New boat project

It appears a Romanian magazine has been issuing a supplement containing a model boat kit. My mom has been collecting the pieces over the past year and now I have over 60 booklets and boat pieces to put together.  It's turned out to be great project for Sebastien and I, though Sebastien gets easily bored.

Here's the kit (all in a box):

Here are the books (stories about boats):

And the instruction manuals:

And here's how far we've gotten:

Stay tuned for more boat pictures as we progress in our adventure!

BTW, the ship we're building is San Giovanni Battista, a 17th century galleon built in Toscana by the Medicis. 

Spring refit

It's time to bring the boat out on the water again, and this time I hope we'll be doing more boating and less working on the boat. I've put another coat of paint on the outside. It took > 1/2 a pint of paint, as well as a little more than 2 hours of work to wet-sand the whole thing, clean it with lacquer thinner, and apply the paint. Add another 1/2 hour of touch-ups to fix all the paint 'holidays' and add a bit more to the bow and skeg, and it's pretty much a 3 hour job. I also added a rudder lock to keep the rudder from popping up while sailing stern-heavy (the okume plywood is really light and both rudder and daggerboard keep popping out).

Now the big question is whether I should add more varnish to the boat. For starters I'll probably do the top side of the daggerboard, the rudder stock and the boat rails (and maybe the mast step and partner), i.e. the parts that take most punishment. The rest may have to wait, though I'm tempted to experiment with sand in varnish to make the bottom of the boat less slippery.

Winter storage

With long delay, here are some pictures of the winter storage arrangement.

First, however, a nifty sail/spar/oar bag made by my mother in law from Sunbrella fabric. It closes with snap buckles and the straps are aligned with the roof rack so I can attach the bag to the rack with small pieces of rope. Obviously, the whole bundle also gets cinched down with webbing straps.

The great news is that I no longer have to play around with various pieces of rope to try to get the spars bundled up before transportation

 

Here's the boat on saw horses (the same ones I've built and used throughout the construction). If you squint you can see the first snow of the season on Halloween day.

 

Here are vents I've made for the bow and stern compartments. Simply big tubs of yogurt with the bottom cut off and window screen put in to keep critters out. The tubs fit just right and quite snuggly within the access ports. This should keep the boat aerated and dry and critter free.

 

And here's a rack for the long spars that simply rests on battens screwed to the saw horse. The transverse pieces are dowels that can rotate to make it easier to slide the spars on and off. I've finished the rack with a bit of linseed oil to delay the inevitable effect of the weather.

 

Skerry afloat at last

Finally got to put the boat in the water, three months after starting to build it.

Here are some pictures from the event.

Getting the sail ready:



Driving along with the boat on the car:



Floating in the boat:



Sailing off:



Sailing in the distance:




The varnish was not quite dry - apparently you have to wait for more than 24 hours before 'stressing' it too much. I'll have lots of patching to do on the boat and spars.

Also, I managed to swamp the boat and when back home found water in the 'watertight' compartments in the stems. I'll have to investigate where the water came from - hopefully it went through the access holes, rather than through holes in the hull.

All in all, though, I'm quite happy with where the boat is. A lot more finishing left to do and some small changes to the rigging (I want to add a topping lift to be able to furl the sail if I need to).

Skerry build day 53: done(?) at last

I spent about 10 hours varnishing the inside of the boat, the foils, and the spars. Everything got the minimum 3 coats and I'll stop here for now. Boat's going to go in the water this weekend.

The biggest pain is the rudder - when attaching the gudgeons to the boat they got tighter and the rudder doesn't quite fit properly anymore. I'm slowly stretching them out but it's a pain...

Here are some pics.

First the setup for varnishing the spars:

Then the varnished boat:

And then the boat on top of the car:

Time: 10 hours
Total: 165.5 hours

Skerry build day 52: varnish at last

After some quick sanding of the epoxied pieces I wiped down the hull and started varnishing. The process is a lot more painful than I thought it would be - the foam brushes totally suck and it took me 1.5 hours to get one coat on. I put 3 coats on the rails so that I can attach the hardware and be ready for a launch this weekend. I'll switch to a brush for the last bit of varnishing - probably 2 more coats for now.

Time: 5 hours (roughly 50-50 sanding and varnishing)
Total: 155.5

Skerry build day 51: More sanding

Today I pretty much finished sanding the inside of the hull. All's ready for varnish.

Time: 1.5 hours
Total: 150.5 hours