Building Clownfish - An I550 Sportsboat

It Floats. It Sails.

2009-10-25T15:08:00.001-07:00

Yesterday morning was spent bolting on rudder fittings and a zillion other small jobs.

After lunch we put her under the crane and in she went. I550's all seem to look like they are stern heavy sitting in the water. This is not the real case, the bow just sticks up a bit.

It was blowing around 20 knots, down from the mornings 25 knots. We had the usual 1.0 to 1.5 metre Port Phillip chop.

We built in a Two degree rake on the forestay length. The boat seems perfectly balanced and the twin rudders grip well. Acceleration is phenomenal. The boat does not pound one bit provided she is sailed at around 15-20 degrees up wind, which is simply amazing.

More testing tomorrow after safety inspection.

Here It Is...

2009-10-20T12:31:00.000-07:00

The last few days have been about screwing and bolting things on. Things like chain plates and forestay fitting, kite blocks, traveller ...and of course the stereo system. There is no truth in the rumour that we installed a giant sub woofer under the cockpit, we just thought that the access holes we made to get at the kite block locations would take a little speaker nicely..

Doug Prosser very kindly lifted her onto one of his many trucks with a forklift, then drove her down to RYCV.

Robert Hick is bringing down the keel today, hopefully we don't have too many problems fitting it. After much consideration we decided to lock the keel down with a single half inch bolt through the keelbox and keel and Frank Brockman made us a nice set of stainless steel bushes for the keel box sides and keel holes. We will epoxy them in. There will then be no chance of wood getting chewed away by the bolt if there is any relative movement.

We did it this way because the load paths and hardware of doing this through the keel top plate were just too complicated for me to get my brain around. The boat is lifted via Two Wichard pad eyes on the main bulkhead just eitehr side of the keelbox. We added some reinforcement to the inside of the bulkhead during the build for this. Lines also go to the kite block fittings.

Here she is....

Flipped And Painted.

2009-10-15T15:33:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we flipped the boat, did a little more sanding and painted the entire deck with anti skid deck paint.

Last week we also readied a cradle for her at RYVC.

Images aren't uploading at the moment...

The Great White Whale And The Theory Of Relativity

2009-10-12T11:53:00.000-07:00

Well there she is folks - the great White Whale, not a Clownfish at all, that's where the Theory Of Relativity comes in - boats expand in size by a factor of at least Four when the time comes to sand, fair and paint them. In addition, each minor blemish stands out like, well like, choose your favourite simile.

So anyway, back to the confessional. Fairing the boat is where you pay big time and money for your youthful exuberance and lack of attention to detail in the very beginning when you built your construction cradle, cut your frames, bottom and sides, joined everything together with cable ties and started slapping on the epoxy. The main truth we learned is this: Every time in the beginning when you saw something that didn't quite line up, or wasn't exactly fair and smooth, and you said to yourself "Oh that's no problem we can fair that", you were making a mistake.

The truth is that getting it right in the beginning is much, much, easier and quicker than trying to rectify a ripple in plywood, glass and epoxy with a long board. We've done it now, and the hull looks pretty fair, flat, square, parallel, smooth, whatever, and should, we hope, look good when Robert Hicks sprays the topcoat for us. Now back to specifics.

Firstly make sure your ply is cut exactly right. Ours was as far as we can tell. There was a minor error in the plans that was detected and corrected by Tim before we got too far.

As for the building cradle, we had those Eight offsets and built a cradle with Seven supports that matched the hull profile in way of the frames as far as we could tell. I suspect that this was a mistake, and if I was doing it again, I would probably just use Three Supports, 169.5, 110 and 36, that way I should be able to see a good continuous curve on the chines.

As for joining the ply to make the bottom and sides, our joints were all too stiff, so we got a flat spot at each join that had to be filled and faired.

As for fitting the frames, we got the bottoms to fit very nicely no problems, but we couldn't get fair curves with the frames pulled in to the sides. I'm still not quite sure what was going on there. Be aware that not getting it all to fit exactly is going to give you problems at your shear line when the deck goes on, requiring a little creative freehand planing, but hey it's your project and the hull still measures OK anyway. I suspect that part of the problem was caused by the aforementioned not supporting the boat on three points. Maybe if I had, everything would have adjusted itself a little when we fitted the frames. This is something older and wiser heads can ponder.

But anyway, back to the sanding and fairing. We followed Robert Hicks advice. He is a professional yacht designer and builder, and he has built our bulb, keel and rudders for us. The recipe he gave us was as follows..

After glassing, go over the hull with a batten and fair any obvious hollows and bumps with your West system stuff. The next step is to screed the entire hull in a thin coat of West System fairing compound. I used a plasterers trowel for that. The next step is to get out the long board with 40 grit on it. Because we had relatively flat panels and frames spaced about Four feet apart at the back, I made a Twelve foot (2.4m) Two person longboard for the bottom and chines. You only need a Three foot flexible one for the sides.

Get yourself a can of spray paint in a suitably visible colour and liberally spatter dots of it over your hull. Apply the long board....After about half an hour the remaining paint will show you the low spots. If they are relatively small and shallow, fill them with "builders bog" (quick setting polyester) stop for lunch, apply a little more spray paint indicator and continue sanding with the long board. When you think you have it fair, apply your first coat of undercoat, then apply the long board, spray paint, filler and 80 grit to that. Repeat the whole process for Two weeks till you are sanding the final undercoat with 320 grit and everything is as smooth as it can get, or you just get too tired to care. Then apply topcoat.

Blinding White..

2009-09-21T23:55:00.000-07:00

Well the filling had to stop sometime. We just got tired. So today we sprayed the deck with sandable epoxy primer. The more we put on, the better it looked.

Hopefully tomorrow, before a mid week social lunch, we will be flipping the boat.

....No videos though. I think my colleagues would agree that we don't photograph too well at our age.

Doesn't that swept back Luca Brenta lip on the cabin top look cute, as well as practical?

Mast Arrives...

2009-09-18T15:26:00.000-07:00

Friday morning....surprise! The mast arrives. Who could resist leaving the sanding and filling and playing with toys?

C-Tech have done a great job. Everything is well designed and put together, great workmanship and....light! We asked for Two sets of spreaders, the top set just supporting the masthead when we are running with the Assymetric because Port Phillip gets quite choppy at times.

The mast comes in Two parts, joined at the hounds, which conveniently reinforces that are. I also noted that the last few inches fof the mast base are reinforced, dealing away with the engineering "Free Edge Problem" that has been the demise of more than one carbon mast. To put it another way, carbon fibre is not "Black Aluminium" and must be worked and cared for differently.

We joined the Two sections and riveted in the tee ball plates then lined up and glued the spreaders for the result below.

A word to the wise... Those beautiful spreaders are a close fit with the mast, and they need to be placed on the sections before you glue them together or you will be in a world of pain because you can't fit them later. Luckily we remembered.

We were also not thinking clearly when we ordered a carbon tang under the jib sheave box for our Two part jib halliard - the lower spreaders wouldn't fit over the tang and of course the goosneck prevented fitting from below... Doh!

Our solution after deep thought and discussion with Alex was to carefully cut off the carbon tang and smooth the area down a little so that the spreaders fitted over it. We then drilled and tapped a hole to take a small stainless steel saddle to hold the halliard (Below).

Persistence and Frustration.

2009-09-16T22:13:00.001-07:00

First the persistence. We glassed the deck, then put Four inch biaxial tape over the shear line which will hopefully keep everything together if we get a "love tap" from another boat.

We are in fairing and filling mode. My back aches from the long board. It seems we have forever to go. Sanding and filling, sanding and filling. My eyes just water epoxy and my cup of tea tastes like fibreglass dust, yeccchh.

Anyway, there is sort of an outline of a boat shaped object under there somewhere.

I think the Luca Brenta style lip on the cabin top looks good, should maybe help keep water out, and be a good base for some cleats.

Now the frustration.. Delicate readers may want to shut their ears here.... C-Tech very kindly shipped our mast last Friday, right on time and when they said they would. It is now Thursday and we are still waiting for those idiots at DHL to deliver. They managed to split the Two packages and send them to different locations.

Then they tried to hide their incompetence by spouting gibberish down the phone line. Just for the record, there has not been a thing called an "import licence" for general goods into Australia since about 1968, and in any case we have a free trade agreement with New Zealand. "Delayed by Customs" sounds good until we tell them that we have already paid GST and in any case checked with Customs ourselves. "Delayed by Quarantine Inspection' was a nice try until I tell them that there is no bug on this planet that eats or makes a burrow in Carbon Fibre.

We are still waiting. On reflection it would have been cheaper if I had hopped a plane to Auckland and picked the pieces up direct from C-Tech, then flown back. It's only a Four hour trip costing less than what DHL charged C-Tech for freight, and I might well have not to have paid GST of $500 as well. Plus I could have bought a bottle of duty free Whisky for Alex at C-Tech and another one for me on the way back!

Now You See It, Now You Don't

2009-09-09T14:10:00.000-07:00

That's 58 inches of C-Tech carbon prod. We put a little carbon fibre reinforcement around the receiving tube area and stem. We are setting the prod up with a single combined tackline/extender system using 6mm spectra.

We are hoping to put th e foredeck on today and perhaps finish off the fairing before glassing the deck. We hope to receive the mast some time next week. Time to get some chainplates made up....

Progress

2009-09-03T23:53:00.000-07:00

Just a photo of the baot with the side decks glued down and the cabin top cleaned up. We got word today that the prod is on its way from C-Tech in New Zealand and will hopefully arrive Monday so that we can fit the receiving tube and glue up the foredeck.

We looked at the prod Geometry. The photo below shows what 58" looks like. By all accounts our spinnaker is "pretty big" according to Col Anderson at Doyle sails.(Gulp)

When The Epoxy Starts Smoking...

2009-09-03T13:58:00.000-07:00

Well we made this discovery a while ago. If you mix too much epoxy in a container it heats up. Then it gets hot, very hot. When it starts smoking it's time to carefully take the pot outside and get rid of that epoxy real quick.

Well we got the cockpit side decks glued on. If only I'd thought about the fit a little more and the placement of the weights when we held it all down I wouldn't be contemplating filling the hollows they made. Getting the shear line to look right is going to take considerable time after that little mistake.

The cabin top is glued on. We have left a "Lip" at the back to be a bit Luca Brenta-ish, and perhaps keep water out of down below a little. We will trim it back neatly when we have the time.

We made up the side decks and chain plate gussets. The gussets are placed slightly differetly according to C-Tech's instructions to match the 30 degree spreader angle of the mast. They are one inch thick laminations as per plan. We lined them up using C-Techs drawing and a string line from the notional centre of the mast. They will be glassed in with lots of biaxial tape.

We glued on our side decks and now have a definitely boat shaped object. We were (I hope!) A little more careful about that shear line.

By the way, this is the pattern for the bulb that Professional designer and boat builder Robert Hicks made for us. We weren't game to make the foils ourselves so we asked Rob to do the designing and building in that area. All are wood with carbon laminates.

Problems Are Opportunities In Disguise.

2009-08-23T23:32:00.000-07:00

Well we have been busy little beavers.. After the making of the cabin top - which was declared a draw between me and a sheet of hoop pine plywood, we started on the cockpit. The bunks we glassed in as bouyancy tanks. We decided that we wanted to support our plywood edges really well, so we glued 1 1/4"" Oregon onto the edges of the frames and then decided to laminate up some 1 1/2"' plywood strips to support the cockpit to deck joint. We cut out the corners of the frames, slathered everything in epoxy and then just sort of clamped the strips in place to the edges of the frames. To out complete surprise they followed something like a fair curve and were within +- 3mm or so when measured from the centreline, except in one spot where we made some saw cuts, pulled the support into line with clamps and slathered the cuts full of glue.

So we had something like a symmetric cockpit structure. We added a few more Oregon stringers to support the cockpit floor. The cockpit floor was not too hard to draft up, and we did it in Three lateral sections, from the Stern, the joints being just in front of 169 and 124. We then glued them all together on the floor, then dropped them into the cockpit when dry for some trimming. We did a similar thing to make the sides.

We decided to follow the (Pipedream? Alchemy?) construction method so we carefully taped up the frames so that nothing would stick to them and filleted and glued Four inch biaxial tape to the side to bottom joints in one continuous swoop front to back. We let that cure overnight, then screwed on some 2" x1" cross ties to keep it from "flapping", then we carefully pulled our cockpit out, turned it over, sanded and planed the inside edge to a nice round profile, then glassed that with biaxial tape as well.
On Thursday afternoon we mixed copious quantities of glue and stuck the cockpit in permanently. Today (Monday) it appears rock solid. We spent the best part of Two hours checking and planing the shearline which had a few "deviations" in it, mostly due I think to the stiffness of the ply, to get what I hope is a pleasing and regular shear. We then did the same to the cockpit to deck joints and I think they are pretty pleasingly curved as well. We cut out and glued up the side decks hopefully for fitting tomorrow.

I say "hopefully" because my fellow team member has forcefully demanded that every inch of the inside of the boat be sanded and checked by feel for those little sharp epoxy spikes that rip hands and spinnakers apart when you least expect it before the deck goes on. You can hopefully see some pleasing lines appearing in the photos below...

Slower Progress - Slaves Of The Gluing Cycle...

2009-08-10T23:39:00.000-07:00

Progress continues, but it seems so slow as we are now slaves to the gluing cycle. There is a sequence to doing stuff that is not always apparent.

We have built the Cabin top. It has no compound curves. Hoop pine ply does not like compound curves, not like your average wishy washy Okume. Hopefuly it should not look too bad. It looks awful now since it needs to be trimmed to the deck level and sanded to an inch of its life

Much time has been spent doing what I call bracketry - supports for everything that I think needs supporting, and sufficient surface area for a strong glued joint as well. We have started on the cockpit. I cut 1 1/4" Oregon diagonally and have glued that to most of the edges of the frames that will take the bottom, sides and deck.

We stopped that process today to laminate the cockpit to deck edge supports (not sure what their nautical name would be). These are three strips of 1 1/4" plywood with the joints offset and hopefully tastefully arranged and clamped to give a pleasing curve to the cockpit edge, or at least something close to what the designer imagined.

We will take the electric plane to them tomorrow along with a tape and centreline string to see if they are anything like symmetrical. Once that is done we can build the cockpit bottom and sides. We plan to fillet and glass the bottom to the sides in place and then lift them out to tape the inside edges before reinstalling. That cockpit floor to cockpit side joint is going to take a lot of punishment, especially if you weigh as much as I do.

We are in the process of ordering a C-Tech (NZ) carbon rig, but with Two sets of spreaders - the uppers just supporting the masthead when the kite is up. Port Phillip is a pretty choppy place and has 15 -25 knot sea breezes in summer, so we really have to think about that masthead whipping around. The sales are Doyle Fraser Laminates that should be matched pretty well to the rig as Doyle are apparently across the road from C-Tech.

Robert Hicks has done a beautiful keel, bulb and set of rudders for us, I will post photos as soon as I can.

The Cabin Top Saga...

2009-07-27T23:14:00.000-07:00

Here is my attempt at putting the cabin top together single handed. I've lined up and screwed down and clamped the front of the four panels.

Of course, this is my Third attempt at doing this. My first Two attempts did this to my clamps. I now have steel clamps, not ^&%$^%$% plastic.

I've used good old gaffer tape to hold everything in place while I'm doing it - it's like a second pair of hands. I've put tape over the frames so that when I tab the top and sides together, it won't stick to the frames, then I plan to lift it off, de-cable tie it, fillet and glass it internally and Voila!

I've screwed blocks in place as you can see below to hold everything in position. It all lines up nicely at Frame 110 as you can see.

There is just the little matter of bending the Hoop Pine Five ply to shape, and it's tough as nails and really fights back. I carefully started adding cable ties and gently bending everything to make it fit at Frame 89, which need a lot of effort and then.....Bang!

So tomorrow I'm either going to go and get some 1/8" Hoop Pine marine ply and Laminate up the sides in place, or find some weak, flabby, soft, Gaboon, Okume or Meranti quarter inch marine ply that bends easier than the Hoop Pine.

Oh well, I guess every project has its low points..

Keel Box And Thwarts

2009-07-20T13:52:00.000-07:00

Well, first of all.....it's light. We lifted it up just to have a look at it. One person can easily lift the bow or stern. Left chine looks pretty well edge to edge as it should be, the right not quite so good, maybe an Eight out, but it should all fair up pretty well. I guess it will be considerably heavier after we glass the hull and deck.

When I was preparing the bulkheads for the keel box sides, I glued in cleats on the bulkhead faces to hold the bottom of the sides together, since I had no good way of clamping them. Anyway, I fitted the sides so that they would just sort of slide in from the top. I also made up the thwarts out of quarter inch ply so that they were a loose fit.

We relied on the Two pieces of Two inch wide quarter ply on the bulkhead faces for our accuracy in getting everything vertical. Those strips were made up as accurately as our tools allow and they were positioned with reference to the centrelines drawn on the bulkheads when we lofted them.

..So in theory, since the bulkheads are flat, parallel, centred by laser and vertical, we should have a perpendicular keel box, I hope. Well that is the theory anyway.

We filleted and then glassed the bottom to keel side joint, checked to see that everything was glassed, no bare timber, etc, and then glued in the thwarts. They got a fillet and glass where they meet the hull. The keel box side to bulkhead joints were then filleted and glassed.

Stringers and Cleats

2009-07-15T23:37:00.000-07:00

Today I trued up the centrecase, put in some stringers and a couple of cleats.

I think I'm going to go with a square section keel head, but anyway it isn't critical just yet. This morning I trued up the keel box sides and then fitted and sanded them ad infinitum to get a nice mating surface with the bottom.

That done, I started thinking how I was going to clamp everything together. It's easy to clamp at the top, but not at the bottom. I solved that problem , as well as making something to locate the thwarts when I install them by putting cleats on the back of 110 and front of 124. I did it with the keelbox sides in place and butted them right up to them, so that they "lock" the bottom of the keelbox in place. They also provide support for the Thwarts and if I've done it right, the thwarts should be flush with the bunk tops when it's all installed.

Naturally I carefully slid the keelbox sides out after clamping and before the glue set up. They got a coat of epoxy on the insides ready for glueing later. I also roughly cut out the keel hole. The Fein Multi tool cut through ply and epoxy like butter! It took about Two minutes!

After that, I started making more stringers. I used inch and a quarter square Oregon and bevelled the edges of the exposed face a little. I guess they are heavier than beams with lightening holes, but I think they are going to be bullet proof once the cockpit floor ones are bonded to the ply. I've committed the no -no of glueing end grain, but that is really just to locate them until they are bonded to the underside of the cockpit bottom. I've put Two between 169.5 and the stern. The batteries are just to make them conform about a Sixteenth to match the curve of the hull.

I guess we will let that all set up over the weekend, then it's more woodwork for the thwarts and bunk covers. We want to use them as airtanks. I'm not sure if we will foam them or just have an inspection cover.

I've emailed Tim about the sexy curve of the cockpit sides, other guys seem to have widened the cockpit up front, but I think I like the idea of more deck to provide more reserve bouyancy in a knockdown, and will probably build it the way Chris designed it.

Grumpy Walrus

2009-07-13T23:54:00.000-07:00

People are not made to bend double, especially older people, but Wobble was out teaching people how to sail so I had to put in another four stringers by myself.

What seems to work for me is to cut everything to plan dimensions and then get into the boat and do a bit f cutting and sanding until they fit nice. It's important to label each part "Forward", "Up" and "Left" and "Right". I almost glassed in something back to front, and my labels saved me just in time. here they are.

P.S. Before I put those stringers in, and considering I had all the frames in, I decided to lift the boat... Man! It's rigid!

Stringers And $$$

2009-07-12T23:08:00.000-07:00

We decided to put Two stringers towards the stern, and I needed wood for those and various cleats etc., so I set off in search of some clear Oregon....only to find none, nil, nada, zip, with the exception of some awefulold stuff. Finally I went to Lewis &Co who have been selling Oregon since 1905.

They told me that American Oregon is virtually no longer available because the logging coups were closed to protect the Spotted Owl and Bald Eagle. Canadian Oregon is supplying the European and American markets, but no one is carrying much here. I found some 30mm X 30mm. Twelve metres of it cost me $160.00. I mean, we used to burn offcuts of this stuff as kindling!! Well, so be it. I hope the Owls and Eagles are happy.

We cut out frame 89 on Thursday. We left a reinforcing bar across the middle of it which we will cut out later after everything is set up and glued. Friday we glued it in and left it all weekend to set. Monday I made up the Six stringers.

I filleted and glassed in the Two front ones, then glassed in the right side of frame 169.5. The hull should now be symmetrical. That was enough for one day. stooping in the boat glassing in stringers requires contortions.

Frames Going In..

2009-07-06T23:15:00.000-07:00

After what seems like forever measuring that everything is flat, square, parallel, vertical, horizontal, aligned, collimated and centred, we glassed in frame 110. Then we followed today by tabbing in Frame 124 and 169.5. We knew we had 110 in OK, so we used the keel case sides as a spacer and poked and prodded until we think we got 124 right. In the picture below you can see the strap we used to get about half an inch inside the class rules maximum beam measurement.

After that we tabbed in 169.5. Now when we measured the hull using the Beckwith string system, we discovered that the Starboard side at 169.5 was about half an inch out from where it should be, most probably (fingers crossed) because of a warp in the ply or finger trouble by me.

So what we have done is glassed in the Port side and Three quarters of the bottom and its our hope that the big gap visible in the photo will close right up (fingers crossed) when we apply a little muscle and a strap.

We are getting close to ordering the rig which is most probably going to be a Two spreader Carbon layout.

Triangulation

2009-07-01T21:33:00.000-07:00

Image above shows One million clamps holding their shear clamp on. There is not really much to show at the moment, but we have been busy. The centre seam and chines have been filleted and glassed. All the frames have been cut with the exception of 89 under the mast step. 18 has been glassed in as has 53 after some sistering pieces added to get a fair hull.

We fitted frames 110 and 124 and decided to sister 110 to give us a fair hull. 124 just dropped right in and fitted just fine. The sister pieces are now glued on, as are front and back 2" wide centreboard case ends. We have also laminated up the centreboard case sides so that we can use them as "spacers" when we install 110 and 124 - if all goes well, that big day will be Monday.

In all this, we are trying to follow the "measure Three Times, cut once" philosophy which is driving wobble nuts, since he can already feel the boat moving and has bought three Tonnes of Harken bling to screw on as soon as the paint is dry. Having said that we have followed Chris Beckwiths "string" measurement procedure and the boat up to frame 124 is dead square as far as we can tell. At 163, the Sides are unsymetrical by around half an inch, but we believe that its caused by variations in the plywood and will easily pull out when we drop that frame in.

Not sure if other people do this, but I found that Pythagoras comes in handy. Calculate the square root of the hypotenuse of the triangle formed by the frame number and the half beam at the deck edge of the frame, and measure and mark that amount back along the sides from the stem. If your hull is something like square, that should be pretty close to where your frame and sides should join.

We are still trying to get all our dimensions sorted out for our rig and sails. The "jib hoist" measurement is confusing since we have to create some sort of datumn for the sailmaker so that he knows where the stem fitting and deck edge are in the verticle plane.

Some Progress.

2009-06-28T22:45:00.000-07:00

Last week we were tweaking things, trying to get everything to line up before applying the first gobs of epoxy.

We added a phony stem and string to try and line things up.

We fantasised about the bowsprit.....

We checked the hull for hollows and found the same as seemingly lots of others at frame 53.5, so we let the cable ties out and sistered on some contoured ply at the front. the gap is about half an inch wide at the middle.

We glued in the real stem, cut from Tasmanian Oak, on Friday and also tabbed frame 18 in place with 2"" glass tape.

This morning it had all set up nicely, so we filleted and taped the crash box between the stem and frame 18, tabbed the chines and transom and laminated up the keelbox sides. We have had real trouble finding Oregon for shear clamps, cleats etc. so I'm going to use 3/4'' quad Tasmanian oak for teh shear clamp and radiata pine for cleats.

We added a scrap of carbon just because we could and taped everything with 4" biaxial tape.

The plan tomorrow afternoon is to remove frame 110, leaving a beam clamped to the hull for reinforcement, then fillet and tape the centre cut and the chines.

Sails are going to be laminated string from Doyle Fraser, the mast will be a carbon Two spreader affair and we are going for Two rudders at an angle of 15 or 20 degrees and maximum bulb weight. Port Phillip is renowned for its short sharp chop and summer sea breezes around 17+ knots, so we are erring on the side of additional strength.

Blocks Of The Wooden Variety

2009-06-22T23:44:00.000-07:00

Well, not to put to fine a point on it, last week was a mess from the boat building point of view, but this week is so much better.

We got the sides and bottom stitched together, made a temporary stem out of plywood and started trying to line things up, they didn't. Then we made frame 18 and 53.5 and tried inserting them. They didn't fit too well at all. The boat was too narrow in the bow area. After a little head scratching and examination of plans, we decided that the instruction "measure from the centreline" in cutting out the bottom either side of the slot was possibly in error, either the frame dimension was right or the bottom dimension was right, but not both.

We pulled everything apart and emailed Tim, but guessed it was the bottom so we glued some wood back on and left it over the weekend, then relofted it and sanded it back. You can also see my freehand cut awful looking slot. We cleaned that up a bit as well.

Monday afternoon we reassembled everything and tried again and it still looked awful, just a boat shaped object. We could not work out how to get the inside edges to line up at the chine. If you got the edge of the side too high near the bow, it would push in - no matter what you did with cable ties. Similarly, if you let the side get out over the edge of the bottom, it would fall down. Most depressing. We gave up. Nothing fitted.

Anyways, driving home from the clownfish cave last night I had this idea - blocks. We screwed little blocks of fibreboard to the bottom to keep the sides from pushing in, and similar blocks to the sides to keep them from falling off the bottom. Combined with cable ties, we found by trial and error that you can get your edges to line up within a Sixteenth of an inch or so in about half an hour. This is what it looks like now.

Just loosen the screw, pack under the block and your problems are over. Of course remember the outside of your boat is looking like a porcupine, but hey, suddenly everything fits. The boat is even square and the bow looks like a bow with 18 and 53.5 cable tied in.

Bottom And Sides Cut And Joined

2009-06-15T23:23:00.000-07:00

Last Friday we glued up the Two side panels and also cut out the bottom. Yesterday we cut the centre seam out of the bottom panel and stitched it up. It seems a little odd, my cuts were a little rough and I think I may need to do a little remedial work with the Fein Multimaster. I had been thinking of buying one for years and this project is the perfect excuse!

We also cut out the Two side panels. I almost made the fatal mistake of cutting Two Port sides! Wobble realised in time and we put the uncut one face to face with the other and traced around it. We cleaned them up with a plane as best we can.

This morning we got out the cable ties - an electrician friend tells me black ones are stronger than clear. We gingerly started tying the Starboard side to the bottom.... What do you know? It just sort of sits there..

We stitched on the other to make a boat shaped object.

We have cut and laminated the transom, but just stuck one part in to see...

I'm going to follow Kmac's advice from the forum about build order. I've screwed the aft end of the bottom to our building frame and I'm thinking I'll do the same at the bow when I work out exactly where it goes and also screw down further back to try and keep the ply bent as it should be. Then I do the bow and stem.

Once we have everything lined up I become Wobbles helper while we tab the hull together as he is the fibreglass king.

Finished The Cradle..

2009-06-10T22:56:00.000-07:00

We finished the cradle this morning, lining everything up with the laser and levels and we have (hopefully) got everything square, flat, parallel and vertical. The trouble is that even a one sixteenth "bump" sort of stands out.

We laminated our girst long panel today. We were going to do all three, but chickened out, worrying about epoxy setting times. The temperature is around 10 Centigrade and we were using Fast hardener...which was still a little "fast". We will look at our panel tomorrow, and if its AOK we will do the other Two.

Building The Cradle

2009-06-10T15:58:00.000-07:00

We cut our supports out of 5/16 bracing ply. We added four inches to all the offsets to come up with a way of getting our hands underneath if we need to. We are working from the .pdf files using an engineers rule and trying to get everything accurate to the width of a pencil line.

As an engineer, I know tolerances/deviations from plans always build up, they rarely cancel each other out, so it is important in my opinion to get this foundation of the build as right as we can, so that we end up with a boat that is straight and doesn't have a "Good" tack and a "not so good" tack.

Hopefully, we can align everything today, join up some plywood sheets and maybe start cutting real boatbuillding wood on Monday.

Tools...We gots it.

2009-06-08T23:33:00.000-07:00

Well, we finally started. We found some tools in the back of the shed that looked sort of useful...

.......and some wood that sort of looked nautical that nobody wanted.

So we got started. A good friend had some free space in the back of his high security warehouse, so we taped a tarp to the floor to catch the epoxy drips and set up shop.

Our first priority is a building cradle made out of 2 X 4 and bracing ply held together with Tec screws and liquid nails. The supports under each frame are being cut out of bracing ply to the measurements from the .pdf's and offsets Tim emailed us.

We are lucky to have a perfectly level concrete floor. The handy little Black and Decker laser gizmo helped us set up our centreline.

We will put up a post for Frame 00 to attach to and line up each cradle support with the laser.

We will finish the cradle and join up the sheets for bottoms and sides, then start cutting the frames while we wait for the plans....