Sail loft getting ready

Here is a glimpse of the sail loft. A nice little yellow spare room.


I purchased three sail kits (main, jib and storm jib) from a sail maker. These kits have all the hardware and materials (fabric, thread, twine, rope, wire ... everything I need) and instructions to assemble them. I just need to sew the sails together (mostly machine sewing but some hand sewing at the corners) and attach the hardware. The sail fabric is already cut out. For those of you not familiar with sail design, the sail maker designed the sail panels with curved edges so that when they are sewn together they will form an airfoil shape. (Not something I can learn to design without sail design software.)

I'm going to try to sew tough sail fabric with a cheap little Singer sewing machine from Target. I'll let you know how it goes. The sail fabric is called Dacron, a surprisingly tightly stitched, plastic-like polyester fabric (kinda like Nylon, only much more stiff). I have to learn how to use the machine before I can sew the sails. The stitches of my first sail will probably look bad, but hopefully I'll get a hang of it. I'm going to make one sail (the jib) just to make sure that I can do it, then get back to building the boat. After the boat is closer to completion, I'll make the other two sails.

But first, I made a full-size pattern of the sails for the day when I want to make replacement sails. (Talk about thinking ahead, right?) The sail maker was kind enough to give me a computer print-out of the X,Y coordinates that he used to cut the sail panels out with a large automated plotter. I typed these coordinates into AutoCAD to draw the panels exactly to the correct shape. Then I just printed them out superimposed on each other on 30in x 112in paper. Here is a pic of the sail pattern with one of the sail panels lying on top of it to make sure that it matches. It matches perfectly of course.


Here are the coordinates of that sail panel and the resulting CAD drawing. Confused? If so, don't feel bad, it took me awhile to figure out what these coordinates meant.


I figure I paid the design fee so the design is mine. When I make some replacement sails in like 10 years, I'll just have to buy the materials.

You can't call me a sail maker since I'm clueless about sail design, but I guess you can call me a "sail assembler", kinda like the Chinese workers that most sail lofts outsource to nowadays.

Bow Eye and Trailer Adjustment

I installed the bow eye into the stem of the boat. The bow eye is just a long stainless u-bolt that the trailer winch attaches to. I had to chisel out some of the stem because the u-bolt wasn't long enough (this is a common practice I hear). On the back side of the u-bolt there is a steel backing plate to prevent the stem from getting crushed when the nuts are tightened. I also installed a metal clip where a pulley will be attached that rotates (or raises and lowers) the centerplate. I fabricated the metal clip out of some stainless steel plate using an angle grinder.



The boat saw a brief glimpse of daylight as I opened the garage door to winch it up on the trailer. Ooo ... here is a glimpse of the future towing rig. I know I know, it's a beast.




Back in the garage she goes. The garage door is sealed up with plastic again since its still pretty cold outside.



After a few hours of adjusting the roller and bunk heights, the boat is now firmly seated on the trailer. I moved the bow stop (and thus the boat) aft a foot or so to reduce the tongue weight. The boat and trailer will weigh about 1000lbs and I'm shooting for a tongue weight of about 50-70 lbs. After I moved the boat aft, the tilting function of the trailer actually wants to tilt the boat back even when the boat is all the way forward against the bow stop. I thought this would be a problem, but its actually not, because the winch pulls the boat forward and down, which automatically levels the trailer when I'm winching it up onto the trailer. Also, the tilt joint is locked in place with a pin except when launching the boat.



There was a scary moment when I tried to board her from the rear (gigidy) and the whole trailer and boat violently tipped back. After that, I added jack stands under the rear of the trailer frame. The boat is now stable enough for me to climb around in.

Boat Flipping Party

Well, traditionally builders have a party of people to come over to flip their boat. But my boat is so small, that I only needed a few people. And I tried to video the whole process, but the camera didn't record. Oh well, here are some pics of the boat after it was flipped.





I laid down a bunch of old blankets and plastic sheet on one side of the boat. I put eye bolts high on the wall on the other side. Ropes were tied to the boat and through the eye bolts. Two people (Fransisco and I) lifted to roll the boat as two other people (Valerie and Kristy) held on to the ropes to keep the boat from rolling too fast. Without the ropes, I think the boat would have been difficult to control after a certain angle.

The boat is securely screwed to the strong-back frame, so it all rolled over together. Most of the lumber in the boat is temporary scrap wood and will be removed when necessary. There's lots of glue drips to scrape off, but overall the interior of the hull looks pretty good.

Everything went according to plan and the boat is now lying on it's keel. Next I'm going to install the bow eye and then winch it up on the trailer.

Paint Hull

The hull got a rough sanding so that the paint will adhere. I didn't bother to fill in ALL the little blemishes and get her perfect. After all, I'm building a boat to go in the water, not a museum.



Two thin coats of primer are then applied with a roller. The paint is a high quality 100% acrylic latex primer.



Then two coats of top coat are applied. The paint is a high quality industrial DTM 100% acrylic latex semigloss. DTM stands for Direct To Metal, which basically means that the paint adheres well to almost any prepared surface, not just metal. Latex paint is not chosen to be cheap, (since good latex is actually pretty expensive). I feel like latex paint is the best choice for a trailer boat when considering durability, looks, expense, ease of application, and ease of reapplication. (And its not as much as a health or environmental hazard compared to "marine" paints). After doing a little research, I learned that quite a few people paint their boat with latex and results are generally positive.



Next a few coats of trim color.


And then the aluminum strips (fabricated earlier) are installed with stainless 1" wood screws and polysulfide caulk (nasty gooey stuff meant for under the waterline). I made a mess with the caulk and had to touch up the trim paint after.





The shiny paint reveals a lot of the little imperfections in the hull that I didn't notice before, but the wife is still impressed with how it looks and that's what counts.

That's it for the underside of the boat. Now I need to get some goons over here to flip 'er over.

Skeg and capping pieces glued

Wow, no blog post for a whole month? Sorry about that. Let me catch you up.

It took a little longer than expected, but I've glued the skeg and capping pieces in place. After much deliberation, I decided to glue all these pieces in place instead of just screws and sealant. The glue will make them much stronger and sealed, though I won't be able to remove them as easily. After all the pieces were glued on the boat, I sanded the top flat and rounded the edges.




The bolts were used as clamps while gluing the skeg, then the bolts were removed after the glue hardened. (The bolts are easily removable if they are temporarily wrapped in clear packing tape). The inside of the bolt holes were then coated with epoxy (which helps keep the wood from getting "sick" from the metal). The bolts will be reinstalled later with sealant. (So the bolts will be removable for inspection or replacement.)



The stem capping is two layers of 1/2" thick oak that must bend about 90 degrees.

I broke the first piece trying to bend it into position. Oak generally bends well, but this is a very tight bend and my pieces are very dry (probably kiln dried). So I made a wood torturing jig in the shape of the front of the boat.



It's just a piece of plywood with carefully shaped blocks screwed to it. I slowly poured a gallon of boiling water over the oak pieces as I bent and clamped them onto the jig. The heat from the boiling water relaxes the fibers of the wood and prevents it from breaking. A metal strip covers the outside of the wood piece so that the clamping force is more distributed. After the pieces were bent onto the jig, I poured another gallon of hot water on them, then let them dry for a week and removed them from the jig. (I didn't take pics of this process, sorry). They sprung back a little when I removed them, but they were easily installed on the front of the boat without breaking. (This boiling water technique is similar to steam bending, but I didn't want to make a steam box since I only needed to bend these two pieces. Steam bending probably works slightly better and the wood doesn't take as long to dry).

I drilled two 1" drain holes in the bottom of the transom for draining the bilge when the boat is out of the water. These holes are lined with a brass tube permanently glued in. They will be corked with drain plugs when the boat is sailing, since the boat would flood otherwise.



I also drilled some holes through the stem for a bow eye (in which to hook the trailer winch). This was scary, because I couldn't remember if there were any screws in the way. Luckily I didn't hit any. These holes are also coated with epoxy and the bow eye will also be installed with sealant.



Metal strips were made out of aluminum flat bar. I'm hoping they will add some extra protection for the bottom of the boat. We'll see if they do any good. Brass half-oval strips are commonly used, but I couldn't find that for a decent price. Aluminum should work just as well on a trailer boat, though it may not be quite as pretty. I used an angle grinder to cut them to length and round the edges a little. A belt sander with fine paper polished them up nicely. They were test fit on the hull (which is the cause of all the small screw holes in the previous pics), but then removed and will later be attached to the skeg and capping pieces using sealant and countersunk stainless screws.



The hull is shiny because I coated it with another thin coat of epoxy. The next step is to give the hull a final sanding. The final coat of epoxy has some ripples in it and I need to rough up the epoxy anyway, since paint won't stick to this super shiny, slick surface.

Then I'm going to paint the hull! I'm currently painting a scrap of plywood to test the adhesion of the epoxy, primer and topcoat that I'm using. I'll let it dry and then see if there are any adhesion problems.

The boat flipping will be two weekends from now hopefully. (But there is still a lot of work to be done after that.)

Over budget!

The original $5000 budget has been exceeded. Don't get too worried though ... I already purchased almost everything I need to complete the hull. But I still need to buy sails, rope, some of the hardware and outfitting (life jackets, etc). I'm increasing the budget to $6500 to cover the costs of these items.

Remember, this budget includes EVERYTHING I need to get out on the water, not just an empty hull. I estimate that this boat design could be build anywhere from $2000-8000, depending on the quality of materials chosen. However, I think a more reasonable price range would be more like $4000-$7000 for the boat, trailer, and everything except an outboard motor.

I've chosen fairly high quality materials. I figure that I'm investing so much time building, that spending money on quality materials makes sense. The quality materials make a boat that lasts longer, performs better and is easier and cheaper to maintain. This boat will easily outlive me with just minimal maintenance (painting, minor repairs, etc). However, a $2000 "home depot special" boat would be in poor shape after just a few years. It's not even worth the time to build this cheaply in my opinion. If my budget was $2000, I would have just bought a used fiberglass boat and fixed it up. (If you are not interested in the boat building hobby and just interested in getting the best sailboat for your money, this is the way to go).

The main budget buster for me so far was the trailer ... I thought I could get something decent for $200 or so. Nope, it cost me more like $700+ to make a nice trailer that will safely transport my boat. Money well spent I suppose. Sometimes you forget that the boat travels more on land than on water ... a good trailer is important.

When I get closer to completion, I'll post a pie chart or something showing how much I spent on each category ... (wood, glue, fasteners, paint, sails, hardware, trailer, outfitting etc). Right now it's difficult to list all the things that I have or haven't bought yet.

Skeg and Capping Peices Fabricated

The lumber (1 1/4" thick white oak) is placed on the boat and a block and pencil is used to draw the shape of the boat onto the lumber.



The lumber is cut using a circular saw and the edge is cleaned up using a belt sander with 50 grit sand paper ... (which makes a great power planer for this task). I made sure there were no gaps underneath the skeg and that it was not leaning to one side.



The top of the skeg is perfectly horizontal ... (yay a straight line finally!) So I used a tight string (leveled with a string level) to mark the top edge. Then it's cut with a circular saw.



The front of the skeg is checked out to accept the next capping piece. This was done with a table saw set at a low blade height. This worked well, except the bottom edge got chipped a little.



Next the holes are drilled and countersunk for the through bolts. These bolts are hot dipped galvanized steel. It's normally not a good idea to mix metals like these galvanized steel bolts and bronze screws and nails. However, since this is a trailer boat, this won't cause any corrosion problems most likely. Also, bronze is higher on the galvanic series than galvanized steel, so the steel will corrode first if there is a problem. I may have to replace the bolts once every 20 years, but at least the permanent bronze screws will last forever. (For those of you still concerned, just pretend the bolts are sacrificial zincs).



The two capping pieces on either side of the centercase slot are made the same way as the skeg. (Except these pieces are going to be installed using large screws instead of through bolts).



They are also faired slightly on the sides where they meet the skeg using a belt sander. (I'm kinda embarrassed that I use the belt sander so much, but it works so well!)



Next week I'm going to make some more capping pieces for the front of the boat, then take it apart and install all of them with glue.

Fiberglass Hull

After the hull is shaped about right, the fiberglass goes on. Here's how I did it ... I hope it lasts.

I spread a coat of epoxy on the hull, so the dry spots could soak it up. I let it cure for a half a day, then while the epoxy was still slightly tacky, I stuck the fiberglass fabric onto the hull. The fabric is overlapped at the seams.



Then the epoxy is wet out. The epoxy is poured onto the hull, then squeegeed off using a reasonable amount of pressure. Just enough epoxy is used to glue the fabric to the hull, but not to fill the weave. It was pretty easy, except little wet fiberglass hairballs and frayed edges made it a tedious and messy process.



The fabric becomes transparent when wet out, but the weave is still raised and visible.



Each coat of epoxy is applied before the one before it completely cures. (If I didn't do it this way, I would have to sand between each coat to get good cohesion).

The next coat fills the weave partially. The bumps in the hull caused by the fiberglass overlaps, etc. are sanded off and some thickened epoxy is also used to fair these areas a little. Then another coat is applied to fully fill the weave.





After these coats, I noticed quite a few bumps in my once smooth hull, so I decided to completely sand the hull down again (being careful to not dig into the fiberglass cloth). I'm glad I did this extra work because now the hull is much smoother. I'll later apply another coat of epoxy before painting to make up for this extra sanding. But first I'm going to install the skeg and capping pieces.