Tomorrow!

Tomorrow is launch day!  This morning I trailered BELLE over to the boatyard, put the mast up (no problem for one person to do), and got her ready to launch on tomorrow's afternoon tide.  High tide  is about 6:30PM, but there should be enough water in the inlet where the launch will take place by 4:30PM or so.  Here are a couple of final "dry land" photos of the boat:

A coat of bottom paint ("Shark White") and a bunch of rigging details taken care of for launch.

With the mainsail laced to the mast (no mast hoops), I decided to leave the end of the boom down for the night and securely bundle the sail to the spars.  It's quite blustery today, with more wind expected overnight, so I thought it would be safer to do it that way.  Plus I don't have the topping lift in place yet...soon! 

I realize I've been remiss in reporting on the various final details of rigging, bottom paint, etc. I'll make up for it,  there will be photos, etc., of various aspects of the final work on the boat to come soon.  Stay tuned!

In the meantime, though, I'm hoping to have some nice photos of launch day here within a few days.  Wish me luck!

Deck hardware, seats, etc.

With the sails on order, there's just a few more things to take care of before launch day:

Time to bed down the plywood seat-locker tops.  I'm bedding them--rather than using epoxy--so that I'll be able to remove them later for any necessary repair/maintenance. I'm using goopy Life Caulk for the job.

This photo shows both seat-locker tops in place. 

With a second coat of finish paint applied to the deck, the jewelry--I mean hardware--can be bedded with old-fashioned Dolphinite.  Also time to install the slatted seats and floorboards.  The seats are screwed down to the cleats on the seat-locker tops shown above.  There's really just a handful of screws, so these seats will be easy to remove in the fall before wrapping up the boat for the winter.  (For now I anticipate storing the boat outdoors under a canvas tarp.)  They can then be varnished in my "workshop" (OK dining room) at my leisure.

After four coats of varnish (or was it five?), I flat-sanded the transom and put on one more coat.  The red cedar is really starting to look good.

With the mast temporarily stored in the boat--I just discovered the top end fits nicely in the sculling notch I cut in the top of the transom--I can take a breather to take care of some "real world" business...I start a new job on Monday!

In the above photo, note how the mast only overhangs the transom a few inches.   This is a benefit of going with a gaff rig--or lug rig, for that matter--with its relatively short spars compared to a marconi rig.  


I'm putting together a list of "Year Two" updates/changes for the boat, things I'm willing to put off a bit so I can go sailing this summer.  One thing on the list is the various hatches for the under-seat lockers.  I've got them cut out and rough-sanded, but they still need a bit of fussy work (including making a bunch of thumb cleats) that I think I'll put off at this point.  They'll make a nice winter project next year.   Ditto the canvas dodger and boom tent that I plan to make.  The dodger will snap onto the coamings at the forward end of the cockpit;  the boom tent will be a simple tarp tied down to various cleats on deck to keep rain out of the cockpit.

Well that's it for now.  As mentioned above, I'll be taking a little vacation from BELLE until the sails come in.  With luck, they will be done in mid-March, then there will be some rigging work, and then I'll have her in the water not long thereafter.  Almost exactly a year of part-time work...but who's counting!?!

BELLE moved to ground-level shop...plus work on spars and coamings

It's been a while since my last note, in the meantime BELLE has moved!  She's not quite in the water, but at least she's getting closer.  Last week, with much-appreciated help from coworkers, we lowered the boat down from the loft, put her on a trailer, and brought her around to a ground-level shop.  My original plan was to pop her in the water, just to take a look, but the tide wasn't right to launch in the creek next to the shop.  I'll do that in March some time, when it warms up a bit.  My apologies, I do NOT have any photos of BELLE hanging tenuously (actually quite comfortably) from the overhead crane in the shop, I was too nerved up to think of photos!  Still, exciting to see the boat on a trailer and to be able to stand back a bit to take a look at her;  up in the loft, I could never really get a side view from any kind of distance.

Anywho, the coamings are now done and I've moved on to completing the spars (remember those?) and various other bits and pieces:

Here's the last photo from up in the loft!  With the first coat of varnish on the coamings, I made the centerboard cap pieces (Port Orford cedar, left bare), finished off the floorboards (ditto), and temporarily threw in the seats just to take a look. Except for the trim pieces around the foredeck opening, this is pretty much what she's going to look like on launch day.  A couple of months in the sun and  the floorboards and cap will starting turning a nice gray color (like old cedar shingles)  Fun to see BELLE coming together at last...

There are varnished oak trim pieces above the opening;  the side trim pieces will be painted.

After the move:  on a trailer in what we call "Junior's shop".  Next to BELLE is a Castine-class plank-on-frame daysailer in for some winter work.

A quick look at the aft end of the cockpit, with the slatted seats removed.  I've got two coats of varnish on the coamings, at least three more to go.

Meanwhile, back in the loft, I've gotten back to work on the spars.  Here I'm using a little gauge to check the boom as it  is planed and sanded to shape.  (The gauge is made from scrap plywood. A hole saw cut the curve to the right diameter.)

The top end of the mast, shaped to fit the mast band.

That's a nice piece of boat jewelry from Davey.  I'll mount a small block for a flag halyard at the tippy-top of the mast...perhaps I'll use flags to spell out "England expects that ever man will do his duty" on launch day!

That's it for now, until next time.

Completed floorboards and seats plus trying a trolling motor on the transom

Well I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving, I took a week off from boat building--horrors!--to attend to family matters.  This update shows the completed floorboards/seats before sanding/finishing, plus the pad that I've made for clamping the outboard to the transom.  At this point, I think I'm going to put the spars aside for a bit to concentrate on finishing the hull, centerboard, and rudder/tiller.

Here's the roughed-out floorboards and seats in place, glad that's done.  I'll have a photo soon of the floorboards cut up into the various pieces:  there will be a centerline liftout aft of the centerboard trunk and liftouts on either side of the trunk as well.

Here's a test fit of the outboard pad with my old Seagull.  It is a bit smaller than I'd like, but I had a scrap of nice southern longleaf yellow pine that I've been hanging onto just for this piece.  Yellow pine is a hard pine (not soft like white pine) and an excellent boat building wood;  I wish I had more of it. Plus it has a wonderful resiny smell.   A shop with nothing but cedars and yellow pine would smell great!

While I was at it, I borrowed a trolling motor to try that out on the transom.  It is way longer than I need, if I ever buy one I would shorten it by at least 6". 

Good to see the trolling motor easily fits in the well, even a full-length one.  The idea is to convert to electric drive at some point instead of buying a new(er) gas outboard to replace the vernerable Seagull.  A 12V battery under the foredeck, with wires leading through the bilge all the way aft to this well, should do the trick.  A small solar panel on the foredeck would help to keep the battery charged up.  

That's it for now.  I just put the first coat of varnish on the seats, they look pretty good.  I'll have pictures of that--and other work--next time.  I'll be starting on the coamings soon, too, so should be interesting. I'm hoping to get a lot done on BELLE before the Xmas break!  So long.

Seats and floorboards

I'm taking a break from spar making to put together the seats and floorboards.  The seats will be varnished, like the spars, so I figure I'll get those done.  Then I'll be able to get all (or at least most) of the varnish done while completing the rest of the boat.  With luck, the multiple coats of varnish won't hold me up in the end.

The slatted seats are attached to Douglas fir cleats spaced about every 18".  Here I've got them cut a bit overlong (they'll be cut down later) and back-screwed to the 1/4" ply top of the underseat watertight lockers.  I've also milled out the slats for the top, and I've placed one along the edge of the cleats just to take a look.  Note that the seats overhang the lockers by about 3".  I'm going with Cypress, 9/16" thick, for the slats, except the edge will be 5/8" Western Red Cedar.  This is a very soft wood, and I might regret this later...but it'll match the W.R.C. transom, which I really like the look of.  (Incidentally the cypress is renewable "ranched" cypress, NOT old growth.)  If it gets banged up, it can easily be replaced later with a tougher wood like, say, Douglas fir (that's one advantage of slatted seats).  I thought about oiling the seats, but the cypress looks so nice varnished I said "what the heck" and decided to varnish them.

Here's the completed seat on the port side, you can see how the W.R.C. edge piece contrasts with the paler cypress.  All that's left now is putting in some bungs, rounding the inside edge, and sanding/varnishing.   The cleats have been cut back to about 1/2" from the edge, which hides them nicely while still supporting the edge.  Along the hull there's a small shelf which hould be good for small items like docking lines, etc.  I used scrap pieces of 1/4" ply as spacers between the slats.

Meanwhile, the starboard seat is coming together and I've started on the floorboards.  These too are slatted, this time of Port Orford cedar.  This is a West Coast cedar, it seems to be a bit heavier then the East Coast varieties but it seems to be a bit tougher too.  A few knots, but that's fine--heck, they're floorboards, they will get beat on.   I've never worked with this type of cedar, but I know they use it for decking out West.  It will be left completely unfinished, so the sun should bleach it to that nice grey color you see on old houses with cedar shingles.  I used scrap pieces of 3/8" ply between the floorboards to set the spacing.

This photo shows the slatted floorboards in place.  Next, I'll remove the whole thing all as a unit and make various cuts to make the lift-out hatches.  There will be hatches either side of the centerboard trunk and a centerline hatch aft.  That grey "fish" in the middle is a lead weight that proved handy as a "third hand" to bend the boards down to the underlying floors.  I used blue tape to make various notes to myself:  Cut Here!  Don't Cut Here!  Plane to line!

In the last photo, you can see that there are fewer cleats for the seats than in the first photo.  That's because three cleats are permantlly attached to the seat slats:  one at each end and one down the middle.  This is so the whole seat can be removed as a unit for varnishing or what-have-you.  I'll try to get a photo of that next time.  About 10 screws then hold the seat to the cleats that are permanently attached to the 1/4" ply.  Hope that's clear.

That's it for now.  I'll be taking Thanksgiving week off from work, hurrah, but I do hope to have a few more photos in about 10 days or so.  Happy Turkey Day!

Sanding, sanding over the ocean blue...

Since last time I've gotten in the cockpit seats and begun a lot of sanding.  Basically I want to get everything at least primed--and the area under the foredeck finish painted--before the deck goes on.

Time to fit the cockpit seats.  This photo shows test-fitting the top of the starboard seat while the port seat front is fitted to the curve of the bottom.  Tere's a fore-and-aft cleat that runs along the tops of the floors.  The seat front notches over the floors and screws/glues to this cleat.  It will later act as the bottom of the three locker openings. These lockers will be watertight for flotation.

Here's another view, showing the seat tops in place.  Starting to look like a boat!  But still some work to do on the seats, namely cutting out the locker fronts for hatches.  I'd call them doors but they won't have hinges but will be held in place with simple thumb cleats.

A couple of stiffeners (gussets) are added to help support the hull under the seats and openings are cut in the seat fronts.  These gussets separate the under-seat space into three lockers.  Here's the whole thing being glued/screwed into the boat.  Epoxy fillets join the gussets to the hull, but regular cleats are used along the tops because I don't want to epoxy the seat tops to the boat. Rather, I'll bed and screw them in place so they can be removed later for repairs/modifications.  The forward gusset is made of 3/8" ply and has a large hole in it to lighten it a bit.  The aft one is solid 1/4" ply.  (This ply all comes from left-over bits and pieces from planking the boat.) The aft gusset is solid (watertight) so that the aft-most locker can be a "wet locker" while the forward two are "dry lockers" with watertight hatches.  Or I can add a hatch to the aft-most locker to make it watertight too, I'll decide that later.

Here I've tilted the boat over onto the starboard side for better access and begun a few hours of sanding in preparation for primer paint and epoxy-coating the bilge.  I don't care what anyone tells you, sanding epoxy is not fun!  But it'll be a thrill to see almost the whole boat with some paint on her, that's for sure.

Lots more sanding to do...then coating and priming...then more sanding.  Then I'll be able to get to work on the deck hurrah!