At Last!

 The moment we've all been waiting for.  But first, let's get the boat finished, should we?  Not long now ...

I had decided that I wouldn't move on to the boat until I had the cushions covered, to protect the foam from damage and from getting dirty.  FanShi is a small boat and the saloon is right by the companionway.  There is every chance that the seats will get sea water on them sooner or later and once the cushions gets salt in them, they tend to get very damp and clammy in colder weather.  Therefore, I covered them with polyurethane-coated fabric, which will have loose covers over it.  This has the added advantage that when the loose covers are being washed, the cushions are still protected.

As it turns out, this was an even better idea than I had anticipated, because, try as I may, I cannot find any fabric that I like for the loose covers.  I want something bright and don't really want cotton, because it's difficult to keep clean.  A nice velvet in emerald, deep blue and yellow would go down well, but I cannot find anything that suits.  Either the pattern is too big, or the colours are wrong.  I've even stopped worrying about the price!  I shall have to get something cheap and cheerful to be going on with, when I have had time to draw my breath.

With the cushions out of the way, I could turn my attention to the sail.  David had sent me drawings of the different panels and I had bought the fabric, Weathermax 80, many moons ago.  My friend Alan, was visiting in Zebedee and, as he enjoys making sails, was keen to be involved, not in the least because the design of my sail is somewhat different from what Alan has built.

We started marking the sail out on the table.

This kept the cloth out of the dust, but it was too wide for the table. I can get things muddled at the best of times, and having to keep moving the cloth around opened up more opportunities for things to go worng, so we soon got down on the floor with chalk pencil, lead pencil, rules and tapes.

 

I am a great believer in covering my panels with instructions ("To No 2", "Tack", "Leech", etc), but I discovered on Fantail's sail, that lead pencil is very hard to remove.  I invested in a tailor's chalk pencil, which was excellent, but after 5 years of woodworking, I couldn't cope with the thick line it made, so we used lead pencil wherever we hoped it wouldn't show on the completed sail.  Of course, in several places it does show because we forgot to swop back to the chalk!

I cut the cloth using substantial shears that I keep for sail making.  

 

I then sealed the edges, with a hot knife that Noel had lent me.  A sailmaker friend in Nelson had told me that when cutting sail cloth, they never use these tools as a 'knife' because it takes much longer than using shears and leaves a much thicker, uneven edge.  What they do is to hold the hot knife on a piece of glass and pull the fabric past it along the edge of the heated blade.  This seals the edge in a much more even manner.  Pearl could do this while talking to me, but I had to take the blade to the cloth and do it in short passes.  But it certainly did a neat job.

We cut every piece out before sewing up the sail, each one carefully marked.

 

Then we stacked them on the table, ready for sewing.  Unfortunately, Alan needed to leave at this stage, so missed out on the sewing (and frequent unpicking!) stage.

I started with the bottom panel, the one next to the boom.  I made my first mistake here, believing I could do as David does, and have the boom in a pocket.  However, due to the more conventional way in which I rig my lazyjacks, and also due to my being so short, I have to have them adjustable so that I can work on the sail, I ended up taking it off again.  Instead I added adding tabs to the foot of the sail and laced it to the boom.  

With the Christmas holidays imminent, I thought I'd better arrange for my mast to be stepped.  A local engineer, Bruce Yovich, has a tiny crane, and he has stepped and unstepped my masts (and those of other junkies) before, for a fraction of the price of the big cranes.  (One of the strange aspects of NZ boating life is how few yacht clubs and boatyards have their own crane for stepping masts.)  I was pleased that I had contacted him when he told me that he planned to be on holiday from just before Christmas until the end of January!  He promised to come and step the mast the following afternoon.  I dropped sailmaking, asked a couple of people to help me move the mast and got everything ready.

A fellow customer of All Marine, who is also building a boat, had been chatting to Paul, who works there.  When he heard about my project, he asked Paul to give me a facsimile Chinese coin to put under the mast, so I put it alongside a New Zealand $1 coin surrounded by the anti-chafe plastic that goes between the mast and the tabernacle.  It was such a kind thought, and it felt like double luck for my little boat!

Alan had helped me dress the mast, so it was quite straightforward putting it in its tabernacle.

 

With the mast stepped, I felt that the end was definitely in sight.  FanShi was now indubitably a finished boat.  After all, plenty of people who build their own boats, go along to and have their sails made by professional sailmakers!  However, I still had mine to get completed.

Arne Kverneland of the JRA, suggests stapling seams, tabling (hems), etc together before sewing.  A lot of people use 'basting tape' - a thin, double-sided tape, popular with sailmakers - but I have found that (a) it doesn't stick that well to fabrics such as Sunbrella, which are a lot less smooth than polyester sail cloth and (b) if it does stick, it's very difficult to get off again, should you put two bits of fabric together the wrong way (which I do constantly, in spite of all the graffiti).  Moreover, it's quite expensive and tends to gum up the needle.  Arne's idea is simply brilliant.  (Anyone interested in building themselves a sail for a junk-rigged boat is strongly recommended going to www.junkrigassociation.org and scrolling down the left-hand side to Junk Information/Public Domain File By .../Arne Kverneland.  There is a wealth of information here, which makes the whole business seem very achievable.)

The sharp-eyed will have noticed in earlier photographs, a much larger sewing machine on the table and may well be thinking that my mantra "Small is Beautiful, Lees is More" has been taken to ridiculous extremes by replacing the commercial machine with the little domestic sewing machine in this photograph.  In fact, I had been so impressed with its wonderful ease of use, when sewing the polyurethane-coated fabric for the seat covers (which the big commercial machine didn't get on with), that I'd decided to use it as much as possible on the sail.  I found it a lot more controllable than the big machine which easily runs away with me.

 

I don't believe that junk sails require a lot of reinforcing in the corners, but can see no harm in beefing them up a little.  Phil, who runs UK Sails in Whangarei,  had given me an offcut of a jib he had been altering, and I used this polyester sailcloth in the corners.  It is a lot stronger and more stable than the Weathermax.  I covered the polyester with Weathermax to protect it from UV and because it looks more attractive.  At around 10 or 12 ozs, I thought the sailcloth would be too much for my wee machine, but it pushed the needle through without hesitation.  In fact I ended up doing the whole sail on the Brother machine.

When the panels had all been sewn together, I took the sail out and laid it on the grass to see what it looked like.  To be honest, a cambered sail just looks like it needs a good iron, so it didn't really tell me a lot!

I then took it back into the shed to add webbing all round the edges and to sew on the various tabs for lacing the sail.  I had decided to avoid metal fittings as far as possible.

The sail is attached to the yard with straps of Weathermax, sailcloth, and Velcro.  (No critical comments, please.  I have thought about this a lot, am well aware of the various reasons why it may not work, but fancied trying out the idea.)   I reckoned that attaching these to the sail was going to be a real challenge for the Brother, so changed up a needle size.  It certainly baulked at the task, but oddly it was now reluctant to sew what it had sewn before.  Against all the rules and all my experience, I decided to experiment with a needle a size down from what I had been using.  The little machine proceeded to punch its way through Weathermax, sailcloth, Velcro and the webbing tabling with barely a stutter.  I am seriously impressed with this machine and would say the only drawback of using it is that it is so diminutive it was a bit of a squeeze getting the cloth under the arm.  However, a great advantage it has over the big machine is that you can raise the presser foot extra high to get a thick pile of fabric into place, which was a godsend.

Finally, the sail was finished, the battens pushed into their pockets and the yard and boom lashed into place.  One more sewing job remained: the pramhood.

I have made one of these before, for Paul's La Chica.  I remember it being very difficult and that I was not exactly proud of the result, so I decided to try making a pattern first.  Because the framework is not really all that it should be and the tubes are much thicker than I would have chosen, I knew it was going to be even more of a challenge than Paul's.

I used an old sheet as my pattern and spent quite a lot of time making the three panels.  I used each one as a guide to the next.  Although they are really quite different, they were sufficiently similar that it was easier than starting from scratch each time.

 

I then laid the bits of sheet on the Weathermax and cut it out.  I still needed to do quite a bit of fitting to get the cover looking acceptable, not in the least because the framework isn't quite symmetrical.  However, I was not displeased with the final result.  I forgot to take a photo, but it can be seen on the boat in later photographs.

A friend helped me to get the sail onto the boat and at first light on the calm morning that followed, I slowly bent it onto the boat.  This is the first photo before many of the control and standing lines have been fitted.  It took several attemtps to finish the job, because the sail had to come down as soon as there was any breeze.  That was the final major job on the boat: I still needed to give the dinghy a refit and there were the usual 101 tasks that needed attending to, but at least I could go and confirm with the slipway team that I would be ready for the boat to be launched on 15th January.

On the afternoon of the 14th, the yard brought round the machinery for moving FanShi to her final place ashore, ready for splashing the following day.

You'd have to say she looked a bit bewildered by what was happening!

It was exciting to walk alongside her as she was towed along the track towards the slipway - it was the first time I had been able to step back, walk around her and spend some time looking at her from all angles.  I was very pleased with my quirky little boat, and, while I can see all the mistakes that I made and all the things I could have done better, there is enormous satisfaction in realising what I have achieved.

At last FanShi had moved within sight of the water and was ready to be launched.  Rather than put credits on all the photos that follow, I'll mention the photographers' names here.  Many, many thanks to Heather Brown, John Gibbs, Roger Scott and Paul Thompson, for not only taking the photos, but for having the patience to send them to me, while I've been anchored with a poor signal (and my primitive devices!)

Launching day dawned sunny and calm: exactly what I would have asked for.  Friends had suggested I start the outboard motor which, as is the nature of the beasts, decided not to go.  David and then John came and worked their magic on it, nobly getting grease on their clean hands to sort out its issues.  Quite a crowd had gathered and I was more than a little embarrassed to keep everybody waiting.

Finally, however, we were ready and I climbed down the ladder for the last time.

Slowly and gently, the cradle was eased towards the water.

It is traditional for junks to launch bows first, and the yard (and slipway team!) had kindly indulged my whim on this.  FanShi appeared to look at the water somewhat apprehensively as if she wondered just what was expected of her.

I climbed on board before she went too far.

I love this photograph of the boat from astern, waiting for her bow to lift.

Now was the time for the champagne.  David, who designed SibLim, had sent me some local New Zealand Deutz bubbles with which to launch the boat.  I'm sure he must have been so upset not to be there, but sadly, the Covid pandemic made that impossible.  However, one of my friends sent him a video as soon as we floated, so at least he was almost there.  I gave a little dedication to the boat, and thanked all my friends, but cut it short before I burst into tears.  The bottle opened with a satisfying pop and (small) gush of foam and I poured a little of the champage over FanShi's eyes, so that she can see where she is going and keep us both out of trouble.

Then willing hands took hold of the warps and led her alongside the small wharf.

I grabbed fenders out of the locker and we tied alongiside for a while, so that I could talk to all those people who had come without boats and wouldn't be joining us on the water.

The champagne was passed around like a loving cup, with all of us reminded of how lucky we were to be able to celebrate this way in a time of Covid.

From the far side of the slipway I could see how she floated - only a little bit down on her marks.

I had duly started the engine again, but there was a light breeze from astern and a handy anchorage directly ahead.  It seemd a shame to spoil everything with all that noise.

So, saying goodby to the last of the shore party, I hoisted up a few panels of sail and took FanShi out to anchor (To be perfectly honest, I felt a lot more confident of sailing her out than motoring her out!)

She slipped along with a somewhat startling burst of speed and I was glad I had been so conservative with the sail I had raised!

I had both boards down, knowing that I would have to turn in a hurry.

She turned on a sixpence and within a few minutes both anchor and sail were down.  FanShi was finally launched and afloat.  

After enjoying (but in truth, not really taking in) the fact that we were finally afloat, I went to join many of my other friends on Le Canard Bleu, where we celebrated finally seeing the FanShi floating and ready to set sail.

 

My thanks to all of those who helped me in this project. I won't name them here, in a public blog - you know who you are and you know that without your moral and occasionally, physical support, I would never have succeeded.  Another chapter of my life has ended, but I hope there will be many more pages in this book.

The cockpit and around the companionway

I do realise that it is ages and ages since I posted.  Blame it on Christmas, New Year, Tall Ships (and the depression caused by seeing the world going up in flames and Our Masters reckoning The Economy is more important than having a planet to live on).  However, on the plus side there are lots of nice photos for you to look at, although with so much else to catch up, I'm not writing up Tall Ships this year: you will have to join the JRA and see all the photos in the magazine!

 The cockpit was just about completed, last time I wrote, and I fitted the echo sounder.  Ideally, I would have a photo of it after painting, but I forgot, so I'll put it in now while I remember.  An odd place for an echo sounder? Yes: just about visible from the tiller, but there are so many wires sticking out of the back of it, plus a separate alarm that has to be fitted adjacent, that I couldn't bear the thought of it in either saloon or galley.  So here it is.  I always use the shallow water alarm anyway, so I hope it will be satisfactory where it is.

 There was quite a lot of filling, sanding and preparing the companionway for the acrylic 'washboards'.  They are not really washboards, but two pieces of clear acrylic that fold down.  I find washboards a real irritation when I have to keep going in and out.  I like this solution.  Many people don't.

 Astonishingly, I don't seem to have taken any photos of the deck with the covering boards and king plank picked out in varnish.  I think they look nice like this and these are the areas that often have things attached to them.  Generally when a piece of teak wears down, all you need to do is chisel it out and replace it with a new length.  However, if there are things attached to it, it is more of a mission.  The varnish stops the teak wearing and thus it should last the life of the boat.  Contrary to popular prejudice, teak does not thrive from being scrubbed or even simply being left bare.  It weathers like all other wood.

 Before I could finish the cockpit, I needed to paint and varnish the lids.

 And while the varnish was drying, I could carry on with the pram-hood area and the plinth for the bubble.  Making these was a real challenge for me.  In all I had to make four perfectly-round toruses (or is it tori?), ie doughnut shapes.  Making one perfectly-round doughnut was a nightmare and making four took me a lot longer than I care to think about.  The first attempt wasn't that good and I actually found it easier to cut the plywood on the bandsaw than with a jigsaw.  Towards the final fairing of about the third one, I realised that the spoke shaves that John Welsford lent me were perfect for the job - even with plywood.  But the sanding and fairing went on for much longer than it would have taken a 'real' boatbuilder.

 I varnished the lids first so that any paint spills would be easy to clean off.  They are now ready for painting.

 And while I'm at it, I might as well paint the cockpit. (Note the holes for the echo sounder.)


 And, come to think of it, why not the bulwarks and the stern, too?
So there were several days of almost ceaseless painting, which was all highly satisfying, because the patchy primer had been depressing to look at.

 There: doesn't that look pretty?  I must say that I love the yellow, but realise it's not to everyone's taste.  It is so pleasing building a boat that only needs to suit me!

 This was my Christmas present to myself and being a simple little soul, I am getting endless pleasure out of simply looking at it!

 And the cockpit itself, from the centre deck.  Such a shame that the BBB (aka outboard motor) has to mess it all up!

 The upper seating is wonderfully comfortable and will be more so with a cushion or two.  I can just imagine sitting up there looking around while the boat sails herself along.  Bliss.

However, back to reality.  Fitting the plinth for the dome/pram-hood was a horrid task which again took days rather than hours and while it ended up quite satisfactory, it was all due to epoxy.  As a friend likes to quote: "It's the epoxy and paint make me the boatbuilder I ain't"!

 Hardly anyone seems to be able to get their head round the pram/hood bubble arrangement, so I won't even try to explain.  I hope the pictures will be worth a thousand words.  Here is the top ring, on which one leans to watch the world go by.  The pram hood frame goes under this, so it has to be wider than the original ring.  I used offcuts from the teak decks to do this.  It will also look pretty!

 Sanded and ready to be offered up.

 But first, I had to cut the hole (probably one of the most terrifying things I have to do to the boat!) so that I had an idea of where the horizontal plinth would go.  It has to be flat for the pramhood to rotate.  Fitting the rings to the cambered deck was well beyond my skills, so the only alternative was to fit the deck to the rings.  Marcus gave me some helpful suggestions, but even so I was really out of my depth.

 The idea was to build it up in strips, once the hole was cut, so that the shaping would be minimal.  The astute observer will see that the hole is not circular.  That's because the bubble is wider than the companionway is long and the alternatives were to cut into the finished deck and deck lining, make a lot of trim to refinish - or accept that it might be handy to end up with a little flat spot for your cup of tea.  I chose the latter.

 For obvious reasons, there are no in-between photos.  I'm too embarrassed to show what a dog's breakfast it looked like until tidied up.  But it's flat, it's the right size and there aren't too many gaps.

 Well, that's all well and good, but now I need to fit the rings to the hole. And finish the inside of it. Yeah, right, as they say.

I put the upper ring in place and marked it carefully so that I could trim the hole more accurately.  And then procrastinated for a little while.

 But I had a good excuse: more bling!  I had ordered some very nice (Italian) brass cleats from E-bay and after I had just about given them up for lost, they turned up at the yard office.  This allowed me to fit the toerails, which needed to go between said cleats.  Forward, I have my Delilah posts, you will recall, plus hefty anchoring/mooring cleats.  Aft I will fit another couple of (second-hand) cleats of similar size and shape to these.  I don't plan to go alongside much, but it will happen on occasion and I want to have proper cleats in the right place.  One of my foibles is that I find it sheer lunacy to tie up a boat from one end or the other, when there's a chance that the second rope may not be caught immediately.  It makes much more sense to pass the line from amidships.  You can secure the boat at leisure, sure that neither end will swing away from the jetty, leaving you in an embarrassing situation.

The toerails are from recycled teak that happily already had a slight curve, which made it easier to fit them.

Some friends called by recently and took a photo of Boatbuilder At Work.  Apparently the lack of photos of the builder mean that the magazines won't want to publish articles about building the boat.  I think this is rather a relief, in truth.

 Finally, I had to bite the bullet and start sticking everything together.  All the little cleats are to even up the bumps and hollows along the inside and outside of the rings, to try and get a more or less equal average thickness.  A lot of work with sandpaper-and-block and filler was then required to make everything look acceptable.

 There's nothing like a few coats of epoxy to tidy things up.  It's not obvious from this photo,but the inside still needs a lot of work.

 Come to think of it, I needed to make 4 3/4 perfect rings.  The black bits in the foreground are for the pram-hood.  They go under the lip formed by the teak, are tied together and can then rotate.  The pram-hood - still a distant (and probably expensive) dream - is attached to the hemisphere.  Between said bits and the bubble is the plinth for the latter.

 Meanwhile, and over several days, more filling, sanding, sanding and filling took place until the inside of the pram-hood area was acceptable.  A quick slosh with black epoxy and you can hardly tell how much filler had to be used.

 At last, a long-running search on E-bay finally came up with the goods.  Many moons ago on Badger, friends gave me a lovely kettle, with a spiral around the base that made it work better on a flame.  It went with the boat, because it wouldn't have worked well on China Moon's diesel range.  I have mourned it ever since!  So I decided to get me another and doing some research came across one that had a whistle incorporated into the lid, made by a UK company called Newey & Bloomer.  I had a look at the website when I realised that not all the kettles come with a whistle (which I now coveted) and wrote to ask if they could be bought separately, if my hoped-for E-bay acquisition came about.  An extremely nice lady said that yes, they could, and then warned me carefully about buying second hand.  Because the kettles are copper, they have to be tinned and, she explained, many second-hand ones have lost the tinning.  (Possibly they have been over-scoured to get rid of lime scale.)  She kindly said that she would put my name on file in case they had a slight 'second', which she would sell me for about half price.  I didn't have the heart to tell her that even at half-price it would be well beyond my pocket.  Time after time, they came up on E-bay and were sold for a small fortune, but finally, between Christmas and New Year, I dropped lucky, probably because everyone was too busy with the holiday season to be looking for a kettle.  Suffice it to say, that a nearly-new kettle (I could tell because most of it still had the original lacquer on) was offered for sale, I made my usual offer and won the auction.  It is just perfect for my galley, I think.  Anyway, I wrote to the kind lady, Louise, saying how lucky I had been and after congratulating me, she said that if any of my friends wanted one of these masterpieces of British Manufacture, they would be offered a unique discount code.  Enter ANNIE25 and you will get a 25% discount on a new kettle!  They are certainly expensive, but they last a lifetime and considering that I am on my fourth electric kettle since starting this project, maybe they are better value than you might first think!  Anyway, that was my real Christmas present to myself and while the postage made my eyes water, the kettle itself cost just under $70. Even I push the boat out on occasion!
 

 Anyway, back to reality.  The dome has to go over the hatch in inclement weather and be out of the way when the pram-hood is in use, or I just want the hatch open.  My good friend Paul, at All-marine found a couple of fittings designed as hatch struts and these were perfect for the arms for my hatch.  Chocks of wood on the edge of the framing allowed them to be fitted.

 Before fitting the dome to its frame, I tested the whole thing out.  It did what I'd hoped.

 A couple of teak chocks support the arms.

 Now that all this was sorted, I could finally fit some companionway steps.  In order for the hatch area to be effective, I need to be able to stand and see out of it, and yet still be sheltered by the pram hood.  Until I had the full plinth in place, I couldn't work out exactly where to put the step.  At one time I had thought to fit three steps, but have found that two are all that is required.  They are quite far apart, but I don't find this a problem and if in years to come I do, I can always do something else.  I still had one nice board of kauri left that I'd been reluctant to use, but the steps seemed like the ideal use for it.  The lower step will be removable to allow for access to the lazarette.

 With the bubble fitted on the plinth, I found that I could also see through that.  I can't imagine using it much underway (they get covered in salt in short order), but at anchor, when it's shut, I can still have a look around.  I laminated up some kauri around the plywood to provide a lip that fits over the plinth.

 The second step is at the level of the washboards, which provides a comfortable seat and makes it easy to go below.  (Most people will certainly disagree with this.  My companionway is not designed to make life easy for large people!)  I tried it out and found it works just fine for me.

 The chocks for the removable step were fitted and then the upper step fitted to check that it all worked.

 I fitted little over-centre catches to hold the bubble in place and secure it over the plinth.  It seems pretty secure.  I have no idea what forces it would be subject to should we be capsized.  I suspect that might be the least of my worries!

 The steps are epoxied and will be varnished.  That will, of course, make them slippery, so I am going to fit strips of tigerwood to provide grip.  I don't think kauri would take kindly to being left bare and would probably get very grubby: the tigerwood was too narrow and I had no suitable teak.

 The upper step was glued into place and then two pieces of teak were fitted.  These will support the 'washboards', when they are lowered.

 The upper step from the saloon.

I have fitted small chocks to the deck, by the arms, to  stop the bubble from sliding from side to side.  This arrangement is not yet completed - I need to think through what would happen if the bubble is hit by a large wave.

So, there we are.  Stand by for my starting work on the bilgeboards.