Extra Stowage and Floatage

Most of my efforts on Shan Skailyn lately is geared toward preparing it for the maiden voyage coming up in just over 6 weeks. One of the things I've been concerned with for some time is trying to get a little more flotation in the middle section of the boat in case of capsize. My solution is simple and perfectly fits the needs of the voyage without permanent modifications that don't necessarily fit needs for the type of sailing we'll be doing once the boat is in Madang. It's just this longer voyage and my lack of experience that wants extra floatation for safety. So look here at my solution. I had some foam padding that I cut and glued together. It fits very snugly under the middle and aft seat of the middle section. Under the aft seat, goes a 5 gallon bucket. It adds extra waterproof stowage and stays put by wedging underneath the foam. That alone would probably stay put. But I added some rubber inner tube lashings which get lashed through the access holes in the bulkhead. Then under the middle seat, I'll be stowing my large waterproof 'sealine' bag (that I found for a measly five bucks!). Oh, and another little, almost insignificant thing I did recently was cut my bailing buckets out of some empty liquid laundry detergent bottles. Yippeee. I'm sure lots of other folks are as excited about that boring little detail as I am.

I've been looking over the google earth maps that I stored in my cache for offline viewing. I've found it worthwhile (though it's real worth will show during the trip) to go through and plan out some different places that look promising for stopping for the afternoon/night. One thing that is increasingly worrisome to me is the reality of the prevalence of opportunistic theft that is so prevalent in this country. There are many little things that I fear will get snagged during our nights staying in different villages. You might not guess it, but the most popular by far, and the most likely to disappear at a moment's notice, will be the inner tube lashings which I've made liberal use of throughout the craft. There are several solutions I can think of to curb the problem. We might end up settling on a combination of all of them when it comes down to it. I think the winner though is going to be either to sleep out next to the boat... but then there's still the problem of leaving the boat unattended any other time during the afternoon when hanging out with folks. Or we could offer some eager young soul a good wage if he can protect the boat from theft till morning. Then of course we'd take whatever we can with us if and when we leave the boat so as to not leave any obvious fodder. The rubber lashings are easy enough to replace. We'll just bring extra in anticipation of the need. However, there are a number of things that could get taken that would really put us up a creek. The access hatch lids, for one could really put a damper on things. Rope would be another popular item which would walk. Anyway, long story short... theft is going to be a problem and we will have to do what we can to minimize it.

Tying Up Loose Ends

Our family took this week off for some much needed rest. Of course, rest for me means being able to work on Shan Skailyn and playing with the kids and hanging with my woman. I actually didn't accomplish much work on the boat that is readily visible. I spent most of the time I had literally tying up loose ends. After working with the rigging over and over again to gain confidence in the different things I'd need to be able to do, I was able to better determine where to cut some of that all too precious rope with confidence that I wasn't making some stupid mistake that I'd regret. All ropes cut to length, whipped, ends fused, etc. Made up the proper lengths of braided inner tube lashings for the polas, and more of that kind of stuff.

I was sure to practice reefing and un-reefing the sail at least once each day. I'm really happy with how smooth the whole thing works. Now we'll have to see how it works out at sea, likely with at least some wind to fight against. One thing I realized is that it would be really easy to ignore the fact that the boom can give me a pounding not soon to be forgotten while reefing!

Finally I was able to rig up the harness by which the helicopter can safely sling Shan Skailyn down to the coast in not quite eight weeks time now. It's good to work out little details like that ahead of time. I'm regretting not having taken a picture of the thing all harnessed up. What was I thinking?

I've been working with Sesi too, teaching him some of the more important things about the boat and what he'd need to do in an emergency, like if Kyle and I both got knocked off the boat. For example, he needs to know how to depower the sail. Obviously there's so much more, but I don't want to bore you with too much detail, which I may have done already.

I've been very anxiously awaiting a package that I had mailed to me back in early October with all the last little tidbits that are needed to finish the boat as well as some essentials for the trip. This package has taken an unusually long time to arrive and my last chance to get it is coming up in just two days. I'll find out on Monday when the helicopter does our next supply run if the package is here. Gonna have to improvise on some things if it hasn't.

Shan Skailyn has been assembled in our yard all week and it's quite a hit for our friends passing by. During my week off it was fun to hang out around the boat and explain how it works. Most have never seen a sailboat before. "Where's the motor?" they keep asking. They can't believe that the wind alone is supposed to make Shan Skailyn move. It's a crazy thing this whiteskin is doing up here on the mountain!

Behold the Fold

This weekend was the first time I've been able to assemble Shan Skailyn since I installed its hefty iako hinges some time ago. Works like a charm! That'll come in super handy.

Thought I'd throw in a picture of my 'land crew'; youngsters from the area who were all too pleased to help with the assembly process. Note the reefed sail. I've got the sail and rigging completely done now. The whole thing can be reefed in just a few minutes with relative ease. Same for the reverse.

This composite photo is my attempt to overcome the difficulties of sending pictures over email. Our HF radio system doesn't handle multiple pictures well. So maybe it'll handle this better.

Finished Oar

Once again, I found myself limited to just a few hours of work on Shan Skailyn this last weekend. Is it me, or do things just keep getting more and more busy? No problem. Just plug away when you can and it'll eventually get all done.

I managed to finish the steering oar. Turned out pretty nice, though I do wonder about it's flexibility, if it may be too much. Oh well. I'll leave that up to future experience to tell me. Again, this is a backup steering/propulsion system. I simply modeled after the diagram in Gary's book. Went with the 10' version. Total weight is 3.6 kgs (7.9 lbs). Seems a bit heavy to me. Though I'm not sure what one might expect from a 10' oar weight wise. Only thing left on the oar at this point is to put the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th coats of exterior varnish on the oar. Also note the texture I put on the handle (see picture in previous botched post). My thinking was that it would provide better grip in wet conditions. I'm wondering if it might only serve to expedite the development of blisters. Hmmm. If it does, I can just wrap inner tube strips around it for comfort. Hmmm. Why didn't I just do that in the first place?!

One other thing I did on Saturday morning was to varnish the underside of the fore and aft decks. This is something I neglected to do initially, thinking it wouldn't be a problem to just leave the plywood bare on the deck since it's in a sealed compartment. However, as I've thought over things, I've come to realize that my original thinking was naive. In a water craft, I think one can assume everything will get wet at one point or another. Best to leave zero surfaces unfinished if I want to extend the life of the material. So I got that done. Not an easy job on an assembled boat. I had to assemble the fore and aft pieces and turn it upside down on a table so I could sit up inside the hull and reach my arms inside the sealed compartments and apply the varnish all the way to the stem. Now I know why I've delayed doing that. All that work and it feels like I didn't really accomplish anything meaningful, at least not anything perceivable. But I do rest better knowing I've taken a good step toward preserving Shan Skailyn. After reading Chris Grill's blog (grillabongquixotic.wordpress.com - gotta check it out if you haven't already) and seeing what happened to his deck, I'm taking whatever measures I can to keep this one intact as long as possible. Of course his boat, Desesperado, has been in the water nonstop for more than a year, not to mention it's a completely different construction method and material. But the principle is the same... water eventually rots wood. Thus it is a good idea to do what you can to keep the water off the wood.

In Pieces

Shan Skailyn's hull is made to disassemble into three 8' sections for storage in smaller spaces.

Small detail

This is a little stainless steel piece I had to cut to fit around and hold the hex head of the leeboard bolt. This keeps it from spinning when I tighten down the leeboard. This is the only way I can tighten the leeboard enough so that it is able to hold in place with a reasonable amount of force against it. Note also that rather than use an underseat bracket as in Gary's book, Gary recommended I try simply stiffening the whole side with a piece of timber and mounting through that. Much simpler solution.

All assembled... again

I've had Shan Skailyn set up out on our little helicopter pad for the last couple weeks. I just needed to have it assembled for a while so I could check some details that I otherwise would have a hard time checking. With the heavy rain we get I just kept it under a tarp until I would work on it on the weekend. I also made the discovery that both my ama sections are leaking somewhere! Ughhhh! I've checked them over for any bad joints... nothing. I'm pretty sure it's just the inspection ports. Gary recommended I grease around the o-ring seal. Will have to do that and set back out in the rain to see what happens.

Saturday morning I disassembled the whole thing again and moved all the parts into our little office building where I store it here in Mibu. Now that I have everything built, I'd really like to weigh everything and get a total rigged weight. Really curious what that is. Will post when I do end up doing that.

Really the only difference in these pictures is that I have Shan Skailyn's hiking seats installed. I took a number of other photos of details that I'll post throughout the week. So stay tuned.

Raise the Sail

Ugghhh, our email system keeps butching my emails... Trying again

Today was an exciting day! For the first time ever I got to see how Shan Skailyn's rigging is all going to work out. Raise that sail!

Tadaa... Finished paint job

Our family took this whole week off after Christmas... well mostly off. Still had some little work things that came up but all in all it was a decent week off. So I managed to get Shan Skailyn's hull, iakos and ama completely painted! The paint job is finally done!!! That was a huge job!
So check it out! Shan Skailyn in all her slightly gaudy, painted glory! Our two older girls and some visiting friends were quite excited to play with 'Rusty' the tree kangaroo in the boat.

Even though I just used exterior acrylic paint, I'm thinking that with the 4 coats of primer and at least 3 top coats (the red needed more to keep the primer from showing through) that the paint job ought to hold up a good long time. I sanded in between all the primer coats (not the top coats) which helped produce a nice smooth finish overall.
One little tip for any other would be boat painters out there. If you're not using masking tape and still wanting some fairly clean lines in your paint job, use a little edge painter like the one I used. I actually had masking tape but on the pieces I tested it on it just was leaving a ton of hard to remove junk and the adhesive was just too strong. I was worried it was going to remove paint. So I first opted to hand paint the lines in using some little artist paint brushes we had on hand. S-L-O-W! Also, the lines were still too ragged for my taste. That's when I rummaged through my supply cabinet and found that I had this little edge painter. It's just a flat pad, with lots of short, soft bristles and a little grip on the backside. It's made for painting right up into corners with no mess and no masking. I decided to try it and was blown away by how smoothly it lays down paint... no bubbles, hardly any streaks... just smooth. It also makes it so much easier to paint a nice clean straight edge. Everything about this little device really made it the perfect applicator for the whole paint job (except for filleted corners). So I used it for everything once I discovered I had it. Can I say again that this thing laid down a super clear coat? Better than any roller or paintbrush I've ever used. I think a sprayer probably would have done better, but for the low budget people, this thing is a treat! Get one for your boat!

Seeing it all come together

We have the pleasure of a visit from our helicopter pilot, Mike, and his family this weekend. Coming in with them and with the helicopter today we got our supplies in... including our mail... which also includes the hex nuts that I've been anxiously awaiting for the bolts to connect the hull pieces together. I can finally assemble the hull!
Mike and I spent the afternoon putting all of Shan Skailyn's pieces together to see just how everything is looking so far. Such an awesome feeling to see all that come together!
Everything fit the way it was supposed to. That's a good sign! I was surprised at how strong those lashings actually are, joining the iakos (cross beams) to the hull. One helpful piece of information for anyone ordering parts for a similar project is that each lashing point on the iako to hull connection takes about 9 feet of small diameter rope. In my ignorance, I had only planned and purchased enough for one meter on each lashing point. By the time we had joined everything together, including the ama to iako connections, I had very little left of the mere 65 feet of rope I had purchased. Gonna have to buy more.
There was a lot of interest generated among our kids and the many Mibu kids that were up playing in the area as they saw this oddball project come together in this place with nowhere to sail!
Mike and I also took this chance to talk about how things will have to work out when the helicopter that you see in the background carries all this 12 miles out to the coast sometime next year for its maiden voyage.

Keep on priming

Just another weekend of applying primer coat after primer coat after primer coat. You forget how much work painting is! Painting, anxiously waiting and checking for it to dry, then sanding, and going through the whole process again... and again.
As of now, I've got 4 good coats of primer on the aft section of the hull with only 3 so far on the fore and mid sections. I'm debating whether or not 3 coats of primer is enough. First off, I'm tired of applying the stuff. Second, 3 heavy coats seems like it might just be enough. Especially considering that I've got at least 2 gloss top coat that will be going on later. BUT since this is just lowly acrylic house paint, I do want to make sure I'm applying the necessary amount to hold up a good long time. Is three coats of primer and 2 coats of gloss top coat enough for a boat that will always be out of the water when not in use?

Small Details

Here are the pix of the leeboard brackets. Note the plural. And note the fact that these are not per Gary's book. In talking with Gary over email he recommended trying a mere timber stiffener rather than the bracket he shows plans for in his book. The timber stiffener starts at the gunwale and goes all the way down to the chine. Each piece is glued and screwed with 8 screws. It was simpler and made lots of sense. I also wanted the option to shift the CLR of the hull a bit as I gain a feel for how Shan Skailyn tacks. So Gary also recommended putting two leeboard locations about 300mm apart. With the swing of the leeboard, there's actually quite a bit of shifting of the CLR that can now happen. You might notice that above each bolt hole I plugged another hole. I was over eager to drill! I decided later (again, due to Gary's recommendations) that the leeboard needed to be a few inches lower. Easy fix.
Then in the other picture you'll see the finished mast step. Nothing fancy there. Just a single piece of wood with a square cutout to fit the base of the stub mast. The really nasty dark stuff on the inside of the hull with the mast step is much worse than it looks. Just a result of doctoring up an overly dark photo. The stub mast is another thing that's been slowly coming along. Nothing worth taking pictures of yet. Actually I wish I'd taken a picture of the original piece of timber for before and after comparison pix. Oh well. Er, wait a minute, I think I did some time ago.

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Beginner's experience with fiberglass

I finally deemed the hull ready to fiberglass this weekend. Being my first time ever working with fiberglass I've been nervous about it. I've gathered tons of online material about fiberglass for offline reading in the bush. I've asked a number of questions to glean from Gary D's many years of experience too. He, by far, has the most simplistic, least wasteful, least time consuming method I've come across so far. So I made that first step into the unknown on Saturday morning and fiberglassed the middle section.
I went with Gary's advice about the squeegee. Worked great. Poured the stuff on, starting the center of the hull and then squeegeed it around. Then I followed up with the brush. I'm overlapping the fiberglass 2" up the side of the hull. Squeegeeing didn't work too well on that part. Went with the brush. I also went with Gary's suggestion to try to get all three coats done in one full day, applying subsequent coats prior to the previous one fully curing. We're quite cool here in Mibu. So in order to get the temps to a point where things would cure fast enough to get all three coats on in a day, I started off in the morning by putting the hull out in the earliest sun light available, to warm it up a bit. I also warmed up the resin by putting the epoxy containers in warm water 1/2 hour before getting started. When ready, I moved the warmed hull indoors where the sun quickly warms things because of the corrugated tin roofing. I figured this whole process would have the hull actually cooling down rather than heating up as the resin cured, so as to not make bubbles from air expansion. OK, so done wetting by 9am. No bubbles to speak of and ready for second coat by 11am. Cloudy day, cooling off again around noon, so next round not ready till 2pm. There you have it... all three coats in one day.
All in all, the whole process worked like a charm. This morning, I'm seeing a very clear lay up where all the detail of the wood is visible. Not that clarity matters since I'm painting over it, but hey, it's nice to know I can do it in case I ever want to build another boat someday. However, I can see the cloth on close inspection (see pic). Yet the detail of the wood is nicely seen.
OK, let's talk quantities here; For the middle section (largest surface area to cover) I used a total of 5 dixie cups full of resin. I'm talking about the little 5 oz kids cups here. The initial wetting of the glass used 3. Actually I mixed up three and only used about 2.25 of them. The rest got 're-allocated' to strengthening joints, filling gaps and shaping out the very front end of the foredecks around the stem. Back to numbers... The subsequent coats of epoxy each took significantly less epoxy to fill the weave, each one taking exactly one 5 oz dixie cup full. All in all, glassing the bottom of the middle section of Shan Skailyn took only 25 oz of resin, or about .7 liters. Again, that number is skewed a bit because I made about 3/4 dixie cup too much for wetting out the cloth. So it really should have only taken about 21-22 oz total. I would imagine that each end section would be about two-thirds of the surface area of the middle section, thus using that much less resin on each one.
At this point, I'm a lot less worried that I'll have to buy more resin. I think I'll have enough to squeeze by, especially if I'm careful with the glassing of the end sections. I've been paying careful attention to measuring my resin up to this point, using large syringes to measure out my quantities. Once I got an idea of how much resin is needed for glue, I've been able to use it with very little waste. Being careful with the measurements like that is paying dividends now as it looks like I'll be able to make this thing using 3.75 liters of epoxy (about a gallon) per Gary's recommendations in his book.

Hull nearly completed

(Once again, our fantastic system for emails managed to destroy my original email message, breaking it into pieces and unable to put it together again. Here's the text that was supposed to accompany those last 4 pix.)

I ended up working through the weekend this week. So I treated myself to a day off today (Monday) with the aim of playing with the kids and working on Shan Skailyn.

I thought the cutting and installation of the seats was going to be quicker. But that's about all I completed today. Still good though. Another great step toward getting her done. I also installed the filler strip over the gunwales to bring everything level with the seats. Once the epoxy is cured I'll use the router to clean up the edges (I glued everything slightly oversized) and sand it down.

For the strip over the gunwales I chose to go with a hardwood, thinking it would eventually save on wear and tear over the other option which would have been to use scraps of the 1/4" plywood that is left over. Also, when it comes to lashing the iakos over the gunwale when set up as a 16 footer, I would imagine I'll be happy it's all hardwood there. I noticed on Gary's boat that he has little metal covers over that area, I would imagine for the same reason.

Also, maybe I'm just a dunce and couldn't figure it out from the plans, but the three seats that Gary's plans show on the plywood cut outs don't seem like enough to take care of the needs of the 24' version he shows in the drawings. So what I opted for was to take the foremost seat (the one the mast passes through) as well as the aft most seat and make them out of some 3/4" ply I had sitting around. I dado'd the edges so they are recessed down and are level with the rest of the seats at 1/4" above the gunwale. I would imagine this setup is going to work quite well, though I'm sure I am paying a bit more price in weight.

Speaking of weight, I can't wait to see how much the entire hull weighs. Probably need to wait until it's all glassed and painted first. But knowing me, I probably won't be able to wait that long. Will weigh them soon I'm sure.

One more little tidbit that might be helpful for any other boatbuilders-to-be out there. If you're planning on using the bronze ring shank nails, you'll want about 900 of them just to be sure. I've kept running out because I shorted myself early on. By the time I'm all done, I'll probably have used at least 700. But I wish I'd put twice as many in certain areas along the chine and gunwales. I think I over-skimped there putting a paltry 1 nail per foot... sorry, I can't remember what all I ordered or I'd have a more accurate number.

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