More on bilgeboards, rudders and now ... self steering. Plus a bit of paint.

I concluded my last post with the less-than-welcome discovery that the bilgeboards could not be rigged as planned.  Obviously a Plan B was required.

 If you look carefully at the photo, you can see what the problem is.  A block is required on deck to haul the bilgeboard up.

If it is fitted on the piece of teak, intended for that purpose, the rope will catch on the plastic strip at the after end of the board.  The obvious thing to do was to put the blocks on post, which would bring them further inboard.

Some years ago, I was given some fibreglass stanchions.  They are very strong and well made, but at 33mm diameter at the base, looked far too large when I offered them up for their intended purpose.  However, I reckoned they would be ideal for this job, and laminated up some leftover teak decking to make a base for them.

These bases were glued to the decks, joggled around the teak already there.

The stanchions were fitted into holes that were sunk well into the bases, using a hole saw.  Extra glue was poured in from the top to ensure a really substantial "root" had been achieved.

The posts in place.  In the background is Blackie, a feral cat that thinks the shed is her home.

I capped off the posts to keep the rain out and could then rig the blocks for raising and lowering the boards.  Well, as it turns out, lowering them.  With no water to float them raising them is impossible, at present: the slope of the cases plus gravity makes for too much resistance.

While this had been going on, I had decided to get my pram hood frame made up.  There are very clear drawings in Practical Junk Rig, and I took my copy along to a local company that specialises in making stainless steel stuff for boats.  I showed him the drawing, said what I wanted, gave him the semi-circular piece of wood that I had already made and asked him if he wanted to keep the book.  He photocopied the relevant page and gave it back to me.  I asked him if he really understood the concept and he looked at me as though I had crawled out from under a stone.  Of course he did.

Well, apparently he didn't.  Not only did he make the frames far too heavy - 18mm stainless steel instead of the 12mm that would have been more appropriate, he made the hinge/connector way too big.  You can see it in the top left corner of the photo.  Made out of 3mm material, it was impossible to bend to match the wood, and moreover, it was so big that it extended well beyond the hemisphere.  And the frames didn't stack properly.  I am not the cleverest of people when it comes to following a drawing and it is a slow and painful process for me to reproduce something.  However, I worked out a scale from the book and made a pattern out of 4mm plywood in about half an hour.  I then adjusted it until I could get the somewhat altered frames to fit.  I couldn't afford to get the whole thing made again, and there is nothing actually wrong with 18mm for the frame.  It's just unnecessarily heavy.

I took my pattern to another shop (I am completely feeble about going back to complain to people) and got them to make what I wanted.  They really couldn't go wrong and I drilled out the holes myself.  Here is the framework in place.

And this is with the frames folded down.  At the end of the day it is a very acceptable job and I give grateful thanks to the good friend who gave me some funds to make this possible.  I shall always think of it as his pram-hood.

Joining the rudders together has been something that has puzzled me for a long time.  There's all this blather about Ackermann steering which is all to do with car wheels, but apparently applies to rudders, too.  Then the rudder bar has to allow the engine to lift.  After much cogitation and some discussion with The Great One, who spelt it all out to me in words of one syllable, I decided that the bar would be best fitted abaft the rudders on small 'tillers', attached to the rudders.  Some of my invaluable old kauri was sawn up for this purpose, and glued so that the tillers had a small wedge on them, according to Mr Ackermann's theories.  I've already forgotten exactly what they are!

The next job was to sort out the self-steering gear.  More multitasking!  It's really rather stressful, in truth, and leaves me little energy for other things.  The Great One, once more had come up trumps, you will recall and really, all I had to do was to make the connections and a wind vane.  I had made little tillers for the trim tab rudders, and made the connection between the vane and the nearest (port) tiller from Tufnol.  While I am perfectly sure that David made everything correctly, I am never quite sure that I have done an equally good job, so I have made several extra holes in both so that I can adjust the trim of vane to trim tab if necessary.

I think I mentioned about having to put on yards of masking tape - one of my least favoured jobs, so that I could start painting.  Anyway, I spread the red paint with gay abandon, but came to regret not putting on any undercoat.  The red polyurethane doesn't cover that well (and, to be fair, it says so on the lid) and a base coat would have made it all more even.  Five coats were required to get an even (ish) appearance.  I shall not make the same mistake with the other colours!

Another issue that has been tasking my poor brain for, literally, years, has been the tiller(s). Having somewhat reluctantly concluded that one tiller was simply not going to work, I have accepted that I will have to have two.  However, it's bad enough having one tiller in the cockpit at anchor, but two is beyond a joke.  The obvious thing is to hinge them up and I was sure that this would be my solution until it sank into my tiny mind that there is to be a thundering great seat across the lute, over the rudders.  This would obviously prevent them lifting.  Always, in the back of my mind, is the fear that I might have to clear harbour, one dark and stormy night, with no notice.  The idea of removable tillers is therefore anathema to me, but finally I had to accept that if I wanted to be able to have a clear cockpit at anchor, then I will have to be able to take the tillers out.  And besides: I don't expect I'll be sailing in wild places that often!

The next question was how to fit the tillers and all I could really come up with was some sort of box into which they could slide in or out.  I couldn't put the tillers on top of the rudders, contained between cheeks, because of the trim tab tillers.  I didn't want anything too clumsy and the best I could come up with was fitting them into some box section metal.  I managed to run down some aluminium of very nearly the dimensions of the section that I had already laminated for my tillers (before I realised that they couldn't be hinged!).

Having finally made my decision, I cut the laminate in half and shaped the tillers.  The laminates make them strong, and although they don't look that big, they certainly compare favourably with solid tillers on boats of a similar size and, of course, the rudders are not that big.  I am a great believer in reefing out weather helm: I am sure they will be amply strong.

The plan was to screw the cases on to the side of the rudders, bedded on Simson's Marine Glue.  It is possible to glue alloy with epoxy, but very messy.  I intended to leave two large screws in place anyway, so the Simson's should be more than adequate.  A bolt, with an R clip to secure it, will pass though both tiller and rudder head.  I scarfed a piece of purpleheart to the base of the tillers because it is both harder and stronger than teak.  I then coated them with epoxy and graphite powder.

While I was working on the rudders, I decided to fit a couple of stops.  I have never had rudder stops on a boat before, and have often felt that they would be a good idea.  Time will tell.  On this photo, you can also see the long bolt that fits through the tiller and its case.

I fitted the shaped tillers to check that everything works.  They are easy to remove and replace. They lie neatly outboard on the upper seating and don't interfere with anything.  Once the alloy is painted, it will be less obvious.  I admit that this isn't the prettiest of solutions, but it is practical.

Meanwhile, I was carrying on with the self-steering gear.  I bought some 3mm plywood for the vane and cut it to the same shape as the sail will be, which I think looks rather nice.  I glassed one side, to stiffen it a little.  I didn't want to add the extra weight of glassing both sides.

The trim tab tillers also need to be joined, so I made up a little bar from offcuts of teak.  I am getting a bit short of suitable timber and reckoned that the laminated teak would be both strong and light.  I had epoxy mixed anyway, to coat the bottom of the seat.

The reason I was trying to keep the vane light is because it is necessary to counterbalance it in order for it to respond to the wind as is required.  I added struts to the plywood to attach the vane to the post down to the self-steering mechanism

and to support the counterbalance weight.  I was following David's drawing, but when I realised how much lead was required, I rather wished I'd made the lower arm a bit longer.  Real boatbuilders would have melted scrap lead to an appropriate shape.  I'm terrified of doing that, so went and bought a couple of 500 gram dive weights and a variety of fishing weights to trim it accurately.  I glassed the big weights to the lower arm of the wind vane.

I then put it onto the upright and tried adding small weights until the vane balanced.  Another 2x8oz and 3x1/4 oz weights were required.  The last 1/4 oz made it a little nose heavy, but I still had to add paint to the vane.

I fitted the self steering to check that it all seems to work - and to get it out of the way until I would paint the vane!

Finally the last coat of red paint was on and I covered it with clear polyurethane to protect it from the sun.  Counter intuitive, I know, but the commercial, clear two-part polyurethane that I use as 'varnish', has better UV inhibitors than the coloured paint!

I finished off varnishing around the stern and waited for it to harden off so that I could affix the solar panels.

Gordon was painting his dinghy, so I filched the tag end of his white paint to cover the small pieces of wood that will serve as dividers between the colours on the cabin sides.

I had been discussing my bow rollers with a friend and it occurred to me that I might as well fit them.  I've been putting it off because it's a bit of a squeeze getting past them, but as I won't be lugging pieces of wood around 'upstairs' any more I decided to secure them permanently.

The next stage was to prepare the cabin sides for undercoating and I decided to do the battens for the sail at the same time.  There are seven battens in total, including the boom, and as they are jointed, that means 14 altogether.  They take up a lot of space, laid out flat.

Then there was another long day spent masking off the red paint so that I could undercoat the cabin sides.  Blackie seems to have got herself into the photo again.

Yay!  Here goes the first coat of undercoat on the cabin sides.  This stuff covers wonderfully, as you can see, and has a slight sheen so that it shows all the bumps and hollows.  I'm actually very pleased with how fair the hull is.  There are no fillers apart from what I used over the scarf joints before covering the hull with fibreglass.  The undercoat is International Perfection.I might have used if for the top coats, too, except for the fact that the range of colours is so limited.  It is certainly the easiest two-part polyurethane I have used for producing an acceptable finish.

Acceptable to me, perhaps I should say.  To be honest, even if I had the skills and the patience, I am not that interested in getting a 'super yacht' finish on the topsides.  A boat that is lived on all the year round is effectively a work boat.  I like her to look smart and tidy, but I aim for the sort of finish you used to see on fishing boats, in the days when fishermen loved and cared for their vessels.  Life is too short to spend time and money fairing and sanding, fairing and sanding.  If she looks attractive as I row away from her, that will suit me.

It was exciting adding the first layer of coloured paint at the bow.  Even more pleasing was that I am achieving the effect that I was aiming for.

As I shall be making a yellow sail, the wind vane is also yellow.  Much more so than it looks in the photograph which appears more like cream!

Which reminds me.  The undercoat certainly makes for a nice, even base, but at the end of the day, I still end up applying 5 coats of paint!

The varnish around the stern was now hardened enough for me to put the solar panels back in place, permanently.

The panels are lashed down to lacing eyes, that are screwed to the panel frames and to the davit bar aft, and the top of the lute, forward.

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.