Vandemere 2012

I knew it was a long shot getting the boat ready for the water by 28 October. I still have a couple of weeks worth of work to go. I am not even certain I will launch the boat before we close up shop in Rhode Island for the winter. Did you notice that I did not use the word finish. I hate to give Gary any fodder but someone once said that a boat is never finished................ until it sinks.

Well the good news is I definitely have a shot at having things ready for 2012.

Before I put the decking on I like to precoat the underside with two or three coats of epoxy. Since epoxy bonds best to either bare wood or green epoxy and bonds less well to fully cured epoxy, I usually leave uncoated the areas under the deck that will bear on framing.

This left an interesting pattern on the last piece of deck that closes up the bow. The large opening is there for the base of the mast to swing through. It make me think of a church and of course it lays just forward of the tabernacle.

This shows the framing under the fore deck. The arch was laminated from several layers of very thin wood. There is a lamp in there to help keep things warm so as to move the curing process along.

Here I have primer on the topsides, but still a long ways from being ready for the water.

Bowsprit

Skorpa sports a removable bowsprit that allows her to fly a 250 square foot asymmetrical spinnaker. This more than doubles her working sail area of 238 sqft.  I had a few questions about the bowsprit tube so I called Graham and he answered my questions and as he often does he also gave me a little trick to make the job go easier.

Getting the hole cut in the hull in the right place, with the right shape is a little tricky.

Here is Graham's helpful tip.

Locate the point 6 feet forward of the bow where the tip of the bowsprit should be.

Determine where on the forward bulkhead the base of the bowsprit sits.

Using your best judgement drill a hole through the hull in line with those two points.

Now run a string from the tip location through the hole to the base.

Move the hole until the string is straight and you have the center of the necessary opening in the hull.

I used the same trick to determine the forward and aft points of the opening.

I used a variety of methods to draw the outline of the opening, but knowing for certain the center point was critical to doing a reasonable job.

The opening came out pretty nicely. The carbon fiber bowsprit tube is laying on the deck.

I reinforced the area around the hull opening with 3/8 ply ' to give it some bearing' as Graham says. The I added some carbon and fiberglass tape. You can see the main mast trying out the tabernacle.