Centerboard progress

The centerboard and rudder are nearing completion. This has been one of the more labor-intensive projects so far. The plans give general instructions on shaping the profile of the blades, but I decided to try to get something close to a NACA section for (hopefully) a bit of improved performance. The link is to a Duckworks article by Warren Messer on a method for producing blades with this profile. I didn't go crazy here. I just plugged in some numbers for my blade dimensions to get a profile which I used to "eyeball" my blade as I was shaping it. I'm sure it's far from perfect, but I think it will be an improvement over what I would have produced with the the stock plans.

Here is the rough blank with the control appendage. It had been rough-shaped at this point.




After comparing the rough shaping with the NACA dimensions, I needed to do some fairing. This was done with an epoxy and phenolic micro-balloons mixture mixed to a fairly thick, non-sagging consistency. After curing for a couple days, I hit it with a fairing board while frequently checking against the NACA profile.


After several iterations of compound and fairing board I had a shape I could live with. Like I said, not perfect, but pretty good. Then I "rattle-bombed" it with a can of white appliance epoxy. This stuff goes on thin and dries very hard. I will probably give it two or three more coats of the stuff before I call it done. Here is how it looks now.

Thwart and Mast Step

My friend Kevin was visiting for the weekend so of course I made him work for room and board. Reaching into the bow section to install the forward mast step is tough for a someone with stumpy little arms like mine. Fortunately, Kevin has freaky orangutan arms, so no problem.



He does nice work. But there is always a chance he installed a small charge under the mast step that he can set off remotely the first time we race. We are a bit competitive about the racing.


This is his boat. Skate is a schooner-rigged proa. Very fast.



Meanwhile, I was working on the centerboard trunk and thwart. I managed to find a very nice piece of 12" wide African mahogany for the thwart. It was a rusty red color in the rough-cut blank. But once I planed and sanded it a bit, it lightened up to look almost like a cedar. I'll be curious to see what it looks like with the final finish.




I built the centerboard trunk to be a tiny bit taller then the final designed height. The contraption below is for scribing a line along the top of the trunk to exactly match the height of the seat tops. This way if I decide to make removable bunk slats to cover the footwell space, they will make a perfectly flat surface all the way across the cockpit.

Centerboard Trunk

Most of my time lately has been spent in the shop shaping foils and glassing the centerboard trunk. It's been too cold outside to do any work on the cockpit. Even with a heater running full bore in the shop it has been pretty cold. But now it is in the 60s and 70s and I can start fitting the centerboard trunk in place. Here it is dry fit together with the partially faired centerboard installed.

Dry Fitting the Seats

I've been spending most of my boat time cutting the seat sides and tops to shape. It's a fun process but it involves a bunch of climbing in and out with a thick pencil for scribing the hull shape to the roughly shapes seat panels. Then lots of time with the power plane and low angle planes fine tuning the curves to make for a snug fit. Now that all these panels are shaped I can dry fit everything in place. It's cool to see the interior goes from a raw hull to the general finished layout of the cockpit so quickly. Here's a quick slide show to show the transformation. Of course everything is just clamped or taped in place for the moment and will all come back out so I can epoxy coat the seat tanks. Then I'll begin installing everything.

The centerboard trunk is supported at the aft end by a temporary thwart just to hold it in the correct position. The actual thwart will cover the back foot or so of the centerboard trunk.

Aft Hatch Framing

I managed to carve out a few hours to finish epoxy coating the aft hatch area and add the framing for the rear deck. Some of the framing is left a bit high at this point so I can plane it down later to match the curve of the transom.


The offset framing on the starboard side defines where the rear hatch is located. At first I wasn't crazy about the asymmetric look of this hatch location. But after thinking about it for a bit I decided that the ability to access that hatch while sailing (since it is not under the tiller) is quite practical, which makes it look much nicer.



The hatch opening is just large enough for one of those large, 5 gallon buckets to fit easily through. I've heard from several people that these make for excellent watertight storage on extended camping trips. There is enough room in the rear compartment to hold 8 of these buckets with room left over for loose stuff like sleeping bags, tents, etc.


I'm leaving the rear hatch unpainted to make it easier to inspect the wood over time.

Next up is scribing and cutting the remainder of the seat sides and epoxy coating the side compartments. More soon hopefully.

Slow progress

I haven't been able to work on the boat much lately. But there has been some minor progress. There are a series of hull-stiffening stringers both fore and aft of the main bulkhead. They are epoxied in place to help stiffen the hull right where there is most likely to be occasional bumps while beaching or retrieving the boat to a trailer. The aft stringers run parallel to the centerline while those in the front compartment are on a diagonal that matches the straight line in the developed curve of the bow.

The front compartment also houses the forward mast step which can be seen here. It is not installed yes, but just taped in placed to fine-tune the location. I'll be glassing it in place soon.

I have also installed the side bulkheads and added the framing for the side seats. It's not a ton of progress, but with this done it's easier to picture how the cockpit will be laid out and how much room there will be to move around.

Keel Batten Installed

Keel batten went in this weekend, with the help of my friend Guy. It was a fairly straightforward process. I had previously beveled the keel batten for it's entire length to match the shape of the cockpit sole. After dry-fitting it, I drilled a few screw holes to make aligning it for installation a bit easier. Then we mixed up a bunch of epoxy thickened with silica, dumped it in the seam and set the batten in and screwed it in just snug enough to get some squeeze out along the edge of the batten. In a few places there wasn't any squeeze out so we mixed up a bit more epoxy which we left a bit thinner than the first batch. We poured this into the starved areas and let gravity do the rest. It was a bit messy, but that keel batten is IN. Now it is much easier to get inside the hull and work on stuff up close rather than having to reach in from a step ladder.



Since then I have also added the aft bulkhead which creates the rear storage area. Before framing the top of the rear deck area I need to consider whether I want to make any modifications to the stock plans in this compartment. One thing I am considering is whether I will want to have battery-operated lighting. If so this would be the logical place to put a battery box for a small gel cell. If I do go this route I will probably get some simple LED navigation lights and perhaps one or two LED cockpit/chart lights on a separate switch for night navigation and camping. The problem is, I know next to nothing about 12volt electrical systems. Any experts out there with an opinion?





Next up will probably be framing for the cockpit seats.