30' cruising catamaran repair log

Got the back beam patched up. Painted the interior portions of the beam, and drilled holes for the mainsail track.. adding backing biaxial underneath. Still will need to epoxy them up and redrill.

 

Got the gas tank benches installed and fiberglassed.

 

Got some hatch frames built, a couple installed and a couple just fitted, not yet glued up due to winter hitting the shop.

 

Moved into the heated part of my shop and did a little work on access panels.

 

Began working on rudders. Started by cleaning up the repairs on the kick-up cassettes and squaring off their wet edges. Then ground the blade portion of the rudder shafts with a 4.5" grinder to rough it up. Spiral wrapped 3 layers of biax over that and epoxied them with a vacuum bag. Then began fitting blade stations, coved and fiberglassed them into place, cut and fitted foam between them. Last picture has all the foam already glued on, with just the last tail piece getting clamped/glued on.

 

Working on rudders. Had to do a bit of fairing after glassing because of those glue lines in the foam - hard spots. Also a bit of manufacturing defect in the triaxial glass - a diagonal conflagration of fibers. Also, since I was using heavy glass instead of two layers of lighter glass, I had a hard time getting it to bend around the leading edge, so ended up with some small wrinkles I cut out and reinforced with several layers of thin cloth. I then put some thickened epoxy on, faired them, and then coated with epoxy. Maybe the 4th pic you can see how I cut back the trailing edge so the two sides of glass could bond together well. That area also go some structural bog after glassing to fair it out. I also squared off the tops of the blades to the rudder cassettes. Next to sand and paint.

 

Still at it. Been smearing fairing compound here and there.. phenolic microballoons, cab-o-sil, and epoxy mostly after running out of my stock of West's 410. Got the pads for the lifeline stanchions done, got foam toe-rails installed, winch pads done (just have 2 for now), and net attachment pvc bonded onto hulls.

Now I'm about ready for primer.. need to sand the old primer down first. And I'm pondering my steering. Thinking I would like a car/track on back beam with rigid pipe from that to each rudder. Haven't figured out how I would do it yet though. Easiest was a connecting bar across the top of that back beam, but with my aft hatches now that conflicts - wouldn't be able to open them. Also the tiller arms from the rudders would have to stop at the beam since I'll have a corner stanchion thing there the arms would conflict with. So..

 

Hi Jim, I wound up having to turn the tiller heads aft, so everything would clear. Only problem with that is then the tiller worked the rudders *** backwards, so I had to go with a double turning block on the ends of the track. I wish I had figured that out before I purchased those expensive harken single track blocks. HEY! in fact, if you are in the market for them I might send you mine, since they are in my junk box somewhere...

 

Hi Charly

Could be interested in the blocks - got a part number or link so I can take a look at them? Not sure how all this works yet - unfamiliar with what's available. Still vacillating between trying something like that or just making the connecting bar across the beam work. I'm going to look through your pics to see if I can discover how you handled it.

 

The Harken track size is the issue I can t remember but will check. All the parts numbers on my plans are old and I had to call harken to get the new part numbers. These are just basic turning blocks that mount on a harken track. I'll dig them out. You can have them if you can use them. If you reverse your tiller heads they won't work unless you can live with backwards steering. My rudders kick up, and that creates some clearance problems with the arrangement, so it was easier to just reverse the tiller heads.

 

Great! They may work fine. Did you use a quadrant on your tiller shaft for the cable? Wondering if those can be homemade or not. Definitely on a strict budget.

 

here is the layout. Im sure Kurt won't mind. The harken blocks look like they fit on a track about 7/8 inch wide. I'm not too good with metric...


EDIT I had an aluminum pie welded to a flat piece of aluminum for the quadrant, it goes down through the beam, and the wires attach to it and run off in each direction to the turning blocks mounted on the track. I figured out that the track's long length gives it a fairer lead to the blocks, the actual car only travels a few inches right and left. I used dyneema for a while and gave up- it stretches. Then I used galv cable and it broke after a while. then I used ss cable from West marine and it broke, but I didn't have sense enough to use 7x19 instead of 1x 19 ss. 1x 19 is too stiff and will break after a while. West didn't have 7x19.... so I got it off amazon 316 ss. so far so good...

EDIT if you decide you want these pm me you ship info here on on fb messenger and I'll put them in the mail

 

So I've started putting on primer. I'm using some old System Three epoxy primer that I had from 1994, so it takes a fair bit of mixing to get all the solids in suspension again. But otherwise it seems fine. I'm about to run out of it though so I bought some of their current product, which is gray in color so it will be different working with it.

No idea it would take so long working around all the stringers, bulkheads, and coves. But it is taking a lot of time. Trying to give 2 coats, as I'm not real confident in the thickness of my under coats of epoxy and I want to up my chances of waterproof-ness.

I'm definitely finding some of my areas of amateurish-ness in coving.. lots of little pinholes and areas of roughness.. but I have to keep forging ahead or this boat will never see the water again. I fix what is egregious and what is easy to fix.

 

Any updates on this project? I think i've flipped through the entire thread three times in the last couple months. Cool boat, great DIY work!

 

I could do an update, thanks to your question. I'll post a few pictures. What has happened is basically finishing painting the interior, except for some bilge paint what got held up in shipping and refused because of haz mat. Then I started trying to figure out wiring, punching some holes for wire runs here and there - but winter hit and now it is too cold to seal up any holes with epoxy before I string any wire. Made a nest for batteries.. not finished.. in the bench alongside the double berth on starboard side.

Since I have little money but some materials still on hand, I decided to build the boom, based on a design Kurt sent. I have a heated shop, so can do things in there. I'll post some pics of that project. Of course it is taking longer than I thought, but with winter here.. it has been in the double digits below zero (warmed up nearly 60 degrees (from -25F) Sunday for a bit of a storm but cooling off again), so sometimes difficult to get going. Shop isn't all that warm when its that cold.