the hull shell. The big question is how much area should he carry.

 

Hey guys thanks for all the advice. Sharpii2 thanks for the steep by steep on a homemade the top rudder hinge strap and that homemade sail web site! That is going to help a lot and gave me some great ideas. I don’t think that it is plastic covered foam because I can hear what sounds like a broken rivet rolling around in the hull. With that in mind should I cut an inspection port so that I can see what is going on inside there? Thanks a million and please keep the advice coming!!!

 

I would avoid cutting holes in a foam boat. Foam is not very strong and I would be afraid of weakening the structure. If I did cut a hole, it would be a round one big enough for an inspection port and I would cut it midway between the cockpit and the transom, I would buy the inspection port first, so I would know the exact diameter to cut for the hole. I wouldn't cut it near the transom because I suspect there is a big block of floatation foam there, as it is best to put the floatation at the ends of the boat.

When you make the rudder, make one that can kick up. That way, if you hit something with it, it won't get torn off the boat. If the boat were stronger, you could get away with a fixed blade rudder, as the rudder would break first.
Here, you don't have that luxury.

Below is a drawing of such a rudder I drew for a design I was working on a while back. As you can see, it is bare bones simple. If you want to use an unballasted wooden blade. you can run a weak bungee cord from the leading edge of the rudder blade to a strap eye fastened to the bottom of the boat. Ideally, this will be just strong enough to pull the blade down. A line on the tiller allows you to bull the blade up.

Your rudder blade area should be about 1.5% of your sail area.
Your immersed dagger board area should be about double that.

 

Thanks for that drawing for the rudder and the dagger board. The boat is definitely a fiberglass body with at least one small foam block inside that I can see through a drain plug in the back. Are you saying that I should put the inspection port where the red circle is? I was thinking that I should put one about where one of the green circles is.

The lip on the bow of the boat has a crack on the underside of it. The crack completely separates the deck from the hull. How hard would it be to epoxy or fiberglass that back together?

 

I meant cutting a hole where the red circle is. You might cut another in the foredeck between the mast step and the cockpit. The idea is to keep them away from the edge of the boat, as they may be less than watertight

As for the crack, you haven't described it well enough. If it is where the lip flairs out, there may be some hope of glassing it back together. If it is right at the edge, the deck might have to be removed and reinstalled. Probably far above the amount of work you want to put into this hull. There may be a cruder way to repair this, but it won't look pretty.

There seems to be a great deal of paint on this boat and what appears to be bondo(r). I would try to get as much paint as I could off the lip, so I could see the true nature and extent of the crack. You could try using some paint stripper, but be very careful. Try it at a very small part of the hull to make sure it only removes paint. Otherwise, it's grit and 50 grit. Sandpaper, that is.

I would also do a dimensioned drawing of the deck, so I would know where everything is in relation to everything else and how large it is. Then I could start drawing a rig for it, amongst other things.

How long is this boat? It appears to be between 11 and 13 ft long.

 

The aft deck can be cut for access but so can the hull under water, where your first attempt at glassing will not be seen. I wouldn't install an inspection port where none is needed. The hull bottom is easy to deal with, having virtually no curvature so why not cut that if access is required.
Remember the original construction will have something like a plywood substrate or something else that makes the inner transom surface very lumpy. That will be in the way, meaning probably you'll want to grind it away prior to rebonding the new chunks in.
Looking further, these ideas may not apply, but if they do, you'll not have to worry about non-skid or an inspection port that's too small to allow a grinder to be used. You could cut out a whole 12" x 12" area, feather edges, and replace by laying glass over posterboard, for example.

 

Wow.

Inspection ports have been routinely used on every type of dinghy, from Sabots to Lasers to Hobies to all the Olympic Classes, and on everything in between.

It is mind boggling that someone would suggest opting to cut the bottom out of a boat to save using an inspection port.

The original poster should think twice, or maybe ten times, before following this advice.