Onto The Trailer

In between sanding and oiling the decks I have been looking for a trailer. Eventually I bought a new 5 metre trailer from Swiftco. It is built to carry a much heavier boat (950 Kg) than my Able so there is no doubt that it will be strong enough! The springs are too strong for the much lighter boat and my first job was to remove a leaf from each spring.

To get the boat onto the trailer I lifted it up in two slings; the forward one has a block and tackle and the aft one is lifted with an engine crane. Fortunately this arrangement worked very well because I lost count of the number of times I lifted the boat on and off the trailer (and dragged the trailer out of the shed) as I adjusted the rollers and skids to fit. It remains to be seen if the boat launches and retrieves nicely with it set up the way it is now. Here is the boat waiting patiently for the trailer to be put back under it.

Here is a side view of the boat and trailer - only the second time the boat has been out of the shed.

Another side view from slightly forwards.

I stood the mast up with a piece of rope as a forestay. This was necessary to allow the side and forestay lengths to be measured. I will have these wire stays made up by a local chandlery. The mast rake appears greater than actual because the boat is not sitting level on the trailer, look at the waterline.

Here is a photo of the mast hinge. This seems to work OK and the mast is easy enough to raise and lower although a line through a block on the bowsprit is essential to hold it in place while a more permanent fastening is made between forestay and bowsprit for sailing.

Here are a couple of photos of the interior of the boat. The wood work is essentially complete except that I will put a couple of wooden hatches where the cross thwart runs into the side seats to provided access to the storage space underneath.

And finally, when I came to wheel the boat back into the shed, look what happens.

The lower part of the hinged mast is just too high to fit under the shed door. This is quite a problem as my intention was to store the complete boat in this shed in its final "ready to go" configuration with mast, spars and mainsail folded down. At the moment I have 3 solutions: store it elsewhere, build a new shed where the old one is or make a new mast with the hinge lower down. I am very tempted by the new shed because the old one only has 2.1M (7 foot) clearance under the roof trusses; a higher roof would provide more space and make the shed much cooler in the summer months. But it would be expensive! The solution will probably be a combination of store it elsewhere and make a new mast. My longer term plan already included a new mast made with the birdsmouth technique (hollow and much lighter). In the meantime it will be stored elsewhere, undercover but without walls.

Now to continue with the seemingly endless list of jobs and have some sails made.

Decks and Seat Tops Finished

The previous post left the decks and seat tops covered in the black goop (Sikaflex 291). When it had cured for three days I started sanding the excess black goop off. A belt sander with an 80 grit belt made short work of it in the open areas but it is a dangerous tool to use close to the newly painted hull and bulkheads. I found that a paint scraper with a carbide blade worked well to remove the bulk of the black stuff close to the paintwork and could also get into the corners (although care is needed when working across the grain). After the scraper the detail sander with 80 grit paper cleaned up the edges. It sounds straight forward and it was but it took a long day to complete this sanding. Here is a photo of the foredeck after the sanding is complete.

 

Unfortunately after the sanding the imperfections show up where I had failed to fill the gap completely. There were not too many of these and I went round and patched them up. Here is another photo of the foredeck with the patching done. Once patched I had to wait for the caulk to cure before sanding again.

 

Finally I was able to start putting some finish onto the decks; I used Deks Olje. This is a two part finish; the first part is oily and is intended to protect the wood, the second part is more like a varnish and produces a glossy finish. The manufacturers recommend using only the first part on decks to obtain a sealed, protected non-slip surface and that is what I did. It could not be simpler to apply, put on coat after caot, wet on wet, until the surface is still wet after 10 minutes. I applied 7 coats and the then wiped off the excess with a clean rag. After 3 or 4 days the surface is exactly what I wanted.

 

 

I am very pleased with the result. Whether I would do it again is another question. It has been a time consuming and quite expensive exercise but it looks pretty good to me!

Decking and Seat Tops

Following on from the end of the previous post here is the foredeck with the pavers removed. There is a bit of epoxy squeeze out and I have been removing it with the hot air gun and scrapers. The last two pieces of the margin were glued in place and the straight pieces of decking cut to length and glued down working from the centre outwards. Most of these planks have a curved end and the templates were very handy for marking the curve on the planks. I laid 3 planks at a time working out the spacing by eye; this was probably a mistake, I should have used tile spacers to get the spacing more consistent.

 However, I am pleased with the result. Here is the foredeck with all planks in place. If you double click the image you should get an enlarged view.

Having completed the fore and aft decks I decided to plank the seat tops. This idea had been in my mind but I was hesitant about the larger areas involved. The appearance of the decks convinced me to go ahead with the seats.

The edge of the seats overhangs slightly as shown in Barrett Faneuf's writeup on the Duckworks site. I cut the rebate in these boards on my tablesaw; a bit tricky to set up but much quicker than using the router which is what I did for the edging of the aft deck. With the boards shaped I mitred the corners and glued them in place. The curved margin planks against the hull had to be made in 3 pieces and, once again, I re-used the templates from when I cut the plywood seat tops. The next photo shows the margin planks being glued in place.

From here it was simply a case of cutting the planks to length, shaping the ends where necessary and gluing them down. Because of the longer lengths involved I did these plans 2 at a time working outwards from the centre of the boat. This went quite quickly - shape and glue 2 planks on one side then do the same on the other side. After a couple of hours the epoxy was set enough to hold the planks and another 2 planks could be done. As this process reached the sides I had to slow down a bit because the narrowing space between pavers and hull made access difficult.

Here it is, all planks in place and pavers removed. There is now a lot of sanding to do to clean off the excess epoxy but mainly to level the surface of the planks. I did the bulk of the sanding with a belt sander with 40 grit paper. The corners I did with a detail sander . All this sanding had to be done very carefully to avoid damaging the completed paintwork inside the hull. The 40 grit paper left surface scratches which I cleaned up with 80 grit paper. There's no point trying for the ultimate finish yet as there is more heavy sanding to be done once the caulking is complete.

I made a fairly careful estimate of the length of the caulking and multiplied the length by the average cross section of the gaps. Dividing this total volume by 310 mL (the size of a tube of caulk) came to 8.5 tubes. I bought 10 tubes of Sikaflex 291 and, to avoid another dose of boat building induced RSI in my wrist, I also bought a battery powered caulking gun.

This thing was worth the price. My wrist still works but my back and shoulders ache from bending and operating the device at arms length.

Both Barrett Faneuf and  Joel Bergen taped the planks to keep the black goop under some sort of control - make no mistake, it gets everywhere! I simply gunned the goop into the gap and then trowelled it with a plastic scraper. When it is set I will sand the mess off (I hope).

The next photo shows the caulking about half done. That much caulking took about 2.5 hours and I stopped for a rest overnight!

Another 2.5 hours this morning and it is all done. After 24 hours I will remove the blue masking tape and then wait for the black goop to set. The Sikaflex data sheets suggests that a 6mm thick bead will take 2 days to cure at 23 degrees C and 50% R H. It's hotter and more humid than that here in Brisbane at the moment but I will give it 2 days to be on the safe side.