Boat Flip

Today is boat-flipping day.

I've lined up about 6-8 strong guys and bought a few cases of beer. This is probably more than enough (people, not beer). The plan is pretty straight forward: (1) lift the boat off the hull-shaped cradle,


(2) disassemble cradle and get it out of the way, (3) get boat into the yard, (4) replace cradle with new supports that support the inwales. Then (5) roll boat the boat over and (6) place on the new supports. Finally (7 and 8) drink beer/eat pizza.

Anything that seems so simple makes me suspicious. I think probably the biggest lesson I've taken from sailing over the years is that it's a good habit to always keep in mind the worst-case scenario. Not in a paranoid, tinfoil-cap-wearing kind of way, but rather cultivating a heightened sense of impending doom. Then, when things start to go south, you have half a chance at being prepared and perhaps even a step or two on the way to recovery. And, when things do go according to plan, it seems much more like an actual victory. Much more pleasant this way.

So in this tradition, I've spent some time mentally walking through the rollover. Here's how that has gone:

1) We lift the boat off the cradle then promptly trip over all the scrap lumber stored under the cradle. I've now relocated all the scraps.

2) Lift the boat off the cradle, trip over the dog. He likes to help whenever there's a big project like this. Can't help it, he's part cattle dog. Apparently, the cat is looking for ways to help as well, mostly by taking a nap in the seat tanks. Here's the evidence.

Tell-tale paw prints

3) Lift boat, start moving it when someone discovers one of those nasty, sharp epoxy drips, cuts their hand and drops the boat. I've now given the hull another once-over with a chisel and some sandpaper, plus bought a few extra pairs of gloves.

I quickly realized I could imagine about a million ways to screw this up. So rather than worry too much about it, better to just get on with it.

For the most part, the hull is pretty strong at this point. The only potential weak spot is at the top of the sides at the widest part of the beam. This is because the decks, which will be fiberglassed at a right angle to the sides, are not installed yet. So the problem is that when rolling the boat, this is the part that will naturally want to rest on the ground, potentially bending it to the point of cracking the inwale. My solution was to add lateral braces that screwed into the inwale as well as braces at the forward bulkhead and near the bow.







The bow is an especially tricky part when flipping, because there aren't any good places to get a grip. So I constructed this little block shaped to fit under the inwale and bolted it to a two-by-six to use as a lifting bar. Like so,




The brace at the forward bulkhead was screwed to the forward beam, but rather than let all the weight fall on these screws, I added cargo straps that went around the hull to help carry the load.

All of these braces were allowed to stick out beyond the edge of the sides so that when rolling, the braces, rather than the sides, would meet the ground. This distributed the weight of the hull nicely to the strong bulkheads and made the flip go very smoothly.

Here's a quick view of the whole process.

A few strong guys, a plan, and Bob's your uncle.

Now with the boat inverted, it's on to taping the outer seams, fiberglassing the bottom, cutting the centerboard slot, installing the keel, and installing an Anderson bailer. Then fairing, sanding, fairing, sanding, fairing, sanding...then painting.

With any luck, this will be the only time Goodfoot will be upside-down.

Thanks to everyone who helped out (Bob, Bob, Maureen, Nathan, Jay, Andrew, Tom, Marie and Penelope and Woody). You guys are the best.

Prep for Seat Install

With the seat tops cut to shape and joined into two panels, it's time to epoxy coat the seat tanks that will be enclosed as well as paint the area that will be tough to access under the front seat.

Here are the seat top panels joined together.

Epoxy coating the side tanks...

...and the painted forward section

I decided to go with a cockpit color a bit toned down from plain white, which would probably give a lot of glare. We looked at a couple off-whites and tried out some samples.

The one on the left was the winner.

Here it is in the cockpit.

The seat tops went on today, but we didn't get a chance to take pictures. I'll post those in the next day or two.

Cockpit hatches and other stuff

On of the places I'm deviating from the plans is on the access to the side seats compartments. Most builders use top-access seat hatches which require additional framing and leave a seam right in the middle of the most used sitting space. Like this:

Rough opening for seat hatch.


Framing and gutters to drain water into cockpit.

Seat with gutter molded around framing.

From a storage standpoind, they are nice because they give quick access to the large side tanks that make an ideal storage place for fenders, PFDs, and long items like fishing rods or umbrellas. So there's a trade-off in not going with these hatches. Instead, I'm using eight inch quarter-turn inspection ports located on the seat sides.

Cutting the openings.

Fine-tuning with a Dremel.

They fit!

These ports will be much more watertight in a knock down. Plus the size of the opening still fits medium-sized objects like fenders. PFDs will not fit, but the front and rear compartments have plenty of room for that kind of stuff. By placing the openings about three feet from the side bulkhead, I can reach almost all of the compartment with an extended arm.



It may turn out that items roll to the ends of the compartments out of reach. If so, I may have to add additional port at the other ends. But for now I'm going with four ports, one for each side tank.

The quarter-turn hatches are from Duckworks. I've heard that they tend to be a bit more reliable (leak-proof) that the screw-in models. Once they are fully tightened you can feel them click. At this point they are pretty well sealed. However, they are also a bit difficult to re-open. They may loosen up over time, but for now it seems like a good idea to have a tool to help lever them open when needed. This hatch wrench is made of a few plywood scraps and a sturdy piece of pine for a handle.



Once I cut the opening for the hatches, I decided to bulk up the frame of the opening a bit with some 3/8" plywood backers. This will stiffen the area substantially and give the screws for the hatch frames more material to bite into.





Since I'm not using the seat-top hatches I added a few extra pieces of framing for the seat tops to rest on. This might be unnecessary, but the added weight is small and it is going right to the place where people are most likely to be sitting as well as stepping on and off the boat.

Once the hatch openings were cut it was time for a nap.

I'm stretched out on the cockpit floor behind where the thwart will be located. There is easily enough room to sleep between the seats. My plan is to have floor boards that can be raised to the same height as the seat tops, making a single platform of the rear half of the cockpit. With these in place, the beam of the boat is enough for someone my height to lay sideways. Two people sleeping on the boat should not be a problem at all.

This is the backer block for the bow eye. It's made from a solid chunk of cedar which is light, rot resistant and has a high compression strength. It will be epoxied and glassed in place soon.




Pretty soon I will be ready to put the seat tops on. But first the side compartments must by sanded smooth and epoxy coated to keep moisture out. The first couple times I tried to coat vertical areas I always had problems with drips. This was true no matter how thinly I tried to apply the epoxy. So now I have a different approach. I mix the epoxy wit just enough silica thickener to create a mixture that will resist running. It doesn't have to be as thich a a fillet mixture because it will be going on in such a thin layer. I go with a mixture about the thickness of Ranch dressing. Instead of applying it with a brush, I use a squeegee. It goes on in a thin and consistent layer that does not run and requires very little if any sanding once it has cured. I can't be sure, but I think it actually spreads a bit further then an un-thickened batch of the same volume.




Centerboard trunk is going in today. Will post more soon.

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.