Serendipity Sailing at Lake Wivenhoe

 

This is a short video made by my friend Paul Hernes during a Wooden Boat Association of Queensland camp at Lake Wivenhoe, March 2014. Thanks Paul.

 

She Sails

Had a great 5 days at Lake Wivenhoe with some members of the Wooden Boat Association. The lake has a surface area of 109 square kilometres and a shoreline of 462 kilometres so it is big enough for serious sailing. Here are a couple of frames from some video taken by one of the other members. When the video arrives I will put some/all of it on the web.

Still a few things to sort out but I am very happy with my new boat!

She Floats!

I went for a test launch a couple of days ago mainly to see how she got off and on the trailer but also to try out the ballast tank arrangement and to check for leaks! I was more than a bit relieved to find that everything went well. Sad to say but the battery in my waterproof camera was flat so I only managed a couple of photos with the mobile phone before leaving it in the car for safety.

The two photos appear to be the same but the first is taken with no water in the ballast tanks and the second with them full. The approx 130 litres (130 Kg or 285lb) of water ballast sank the boat by approx 35 or 40 mm. The design waterline is where the colour changes so she floats quite a bit higher than expected. Crew weight will sink her a bit more.

Having taken her to the water and launched her of course I put the mast up and went for a sail. The wind was very light and flukey so it wasn't a very good test sail but everything appeared to work. I need to work out a way of tightening the jib halyard to straighten the luff. I think the mizzen boom needs a vang to flatten the sail, without it the boom lifts and the sail twists making it less effective.

Next week I'm off to a 5 day camp with the local wooden boat guys so there will be lots of suggestions about improvements and hopefully some more photos of the boat in action.

Mainsail - Topping Lift and Reefing Lines

It has been a day of raising and lowering the mast, many times! Because the hinge point of the mast is high I don't have much mechanical advantage when standing on the floor of the boat. I find it is essential to stand on the seats or the top of the centreboard case. From there it is a fairly easy lift to raise the mast, first to shoulder height and then push it up to arms length. In this position it is difficult to move forward and so the lifting line comes into play. This line is clipped through the end of the forestay and then runs through an S hook back to me as I lift the mast; I hold it in my teeth and use both arms to lift.

With the mast vertical I step forward taking in the slack on the line to the forestay and tie it off securely to the Samson post. I get out of the boat and lace the forestay down to the eye nearest the end of the bowsprit with the blue cord. This could be done from the foredeck but it would not be easy to get enough tension into the forestay, pulling downwards with the end of the bowsprit at shoulder height allows the strong pull necessary to tension the rigging. Once laced down and tied off the clip and line can be removed until the mast is to be lowered.

 

The mast is now raised so the mainsail can be bent on to the gaff and mast and the clew of the sail tied to the end of the boom. This is what it looks like.

 

 

The topping lift cum lazy jacks is in position but needs some adjustment (enlarge the photo and you will see the lines). It was quite tricky to get the lengths of rope right and roughly the same on both sides of the sail but it works well. When lowering the sail I hold both halyards in one hand and let the gaff down slowly while I move back in the boat and make the head of the sail fold down tidily onto the boom with the gaff on top of the folds. I tied up this bundle with a length of tape to make a tidy parcel, photo on left below.

 

 On the right the parcel has been lowered onto the side seat ready for the mast to be lowered on   to the stand at the back of the boat. Once the mast is down the parcel of spars and sail is tied up against the mast ready for travelling. The is what it looks like. Note that the parcel also includes the jib.

When travelling the mizzen mast, gaff, boom, sail and boomkin is made into a bundle and laid diagonally across the seats - it just fits. I will pad under and around the ends with some foam rubber to protect the paintwork.

 

Today's other job was to organise some reefing lines. I chose the simplest system I could think of and may have to modify it after trying it out on the water. All I did was to tie a pendant through the reefing eyes at the luff and leech of the sail. To take in a reef the gaff is lowered so the eye can be pulled down to the boom and then tied in position with the pendant. At the luff the line is taken under the boom, through the eye and then around the mast  before being tied off. At the leech the line goes under the boom back through the eye and then to the B block at the end of the boom to be tied off. The second reef is tied in the same as the first one. Here are photos of the reefed sail, one reef on the left and two reefs on the right.

 

 

 

 

Sails Have Arrived

I picked up my sails from the sail maker and spent the rest of the day putting them on the boat.

 

I think it looks pretty good but there are still a few things to finish and one problem to sort out. Sadly the finishing and sorting involves tools and, worse still, glue and paint that need time to dry so I can't go sailing for a few days. However, the end is in sight!

 

Here are a couple more photos showing some of the detail around the mizzen.

 

The attachment for the tack of the sail is simple and works quite well, thanks Paul for the suggestion. The blue line has a loop and toggle above the boom to hold the tack of the sail and below the boom there is a thimble and the tail of the line is laced to provide a downhaul.

 

Next photo shows the fore sail in position. Unfortunately the combined length of the luff, furler at the tack and swivel at the head is a few millimetres more than the distance between the block at the top and attachment point at the bottom. Some adjustment(s) need to be made and, at the moment, I'm not sure what is involved. The sail is fine and the sheet goes to the point on the gunwale where I planned to put the sheet lead blocks.

Gaff and Boom Jaws - Leatherwork

When I rigged the boat in the post before last I tape some pieces of cloth around the jaws on the booms and gaffs to protect the finish on the masts. The proper way to do this is to "leather" the jaws or the mast or both. Fitting leather to the mast is the easy option; the problem with this is that the gaffs slide up and down and it is impractical to wrap the whole mast. So I put leather around the mainmast where the boom contacts it and leather around the jaws on the main gaff and both the mizzen gaff and boom. I've run out of leather but will get more and put leather on the main boom jaws as a belt and braces approach in that area of heavy wear.

Here are a sequence of photos taken at various stages on various jaws showing how I shaped, fitted and fixed the leather. Starting with a bare set of jaws.

As an aside at this point, I am not 100% happy with these jaws. I started out using 9mm plywood for the jaws but someone suggested that this was not strong enough and the plywood would delaminate under the load. So I reinforced them with some solid timber pieces. The result is probably strong enough but not particularly tidy. Laminated hardwood for the whole jaw would have been better.

Piece of leather in place in the next picture. The lines are where cuts need to be made so that the leather will bend around the curved sections. Once the leather is wet (see below) it is more flexible and I may have made too many cuts but this is my first attempt at doing this and I have a limited amount of leather so can't afford too much trial and error!

 

This is what my marked up piece of leather looks like. A bit like it has been crawled over by a spider dipped in ink.

 

 

Having cut the excess off and along the lines between the tabs the leather is offered up to the jaws for a test fit.

 

It looks OK so it is soaked in water for a couple of hours, longer would be better but 2 hours makes it flexible enough (and it dries out quicker!). It doesn't look much different but it is soft and floppy and will now take the required shape.

To get it into the final shape it is bandaged. I used some of that not slip rubbery matting because I had some in small rolls. I simply sawed off chunks about 25 mm wide from the end of the roll. The leather is bound into place, working from the bottom of the jaws outwards. It's tricky, a bit like bandaging the joint between thumb and forefinger but the non slip tapes worked well.

 

Here is a finished jaw. The curve on this one is not as great and the leather took the compound curves quite well. Once the leather has dried out (24 hours) it has quite firmly adopted its new shape and does not try to go back to its flat state. Here the leather has been trimmed and fixed into place with copper boat nails.

 

I will saturate the leather with neatsfoot oil over a period of days to give it some protection against the weather. The oiling will need to be repeated periodically as the oil dries out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mast Sheaves

When I rigged the boat  in the last post I had the mast sheaves in place with some mild steel bolts as pins for them to turn on. The sheaves, which are made out of black nylon, now have some 5/16" brass pins that are held in place by 1mm thick brass cover plates. Here's a photo of the throat halyard sheave and the cover plate in the main mast.

At the top of the mainmast the peak halyard has a similar sheave, pin and cover plates. There are also hardwood lugs to support the forestay and side stays. If I was doing this again I would make the soft eyes in the wire stays a little bigger. The are a tight fit when being put in place. The good thing about this is that they won't fall off, the bad thing is that there isn't room for any leather to protect the mast and they will rub the finish off.

In the lower right the small block on a short wire strop is for the fore sail halyard (yellow rope). The cheekblock is one of a pair for the topping lift cum lazy jack lines.

At this stage I have made no provision for the topsail halyards; when/if I try a topsail I will use a cheekblock in place of one of the sheave in cover plates.

The brass cover plates for the sheave pins were cut and drilled for fixing screw on my CNC mill. For the to fit nicely against the mast they need to be curved. Holding them against the mast and hitting them with a hammer is a crude way of doing but it would damage the mast. I did this by making a curved anvil and a matching dolly out of scrap wood. Here are the three of them, each with a different radius.

These were cut using a holesaw of the right size. The brass plate placed on the concave anvil, the convex dolly placed on top and belted with a heavy hammer, result a perfect fit! It took longer to write about these plates than to make them.

Start on the Rigging

I dragged the boat out of the shed, put the masts up and jury rigged the gaffs and booms in place. I did this so that I could measure the actual length of halyards, sheets. Another reason was to get a better idea of what additional hardware I need to buy. Here are a couple of photos of the boat with masts etc in approximate positions (tricky without the sails). You can click (maybe double click) on the photo to get a larger version.

My first impression on seeing the above was that this boat has a lot of sail, 14.2 square metres or 152 square feet according to the plan. This is more than I am used to on my Navigator, 12.6 sqare metres or 136 square feet. The new boat is a bit bigger than the Navigator but, even so, I am going to have to put in a reef sooner!

A photo of the bowsprit shows how I have tensioned the forestay. Also visible here is the red line that I am using to assist with raising the mast. This clip hooks onto the forestay and, as I raise the mast, I take in the slack in the red line. Once the mast is vertical I can either (or both) put a locking pin through the hinges and tie off the red line. Once the mast is secured I tighten the lacing between the forestay and the eye on the bowsprit. Once this is tight the hook (red line) can be unclipped and the locking pin taken out of the hinge.

Here is the main sheet system. I am not 100% happy about the rope horse but will start out with it because it is the simplest and quickest way to get going! The mainsheet has a 3:1 purchase from the horse to the end of the boom then leads forward through a block mid-boom and down to a (very expensive) swivelling block and jam cleat on the top of the centreboard case.

The sheet for the mizzen will be as per plan; tied to the end of the mizzen boom, then through a block at the end of the boomkin, back to a block in the middle of the boom and through a couple of turning blocks to a cleat on the aft deck. There will be a downhaul for the mizzen boom with its lower end fixed to a saddle on the transom. This downhaul will also prevent the mizzen mast falling out of the boat in the event of a capsize.

Also visible in this photo is the hinged bracket for the outboard. This allows the outboard to be lifted completely out of the water when not in use.