dancing_crow | Entries tagged with boatbuilding

So I took the boat house apart yesterday afternoon, and then started unbending the sail and putting parts away, and ....

I am an utter walnut - I KNEW the sail was hanging weird, and I didn't measure it or change it or ANYTHING, and yes, in fact, the sail was hung wrong. I didn't get it upside down (a small win overall) but I did get the boom and yard swapped, so the top yard had the wrong hole in it, and it was held up from too far forward at the top (tilting the sail aft from the top), and the down-haul held the boom too far forward at the base, so the sail as a whole was in completely the wrong place.

I am hoping fixing these issues will maybe help with my ability to turn into the wind. I did swap the halyard and down haul to the correct locations, and I took the sail off both the yard and boom to retie later with (very fine) climbing string that should be less slippery, and stay tied better. So I am relieved it sailed at all, and hopeful for better sail handling when I next venture forth. And also kicking myself for not re-measuring everything just to check. It isn't that I didn't read the directions - I fucking PORED over the directions. It is that I got confused getting the sail on, and then didn't double check my results when they were close (the sail IS and WAS the correct way up) but I had doubts (I was fairly certain the down haul needed to be further forward). So on the one hand, I was right. And on the other hand, what a weird way to go off the rails.

After all the thrashing around we did yesterday before leaving, and at the pond, and after coming home, today was super simple.

We remembered the paddles for the kayak shaped pool toy (it is a real kayak, and one of the earliest designs for people who wanted neither river running nor sea kayaking but just to poot about on a pond. It is perfect. I needlessly malign it because I think it is delightful and also hilarious. Now these are almost all of what you see on a pond, and at LL Bean and Walmart even, and this one is so old it is Vintage and I love it.) and the pfds (personal flotation devices, I dunno why we have never called them lifejackets) and all the rigging and claptrap necessary to drive the boat including the replaced and mended parts, and boom - we were on the road.

The wind today was SW swinging S, enough to make little ripples, not enough to be a hazard, and also blowing off the beach, making leaving possible and coming back, erm, tricky. One bystander thought it was an antique boat, anyone who talked to me said very nice things about building it. There were many people there experimenting with fishing, so the beach was full and the pond was also full.

I got everything rigged up the second try, and got turned around and headed out to sea, um, the center of the pond, and proceeded to experiment with angles of sail. It is speedy across and at an angle to dead downwind, trying to head too close to the wind causes the steering to go wonky. I had a lot of trouble tacking - bringing the bow through the wind - so I did a lot of 270 degree turns putting the stern through the wind and heading up onto a new tack. The wind was shaped some by the shape of the pond, so the wind direction was not entirely clear. I think I need a masthead pennant to clarify relative wind direction. The centerboard popped up whenever the boat was flat, but once we had any speed and heeling it was tight and solid.

Because it is small and lightweight, all the forces are manageable with one person and two hands.

Matt was paddling about in the little kayak, chasing me and taking pictures, and cheering me on. It was reassuring to have another person out there, even though I had fair faith I could cope with most things.

I ended up having to beat to windward to get back to the beach, which took a long time, but then just before the beach and docks, the wind was stopped by the trees on shore and actually a very faint tail wind appeared, and bumped me gently right into the dock. I couldn't have done better if I'd tried. I mean, I was trying, but also I was intent on not sweating the details, and instead the details landed neatly at my feet and i looked like a goddam genius.

New KNowledge:

I can definitely sail this boat
I need to learn if I have the sail in the correct place/position, and remedy that if not
I need to build a better tiller, because the one in the kit is inadequate, and should be different
It will be easier when I have some kind of wind indicator at the masthead
It will also be easier in more open water
I feel like I might be able to cope with more wind next time

well, I have to say it was not a catastrophe, but also the piece of the rudder I was worried about pulling out did, in fact, pull out, and the rudder itself came off, but I think that was because it couldn't kick up and it just boosted itself off its pins.

After further scrimmage Matt and I decided, with white caps developing on the DAR pond, that a small craft advisory was in effect and we should not, in fact, be attempting to sail today. SO. Really - I'm pretty sure it was Beaufort 4 with gusts on top of that. It would have been fun if we'd had some practice in quieter wind, but it was entirely too much. It was hard work rowing upwind.

We came home via Local Burgy, and then measured all the things that we could think of, and Matt in a fit of brilliance measured some more things and we went to Foster Farrar (the local hardware store) and found a shaft bearing and some largish diameter pins with holes through them for a cotterpin, and came triumphantly home... only to realize the shaft bearing we'd gotten had the inner diameter to match the inner diameter of the hole. We needed the outer diameter for the shaft bearing. So we went back to Foster Farrar, and got a new shaft bearing with the correct outer diameter.

Once home again, I had out drill out the threads on the shaft bearing, so we found a big heavy vise to hold it down and used the drill press. the little brass tube holding the string fit right in, and we used the vise again to press-fit it and get the cord through it and tie the stopper knot (a surprising number of things on this boat are held with stopper knots - the halyard, the downhaul, the down-string for the kick-up rudder).

Matt wanted to put a cotter pin in the pintles so the rudder wouldn't leap off the stern again, s he accomplished that. I got the shiny thing in place on the rudder (picture for shiny) and then slathered everything with epoxy+wood flour which honestly looks exactly like peanut butter except for the way it hardens to rock, basically.

the breeze feels glorious, but it really is 14-15 knots with gusts past 20, and I am hoping it might moderate some and be ok to try again tomorrow.

boat boat boat boat...

The NacMacFeegles sing a deeply deranged version of Row Row Row your boat that is basically everyone shouting "boat BOAT BOAT STREAM BOAT MERRILY BOAT BOAT" each in their own time signature and key.

My boat is making me nuts. Some of the interior paint developed mold underneath, and needed to be sanded back to primer or wood, or whatever had no mold under it, and now I am having a brisk game of whack-a-spot trying to get epoxy on the bare spots, three coats ultimately, and then it will get primer and several coats of polyurethane paint. I keep missing some spots on my way around the boat, and I also, simultaneously, keep finding places I should have sanded down and started the multiple-coats-of-epoxy game with, so I just walk around the boat in the morning with sand paper and hit the parts I think need it, following up with epoxy and a brush, and I figure now if i keep going for another couple of rounds eventually everything will have at least three coats of stuff. Some may have many more. I don't think that is my problem.

I was staring at the boat this morning thinking "I made so many mistakes with this boat" and then I decided i could also say "I learned so many things working on this boat" - both true, but one far more demoralizing than the other.

Do you remember working on a really big project, and you'd get all the big stuff done and dusted, and then it would be endless endless minutiae to finish? I think I am at that stage.

I have bent (tied on) the sails to the boom and gaff/yard,
added the halyard and down haul (lines to keep the sail up, and taut at the bottom)
bent on the pulley for the mainsheet (the string that keeps the sail in check and at a reasonable angle to the wind) The elder crow said if cat rescues ever ran out of names they could just start with boat parts - it would keep them going going for a good year.
screwed two cleats onto the mast (to hold the halyard and down haul)

I have a a tent over me now! I tried to set it up at the end of a very long day and was doing almost alright until I ahd to argue with the tarp, at which point I sat down and cried, and called the Red one for help, and she cancelled her cello lesson (how I know she loves me) and came and said kind things and made it work like a charm. AND put the boat in it when I tripped over the curb and fell over. That was a very long day.

a day later my other brother Matt came out and helped me hang the rudder which honestly did take four hands. He also (engineer) reminded me that the pintles (the pin part of the rudder hinge) had to be parallel or it wouldn't turn properly. So we drilled some more holes, and now the rudder can be mounted, turns with great freedom, AND it comes off again. Massive win. I do still have to putty up the unused holes, but that won't take long.

Anyhow - I think I am creeping up on sea trials. Pond trials. We go up to the DAR state park pond (yes the state park is named after the Daughters of the American Revolution, yes this kind of funny, yes there is also a Daughters of the Mayflower state forest) where the wind blows, if sometimes from unexpected directions, the pond is big enough to practice but small enough to wade out if you get in trouble. I figure if I don't think about it too hard, I can surprise myself with a boat at the pond ready to test out sailing.

The elder crow seems to have rebounded slightly, after I delivered a lot of groceries and accomplished a LOT of laundry. I left them in a tidier house, with their shirts folded (apparently that is the worst part of their laundry process) and instant food on tap. This is win for everyone.

I came home to Al sick with something, but not horribly. On top of burnout, it was a lot for him, and mostly I kept him fed and stayed out of his way. He's better, and getting snarky about things again, so now we are back to just coping with burnout.

I'm fine.

Somehow, when I built this boat however many years ago, it felt more like I was following directions and much less like I was problem solving every single step. I think that must be why I stopped. It was abruptly not entirely clear what I should be doing next, and it made me nervous.

Since restarting, I have realized I'd gone too far with some shaping on the rudder, and wouldn't have a flat spot to drill into or (possibly) enough wood, and fixed that with courage and a file to make a flat spot and graduated drill bits until I got a hole I could shove the required rope through. BUT! the stopper knot is too big in the required rope, so I either have to make a smaller knot, and when that does not work, hammer on the knot until it flattens out (NB that does not in fact work) or find smaller rope. so I did that today and it seems to fit well enough, and I should be able to at least try sailing with it, until I figure out some other thing.

I already relayed the entire hole in the top of the mast process, resulting in a 2" shorter mast and a HUGE hole, but I think it will function. I am noticing that the photos in the directions look different than the things the directions say, which implies, to me at any rate, that I am in more or less freestyle territory. I mean, some things clearly have to get done to some kind of tolerance, frex, the rudder has to be mounted close enough to vertical that it will swing properly and steer the boat. Which means that when I put a hole in that results in the holding piece being distinctly off plumb (it is called a gudgeon - is that not wonderful? and the piece that goes on the rudder that connects is called a pintle. That is your vocab for the day), I have to fix that. I left it last night as an exercise for future-Lee, and today I pulled out the bolt and drilled a new hole and realized how much flexibility I had with moving the drill around, and tried to fill the old hole with epoxy and wood flour and got the right hole instead, and ended up filling Both Of Them, and I shall redrill tomorrow. Current-Lee has her hands full with other issues.

Mostly with varnish. The weather is nice enough I shall finish complaining here and go slap some varnish onto the recently drilled and epoxy-undercoated holes and ends and etc. - muggy weather does NOT work for varnish, so one takes the moments as they arrive.

I built a boat from a kit back in 2017 - I got the kit from Cheaspeake Light Craft, it came in pieces and I basically stitched it together with little copper wires, and then epoxied the parts together. After some epoxying, and a lot of sanding, and some moderately scary parts (I had to drill a hole in the bottom - that was unnerving - for the centerboard) it was painted and decorated and varnished and sitting on a trailer (that I had also built). I launched it in September that year, and rowed it a couple of times both up at the pond we always use for the first outing of every season and then on the Connecticut River which runs through my territory.

With the basic boat kit I had also bought a sailing rig - mast and boom and yard, parts for the centerboard and the rudder and the sail and fathoms of rope in different diameters for rigging. I had the straight pieces glued together and sanded and epoxied and varnished and then the directions had me making a (fucking huge??!) hole in the top of the mast and I just -choked- it was a 1" hole in a 2" wide piece of wood and I had SO MANY QUALMS... so I left it there. I rowed the boat, some summers a lot, and I got better at backing a trailer and braver about going fast with the trailer (that was harder than expected) and the rig just waited for me to gain courage or skill or something.

This summer I decided it was time to make the boat (the boat is names Ursa Minor, in case I get a bigger boat at some point - it is important to leave space for growth). Which meant I had to make all the horrifying holes. I drilled a hole into the edge of the rudder earlier this month, and reinforced it with a brass tube, which was not entirely a catastrophe. So today I gathered my tools and started on a hole in the mast.

It went well enough at first. I got a small pilot hole through in a reasonable place, and then I made it bigger, and then I got a big flat bit (maybe called a spade bit? something that is closer to an inch) and had... some issues - the hole was slightly crooked, the spade bit didn't work with the size I had enlarged the pilot hole to, but I got something I thought I could use. Until I decided to use the router to round over the edges. And Failed (big time) to adjust the depth the router went to. And made my hole SO MUCH WORSE. At which point I had to sit down.

I stared at it for a while in deep deep dismay, and finally got back to work. I flipped to the other side, reset the router and made that work right. I took the skill saw and CUT OFF TWO INCHES OF MAST, and started again. And this time everything went well enough. small pilot hole. Big spade bit hole. correctly adjusted router to round over the edges of the hole. And rounded over the top edges of the mast. And then sanded everything, and sanded it again with higher grit and again and applied epoxy to the raw wood and let that soak in, and then
drunk with succes
I drilled four more holes, in the ends of the boom and yard.
And sanded them, and epoxied them,
and that was all the boatbuilding stress I could take for today

pic from launch day, 2017
blue boat on a New England pond