Small sailboat Design - advice requested

You have a cousin who can control the weather?

Seriously, I'm sorry about the suspense; this is more like a cheap spy novel or soap opera than I intended! We have had surely the worst summer for many decades, the temperature has hardly hit the average throughout the entire season and the rain never seems to quit. September was OK up to the last week, but I got delayed by the soft paint problem, by the time it hardened the rain resumed where it left off.

 

ITS A BOAT! It won't disintegrate if water touches it. I'm winterizing my pool this weekend before it starts to freeze, and if you don't baptize it soon, you'll be adding steel runners to the chines and setting up for "hard" water.

Now that we're in October, you can't count on much great weather till May. Even if the sun is shining, the water isn't going to be bikini-friendly, and I doubt you plan testing capsize recovery any time soon, so why not just take the plunge?

IIRC, the Microsail website was designed and maintained by a company from a rural residential location halfway between Ayton and Mount Forest, Ontario. I'd hazard a guess that Doug's cousin runs that company. Perhaps they plan on competing with Bill Gates in regards to his recently announced plans to control the weather.

--
Bill

 

==================
Oh, Lord.....

 

Oh, yeah!

One of my tame thunderstorms is rumbling away outside, I hope it doesn't nail the hydro line before I've finished. Actually, my neighbours are starting to ask if I could increase the size of my boat to 300 x 50 x 30 - that's in cubits in case you haven't had your coffee yet. That's a size increase of about 40 times. I'm wondering where I can get marine ply in 6" and 10" thickness. Say around 5500 sheets. You may notice ply getting hard to find for a while ...

The latest weather forecast has showers until Thursday! Maybe I should just settle for getting myself as wet as the boat!

 

The mast(s)

Just to prove I haven't been totally idle during the rainy season here are some pics of my efforts at building the mast. The mainmast is gluing up and the top mast is ready for gluing. Most of you guys have seen this all before but these pics will show how I did it for those who are interested. The masts are hollow.

Pic 1 shows cutting the staves for the topmast from a plank of pine: I used spruce for the mainmast earlier but it is easier to get clear pine here. I use a simple handheld circular saw with a finish cut framing blade which leaves an almost perfect surface; the saw has a zero clearance ply baseplate and is used with an extra long guide extending fore and aft of the baseplate so the blade is straight at the beginning and end of the cut. No trimming needed!

In pic 2 the 8 staves have been bevelled at 22.5 deg on both edges (I did not use the birdsmouth joint for thess masts) and are ready for taping. For the mainmast the bevels were cut with a small handheld router before they were cut from the plank but that required too much handling and moving of the plank. So for the top mast, which has a smaller diameter to fit inside (I hope) the mainmast, I cut the staves from the plank first then ran them through a table router; faster and better, but about 8 inches (20 cm) is wasted at each end because the stave only runs through cleanly when guided on both sides of the router bit.

In pic 3 the staves have been placed on strips of duct tape ready for rolling. The tapes overlap one edge so they can be wrapped over the last seam after rolling, and trimmed at the other edge as I found out during the dry run that any excess here gets in the way.

Pic 4 is a dry run to test out the method for building hollow masts and check to see if cable ties would work at tightening up the roll while the glue sets. The tape lines up the pairs of staves along each seam nicely, and the ties do the same if they are tight enough. The trick for tightening the cable ties is to feed the tie tail through a hole in a small piece of ply, then it can be grabbed with a pair of pointed jaw pliers and levered really tight. Just as good as the proper tool, which I spent hours looking for - nobody seems to carry these gadgets these days, I really missed the one I had years ago in my apprentice days ... OK, it has been a half-century ...

In pic 5 the mainmast is glued up. The pine staves for the topmast stayed straight but while I was cutting the spruce staves for the mainmast they twisted all over the place. After several weeks just sitting there they mostly straightened up again; a couple had to be cut and scarfed (scarved?) to get rid of a bend. Even though there were slight curves in several of the staves the resulting mast is dead straight.

The first mast took about 4 hours, about half that for the second.

 

Thanks a lot for this Ancient!
As a newbie this was very good explaining in "howto" for me. And I just love it!
Maybe some day I will have a great benefit out of this.
Everything you do, you are sharing and I am curious about everything you do.

Hope the weather will be with you soon.
Kind Regards
Jan Eliasson

 

Okay, it's Monday, did you get a chance to splash her?

 

Despite the discouraging forecast it has been quite pleasant this morning. Unfortunately my phtographer is unavailable! Homever, masts, sprits and other hardware are rolling out of the workshop and piling up waiting for finishing so it's not all bad news. At this rate I might actually sail her this year after all.

 

Profiling Jig

I made this profiling jig to shape the daggerboard, using a router. I put a short piece of daggerboard blank in to show how it is used - the glue was still setting on the real daggerboard.

I'll let you know how it works out. I will just feed the blank through the jig from one side a half-inch as shown and run the router over the ply form. To do the reverse side I will attach spacer strips along the edges using carpet tape.

I realized after it might have been better to have two ply forms but I think it will be OK as is.

The masts turned out great. I have also made the hollow sprit booms; more pics when they are cleaned up and varnished. I am going to make up a temporary sail using tarp; there will be several types as I want to see which works best before I have a professional make a proper one for the boat.

 

The profiling jig worked reasonably well but was slower than I expected, about an hour a side. Mostly because my router bit was too small and too blunt! Definetely would have been better with 2 guides to keep the router level, with the bit running between, but I think it is a good idea overall. Next time I carve me a foil* this is the way I will go.

* see http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/sailboats/articulated-sailboat-24598.html

 

Here's the story so far on the masts and other sailing rig kit parts.

Pic 1 shows my circular saw with ply soleplate and extended guide, for cutting the staves.

Pic 2 shows the 8 staves with 22.5 deg bevelled edges laid down on strips of duct tape for rolling.

Pic 3 shows the mast glued and rolled up; the tape did a good job of bringing the staves together tightly and aligning the edges but the staves opened up between tape strips so I added cable clamps.

Pic 4 shows one of the hollow wishbone sprit booms gluing up. They look nice; they seemed a bit heavier than I expected but are only 1.1 kg (2.5 lb) per.

ps: Oops, showed some of those pics earlier - sorry about that. They say with age the memory is the 2nd thing to go!

 

Launch Day

Isn't there a picture or two missing? Huh?

 

I've stopped talking about launch day; I suspect the real weather man is monitoring this site ...

 

Oh,Lord....

I'm disappointed in my cousin-sorry about that.....

 

Finally, launch Day Arrives!

At last, a camera, some wet water and the boat all arrived together for official launch day. I thank you all for your patience, or thinly veiled impatience as the case may be.

Dace is a delight to row. i didn't know rowing could be this easy. My only previous experience of rowing is rental row boat, waterlogged and clumsy things, so dace is a revelation. But I will still prefer a paddling a kayak or canoe to rowing, nice to be able to see where I am going. I nearly sank a bridge today.

Dace turns on a dime, 2 flicks of an oar and she is ready to go back over her own tracks. She moves very easily, no effort at all, and seems quite quick. I was handicapped because I forgot to take the stool so I was balancing on a pile of stuff found in the back of the van. I also had the oars in the wrong (2-up) position, should have been about foot further aft for one up, so the bows down a little.

Unfortunately the launch spot was not very good for photography; hopefully we can do better when the "sail launch" happens.