2009 building logs

February 2009 Rear Steps.

With the cabin now on the boat the last external task is the rear steps to complete the shape of the boat. (I still need to fit the starboard dagger case and then glue and glass both into the hulls and then glue and glass the hull to deck turn onto the boat) and once the steps are done there will just be the shaped bows (but I wont be doing these until very near to finished once the boat is turned and moved into position to get it out (I may not be able to turn it if I put the noses on sooner). But for now the rear steps including provision (and maybe even the construction) for the kick up rudders. The rear steps also means the duckboard (I am raising the duckboard up from deck height to the seat height building hatches under it) will be added and to finish the seal up, the last of the cockpit side decks will be added. If I can achieve all of this in February is unlikely but that is the plan. This is another self fabrication so it will be slow going as I work out all of the angles and risers and achieve the shape and look I want and the direction of the steps, another personalisation of the design to make it uniquely ours.

February 1 Glassing the sides to the top.

This relentless summer heat continues. I started at 8am (I was up at 7am but dawdled around much to my later regret). I have the top completely glued to the sides and it is ready to sand. It only takes a day to set in summer. Once it is sanded smooth and rounded the glass will go on without weak spots caused by sharp turn or edges and just as importantly no voids for air bubbles to form under the glass. Sanding the outside joins was easy enough although hard to reach leaning either over onto the roof or from on the roof (I got up onto the roof for the first time today) leaning over the curve trying to be sure not to fall off.

Once the outside was sanded smooth enough to glass I gave it a clean off with a damp towel. I was not concerned about any moisture under the glass because I still had a lot of work to do inside sanding so there was no chance that it would not be dry by the time I would be ready to glass. Then I moved to sanding the inside joins. It is amazing how heavy hand power tools get when they have to be used above your head. I could barely lift the larger grinder for more than 30 seconds at a time, and even the flat orbital 1/3 sheet sander felt heavy. I used a large disc grinder because the radius of the disc closely matched the curve of the join from inside so I could use the edge to sand out the filler and fine finish with the flat orbital.

I found I had a bit of a hollow on the port side in the middle of the curve for about 300mm that creates and ugly step of about 10mm deep after sanding. It is smooth and gradual so as to allow glassing but will need to be bogged to fair it out. I may fair it with bog then glass again just to be sure the bog can never come out. The slight imperfection is the only problem I encountered in the entire roof fitting job so in itself is not such a concern, is not structurally weaker and will fair out, but it is worth noting for 2 reasons. Firstly it is the direct result of laziness due to heat exhaustion. I could see that the roof needed to be pushed down from outside and could not figure out a way to do it. I would need to make a very long brace to the side wall perhaps or the roof of the shed? A very difficult task. I found that over just 300mm I could not get blocks screwed through the roof into other blocks to apply enough force to pull it down, perhaps what I should have done is cut that piece of roof out for about 30mm wide by the 300mm long curved section and refill it at the correct height. But the heat had made me impatient to finish the job so I accepted a little less than I should have thinking that I could fix it with bog. This is the second point. Every builder would have heard the term, "nothing a little bog wont hide, or fix". The problem with this for composite builders is we have gone to the trouble and expense of using a high tech material that is lighter for the same strength as other materials only to be flippant about the weight of bog. We have it drummed into to us from other builders, designers material suppliers etc to keep the weight down. Yesterday I let heat and tiredness overrule the voice in my head telling me it was not quite right. Fortunately for me I have been fairly diligent and have got a fairly good fit of the entire roof so the amount of bog overall will not be too great. But it is a timely warning that correct preparation is much better than correction.

So with all the joins sanded (including a section of side to deck join) I was ready to glass. By now it was around 11am and starting to get really hot. Again. I measured the glass length I would need and set up a plastic sheet on the side bench. I decided to use 200mm and 150mm glass instead of the proscribed 200mm and 150mm glass tapes, just to be sure I completely covered the joins well although I stuck to the 200 and 150 inside as the joins were closer. I wet out a length of each and set about putting the 250mm onto the boat in the usual way we tape long lengths, the wet out length is rolled up then rolled out on the job. Then the 200mm tape over it centred on it and by now I could feel the tape getting really hot in my hand. Its open time was running out, I really had to hustle. I had sweat dripping into my eyes and it was sauna like up on deck but I got the second tape on and the air bubbles out. I decided to peel ply the tapes more to use the peel ply to ensure that I got no air bubbles because the entire roof needs to be sanded before I bog it so the width of tapes not having to be sanded is not much of a help, although it does all help, and I guess it is one less area I don't risk sanding through the glass. I decided because I barely made it to get both tapes down I would only wet one tape at a time on the other side. It took a little longer but at least I was not under as much time pressure.

Once the outside was done I continued on with the inside taping. This time gravity was against me but I didn't have too much trouble ensuring that the tapes were completely stuck on, at 1 point I did have one tape start to peel off again but I quickly caught it before it had come off more than a meter and re attach it. Once all air bubble are out there is enough surface tension suction to ensure the tapes stay on and in this heat it does not take long for them to start to gel off. The second tape has the advantage of the wet tape below it to help it stick and sometimes I brush resin onto the job first and wait for it to tack off a little to help with adhesion but that was not necessary today. I also taped a section on each side (of the boat) of the side to deck joins. I still have gaps to fill on the deck to side curves in the middle of the curves. Once that is done I can cove the outside of the join and glass that. I may cove and glass wet on wet to save having to sand that cove. It will be a larger radius cove than usual.

I had to have many breaks due to the heat, if I had started at 7am instead of 8am I may well have finished in 4 hours instead of 5. One of the things I did amuse myself with whilst having a drink break was to put a sunroof on the roof to see where I would mount it. To my surprise, the curve of the roof (most car roofs are curved so aftermarket sunroofs are also curved) almost exactly matches the curve of the sunroof if mounted about 300mm from the edge of the roof. I was intending to mount the sunroofs as far outboard as I could maybe only 100mm from the edge but as you get closer to the edge the curve increases and will mean having to build the side up to meet the roof and will not look as fair as it does 300mm in so I am certain to fit them there.

I did get done what I set out to today but I was absolutely exhausted after 5 hours of sweating. I then went grocery shopping with Jo as I had promised we would do together today but I had old man shuffle as I pushed the trolley around or more accurately leant over the trolley as I shuffled around. I then collapsed to the couch watching the cricket for the afternoon.

February 2 No work today.

The title of the post pretty much says it all. I did go in and removed the peelply to check the glassing. Nearly all fine. Remember yesterday I mentioned the effect of being tired and cutting corners. I have often finished a glassing session and pretty much washed up and gone home leaving the tapes or wet out to set. I did the same yesterday. I had peel ply on a wet out upside down tape. Perhaps if I was not so heat exhausted I might of hung around a while longer rechecking the glassing and considering how fast the heat was making the resin go off I would not have to stay long. I did not do that. I paid (the small) price for that today, well I will tomorrow.

When I checked the taping today, outside first I was very happy with the results. Good adhesion all around, only one small edge had lifted so I have an area about the size of a 10c coin to grind off, it wont need glassing over just grinding the bubble off and bogging. Then inside the port side was fine. The Starboard side however had a sagged tape. Apparently the peel ply fell off pulling it away from the wet tape below it. Fortunately for me, it stopped at only 200mm. I need to grind this section off being careful not to grind through the glass tape below it, and then retape it. No biggie but just another small job (probably half an hours work) I have to do now that I wouldn't have to do if I had stayed just 10 minutes more.

I could not resist taking a couple more shots of the roof on. I am feeling particularly proud during this part of the build.

February 6 Slow going.

Everyday the news is talking about the hottest heatwave in 40 years. The entire South East of Australia is suffering. In Adelaide they have had over 2 weeks of consecutive days of over 35C and Melbourne had 4 days of over 40C. Here in Sydney we have had some days of relief but it is nearing a month of over 30C. It is very hard to make much progress in this weather and I have had emails from other builders that are also not making much headway at the moment, so I am not alone. I heard on the news tonight that NSW is expecting to be the hottest place on the planet tomorrow. OK we do have sensationalist news crews but hell that has to be hot. I doubt I will get much work done.

I got a an hour of work done during the week. I repaired the damage I did to the roof edge and sanded the roof edging all around ready to uni tape it then double bias tape it to tie it all on. The reason for the uni is to stiffen up the roof a little more. One day near the end of the build I will also build boxes on the roof to hold the solar panels which will also stop a little of the flex the roof has. I don't have an issue with the roof flexing a little but I would prefer it stiffened.

Today, despite the heat I managed to fill the gaps around the curve of the deck to cockpit sides. Each side had a gap in the middle of the curve a little too big  for just glue. If the gap is too big it is difficult to fill with glue/filler without it falling out. So my solution was to glue strips of foam in the gaps and fill the rest with filler. This was relatively easy and the foam helped to hold the rest of the glue fill in place. I overfilled as much as I could top and bottom so that I can sand it smooth. On the top I will still put more coving in to shape the join before glassing and underneath to round the edge so that taping has no sharp edges to get around.

With these gaps closed and when glassed tomorrow (or when the heat allows) the roof and sides are completely glassed on and I can get started on closing the rest of the rear deck, duckboard and transom steps.

One minor irritation this week has been my web servers main server being down for maintenance (at least this is what I suspect, they have not contacted me to verify this). This in itself is not a problem, except it seems that they have a back up server with their customers websites on to maintain continuity. The problem is my cached site on the back up server is 2 years old. So if you have logged on recently and had déjà vu about my build (and I am suddenly back to 2 upside down hulls) then this is the explanation, please bear with them, I get a fantastic deal ($16 a year) to host this site so the occasional hiccup is to be expected and tolerated.

February 7 Early start.

6am start today to beat some of the heat. The task for today was to sand the gluing I had done yesterday, cove the joins where needed and glass the joins before the heat of the day (noon) made work in the shed unbearable.

This is going to sound familiar because it pretty much mirrors the joins of the top to sides. I sanded the outside easily enough. But doing the inside was possibly the most horrible job I have done on the build so far. Lying upside down on the bridgedeck in the forward bunks, with a hairnet on, long sleeve top (although I had long shorts on, I should have had long pants on) and the full face mask on I sanded the join upside down above me getting covered in dust the entire time. And working overhead has to be the most tiring on your arms than just about any job in the build. My sanders all feel like they are 20kg. It is slow going, and where it took about 20 minutes to sand each side outside it takes more than 30 minutes each to do each side inside.

Anyway I got the inside sanded and rounded ready for glassing. There are still some holes and low areas here and there that will need some coving material just before I glass. I then started on the wet out of the tapes for the outside but by now it was about 11am and the roof had really started to heat the shed so I only wet one tape out at a time. Again I opted for 250mm and 200mm tape instead of 200mm and 150mm. I wet out the 3.8 meter bottom tape (from the middle of the cabin side forward to the end of the curve) 250mm wide on a plastic sheet on the bench and rolled it up and took it to the boat. I rolled it out and pressed it down into place as I went being careful that there were not air bubbles or tight areas around the curves. Wet double bias glass is really easy to lay around bends, you just let it bunch a little around the inside of the curve and make sure that the outside of the curve is loose and flat, then once the outside is in full contact with the panel you push the wet inside glass around until all of the bunched up tape is fully spread out and also in full contact with the panel. I then repeated this with the narrower 200mm tape which is also a second chance to be sure now that both the bottom tape and the new top tape have no bubbles. I then applied peel ply as best I could, peel ply does not go around corners quite so well at least not the recycled stuff from on the panels I sometimes use when the reason is not to add structural tapes over them. I only have bog to go on now.

Once I had the port side done I did the starboard side. By the time I am finished both sides it is about 12.30 and it is just too hot to do much more, although inside the boat it is still a little cooler than outside, the duflex acts as an insulator (which is a good sign for the tropics). I have managed to be at the shed 6 hours although I am only counting 5 hours work today.

Jo had arrived to come and collect me for the day whilst I was about half way through the outside tape wet out. She offered to do the wet out to save me climbing up and down and to save a little time (and she actually used the term "wet out" which was quite impressive!) but she was not in old throw away clothes so she sat patiently to wait for me, after having done a kick boxing class in the heat. Once I had the outside finished I called it a day. I was about an hour short of completing what I had set myself to do for the day (I spent half an hour vacuuming the entire top of the boat) but I will do that tomorrow morning before I embark on a clean the shed day (or more, the shed is a mess!). There wont be any more fairing on Nine Lives for a while and also not much more work to do on the outside my boat once the rear steps and duckboard are done so I am hoping that once cleaned up the shed might stay clean for a while.

I had the gloves on and was taping for about an hour by the time I had finished. When I removed the gloves my hands were soaking wet from sweating inside the gloves. They looked like I had been swimming for an hour. I will have to start wearing cotton gloves inside the rubber gloves again. It is more restricting and hotter and your hands still sweat just as much but whilst the gloves get soaking wet they seem to be easier on the skin.

On more minor point carrying on from the downtime my sight has had this week and the confusion of it reverting to 2 years ago, someone has emailed me to say that some antivirus software is alerting when my site is opened and also some advertising pop ups. I don't have any advertising linked to the site other than the link at the bottom to Boatebiz and occasionally links to Jo's online business, so I would appreciate it if this is happening more widespread (I have only had 1 email about it) that readers would shoot me an email to let me know so I know how widespread and serious this issue might be and perhaps a screenshot so I know what to tell the tech people (whilst I can use FrontPage and an FTP uploader to build the site, that is about the extent of my computer skills) what I want fixed.

February 17 Cabin finished.

It has been a weird couple of weeks. I must apologise for the delay in posting, all the more confusing when combined to the weird things the website has been doing. For those that missed it or still don't know what was happening, I use a real budget ISP, I only pay US$1 per month so I never complain much if the site is down for a while. Well it seems the ISP has a back up server so when the main one is down for whatever reason they switch to the back up. Great, the only problem was that the cached version of my site they had on the back up server was not only 2 years old but had some kind of pop up virus attached to it. And all the time it was down I could not update the site. Anyway that is fixed.

The weather has eased, in fact it almost started to feel cold! It has rained for nearly a week no so I am back to getting some work done. I have managed 25 hours in the last 10 days. Still not quite enough (I need to get 3 hours a day average) but after the heat I can at least start to make some progress again. For those of you that read this from overseas and may not have heard, last weekend we had the worst bushfires in our nations history and tragically over 200 will have perished once the fire fighters finish putting the fires out that still burn a week later. These fires were in another state but we also had 2 massive fires here on the central coast about 10kms from us and we had a lot of smoke around, fortunately they were put out quickly without loss of life or property, and they have arrested a man for deliberately lighting them.

I had a massive clean up on the weekend, so whilst I worked for nearly 15 hours, I spent 10 of them cleaning up the shed. It was way overdue. I had not had a clean up for nearly 6 months. I still have a little work to go, I need to dismantle the roof jig under the boat and finally dismantle the strongback. I will then have a heap of room under the boat again.

The cabin roof is now completely taped on, inside and out. The only small piece of work left is to add a piece I cut out of the bulkhead on the starboard side but over did it. Once the piece is added back in (and easy job) and is taped I am done with the cabin and roof. I have started closing the deck along side the cockpit so that all that is left to do is the rear steps and duckboard to close the shell. Easier said than done though. the back of the hull curves down so I have to figure a way to close the deck up over just a meter and a half. I think it will be ok to use a kerfed panel to close these gaps up rather than trying to strip plank such a small area.

I have found something I did not realise I had. Super wide deck where the cockpit seat backs meet the side deck. They are wide and will make excellent winching places. With just 2 winches 1 each side in this spot they can handle all functions, halyards run straight down the sides of the cabin to the winch each side, sheets will also run to them, they can be use to raise the daggers, raise the outboards and raise the dingy if needed with all lines in straight runs and out neatly of the way.

I am so happy with these areas I am wondering if I should lose some of it by adding the cabin side extensions that provide some shelter to the helm. I may compromise between having them and not but having a cut down version of them.

I will also start to work out the angles and logistics of the rear steps. This is a difficult area to design and my mind does not work well with such calculations. But hopefully I will get a start soon.

February 18 Cabin sides all glassed on.

Sanding upside down is probably the worst job on the build. I had to sand the joins on the cabin side to decks this week when I prepared them for taping. Below is a picture of the join before I taped it. I was really happy with how neat these joins ended up being. 

Now that I have competed taping on all of the cabin sides inside and out and patched the areas that I needed to sand back off where the glass did not adhere properly, all that is left to do is close in the rear cabins (port is the bathroom, starboard is the rear bedroom). These will probably need to be strip planked or kerfed as the side deck profile curves down toward the rear steps and I need to match that curve, and over such a short distance it is probable that only kerfing will allow me to get the curve right.

February 23 Cabin extension profile.

The only thing left to do to finish the cabin sides is to glue on the cabin side extension. This extension does 2 things. It finishes the side profile of the cabin and that extension panel also provides some shelter from spray to the cockpit and helm position is you have a beam wind whilst sailing sending spray over the electronics if they are in this area. However, like almost everything on the build it has its downside. First it cuts into a great flat wide deck area making it shorter and narrower, that is the panel cuts it in half making the usable space much less usable. Second it means you cant just jump up from the helm and onto the side deck, you have to step around the panel, what is more, it makes it more difficult to helm from the side deck and to mount the motor controls onto the bulkhead and be easily accessible from the side deck. So I am really in 2 as to what I want here.

As you can see from the pictures above, the side profile does look much better with the side panel on, but it does get in the way, and if I ignore aesthetics and just think of practicality I am sure once the boat is launched there will be times when I wish the sides were on when the helm is being sprayed and I have no protection from the elements at the helm. I am also sure there will be other times when I wish the panel was not there. So what to do.

In the end I think I will go for a compromise! I have been experimenting with other profiles and I think I will go for a curved side profile which is much smaller than the panel that came with the kit. I have looked around the boat and there are not many straight lines, they are all curved. So I will keep the rest of them curved. At this stage I am still at the black marker line stage, but the line on the panel below is kind of what I will go with, except I think I will curve it more.

February 28 Davits

The rear steps are proving difficult for me to design. I just cant get my head around how they will work yet. So rather than let them slow me down, I have decided to try to work from what I know I want and work backwards. I will start with the duckboard. I have already decided that I want a raised duckboard, raised to the level of the seat top so that the walk through is at seat top height and all I am walking through it the seat back. Then under the duckboard will be a series of lockers, the middle one about 1500mm wide so that I can use it to store long items like boat hooks, gaffs, fishing rods etc. Alongside the long middle hatch will be 2 smaller ones for storing LPG bottles. Then the duckboard will be stepped down by 2 250mm steps down to the original duckboard level, then the hull transom steps will start from that level.

I have also decided that the back wall of the duckboard sides will be slanted slightly which will give me a slightly wider duckboard. And after much internal debate I have finally decided on davits rather than a targa bar. I experimented with a number of styles, straight angles but in the end I decided as I did on the cabin side extension that I prefer curves to straight lines. I tried a couple of different curves but in the end settled on an elliptical curve. Also on the advise of a friend Dennis, I tapered the end.

I decided on the shape by making a number of mdf templates until I had the shape I wanted. I then transferred it to a piece of duflex and cut it out. When I selected a piece of duflex I found a piece that already had a curved edge to it, I think it was part of the walk through transom kit. Anyway the curve was very close to the shape I had already decided on, not exact but close enough. So I went with the curve it had and it was even better than the shape I had. I cut it out and then tapered it to the final shape I wanted then used it to trace 3 more pieces the same shape and size. These will form the sides of the davits. I will make a box section out of the sides and 4 pieces for the front and backs on each one. The fronts will extend in a reverse curve to square to the upright so that it becomes a flat extension to glass onto the bridgedeck, inside the duckboard hatches. The front will have a uni stack inside it for strength and the top of the davit will have a block and then another about a third of the way down where the dingy raising rope will come out of the front for uphaul and to be cleated off, making it much easier to raise and lower the dingy from the cockpit rather than leaning out to the ends of the davits.

I am just cutting all the various parts for the davits and duckboards and will start to glue and glass it all together once I have dry fitted it all and it all fits the way I had intended or at least works and looks the way I intended, because I am making this part up as I go here. Most people would have a firm idea of the final look and function they want then draw up plans before proceeding to produce it, I cant visualise what it will look like yet, let alone draw it, so I am finding it better to just start on it and let it form as I go. It is slow going as I cut various templates to arrive at the look I finally settle on but so far it seems to be working out, and it worked for me when I designed and made the cockpit without a drawn up plan.

I would have liked to have got another 20 hours work this month but last weekend was Jo's birthday and my parents were visiting for the weekend so I could not get any work done. Friday afternoon we went to the airport to collect them, on Saturday Jo had a small fancy dress birthday party and I spent most of the day organising for it. It was a lot of fun, Jo had a ball as I am sure all of the guests did and that pleased me much more than missing work on the boat. On Sunday Jo and I took my parents out for lunch and sight seeing so again no work. And on Monday I left for a business trip to Melbourne for 3 days. So considering all of that time lost, 59 hours was not so bad.