Launch of the Spindrift 10

At last my little boat is ready for the water. Sally is helping me make a few last minute preparations.

We always used an old wooden ladder to slide our ancient fiberglass dinghy into the water, but I built a wooden ramp that I hope will be easier on the back and the boat.

Here we go down into the water.

 

 

 

I need to add a roller to the top but other than that the ramp worked very well.

 

 

 

Now off for a sail.

 

 

 



 

 

After a day or so sailing around the pond the winds were light so I decided to do a capsize and recover practice and take a video. This is the first video I have uploaded to Youtube. The boat is fun to sail and quite stable but I want to sail confidently in strong winds far from shore so it is important to be able to right the boat and self rescue in the event of a knockdown. Stuff happens and it is fun to be prepared. Going over was a little scary at first but lots of fun in the end.

 

http://youtu.be/m9bsr7RT_H4

 

 

That was the standard reentry over the transom. It went really well for a first try. I was amazed at how high the boat floated on its side and how little water was in the boat after recovery.

 

 

http://youtu.be/cMLL5q8M4N4

 

 

I tried hopping up on the high side to recover the boat without getting wet but was unsuccessful. Then I reentered from the water over the side. This was trickier and brought in more water but took a little less strength.

 

http://youtu.be/ah3HCGJfb4U

 

Finally Sally joined in the fun.



Birdsmouth revisited

A few years ago I used the birdsmouth technique to make the upper sections of the masts for my EC22 Skorpa. I learned a lot and I thought it would be fun to put some of that experience to work building the upper section of the mast for my Spindrift 10. I will use eight strips of wood about 7 feet long by 3/4 inch wide and about 1/4 thick. I am using some Alaskan Yellow Cedar. Here you can see the table saw set up to make the birdsmouth cut. The finger boards help hold the flimsy strips, and insure even cuts.

Below you can see my eight staves. One side has the notch or birdsmouth cut into it.

I screwed a series of blocks into my work table and used a string to make sure they were in line and at the same level. The first stave will be temporarily fastened to the blocks. This helps insure that the spar is glued up straight, and means you only have to wrestle seven glue covered staves into position.

Some builders use hose clamps or zip ties to hold the staves together until the glue sets but I like to use old bicycle inner tubes like big rubber bands. I had to add some lead weights to convince the mast to lay down on the blocks.

Below is an end on view of the small end of the mast. I shaped a solid plug to fit inside of the mast where a sheave will go and to seal the end of the mast.

The idea is that a hollow mast is almost as strong as a solid mast but much lighter because the wood in the center is not really doing much work. The thinner the wall the lighter but at some point you start to lose more strength than you save weight. The small size of the pieces makes the work a little finicky.

I have a short piece that was cut off from Skorpa's mizzen mast for comparison. Saving weight aloft is important because it makes the boat more stable and if it should capsize the light mast will make the boat less likely to turn turtle. That is completely upside down.

Now I use a plane and sanding board to turn the octagonal cylinder into a round cylinder. I forgot to tell you that after I cut the birdsmouth notches in the staves I tapered each stave so it was only about 1/2 inch wide at the upper end. This produced a tapered hollow wooden cylinder.

 

 

At the top I cut out an opening for a masthead sheave. The halyard will run through this so I can raise sail.

 

 

 

I shaped a small plug to seal the lower end of the spar so no water can get in.

This six foot wooden spar section fits together with two aluminum pieces to make a total mast length of nearly 17 feet. The aluminum is stiffer and is used at the base where that is needed. The hollow wooden spar is lighter than the aluminum and stiffness is not so important in the upper section.

This is really a very big little boat.

I have an idea why it is taking me so long to get this little Spindrift in the water. This ten foot boat has a rudder, a centerboard, a centerboard case, a mast, boom, tiller, everything that a much bigger sail boat has. True each piece is a little smaller, but that does not really save that much time.

The interior of the boat is nearly finished so I flipped the boat and rolled it outside to begin finishing the exterior. Along the chine you can see the tabs that help key the side and bottom panels together. This area needs to be smoothed and rounded over.

The hand plane and long board do the job fairly easily. I just have to be careful to  keep the chine smooth and even.

Once the chine is smooth and fair it is ready for fiberglass tape.

The hull has two openings one for the dagger board and one for the bailer. Holes drilled from the inside allow me to locate and cut out the openings from the outside.

 I use a router with a round over bit to shape the edges of the dagger board case.

Here I am applying fiberglass tape to the rounded chine. You can see some tape reinforcing the joint between the dagger board case and hull.

 

 

I wet out the fiberglass tape before unrolling the tape onto the chine, then I went over the tape with a brush to make sure the tape was fully wet out. I am being careful to not apply excess epoxy because that will run down and harden in globs.

 

After fiber glass tape was applied on the chines and down the centerline I coated the entire hull with two coats of epoxy. Thin as possible to minimize runs.

 The edges of the tape need to be smoothed down and faired into the rest of the hull. Graham does not recommend putting any more glass on the exterior of the hull, but I decided to cover the hull with a layer of very light fiberglass cloth.

A squeegee works well to spread the epoxy and work it into the weave on flat surfaces.

On vertical surfaces you have to apply a thin even layer of epoxy. The roller is best for this.

The roller leaves lot of little air bubbles so I go over the entire surface lightly with a foam brush. Epoxy does not like to lay smoothly but the smoother you can get it the less sanding latter.

 

 

 

 

 

The thin cloth becomes transparent when wet out and you can see through to the plywood. You can also see the purple. Phenolic microballons makes the fairing mixture easier to sand. 

April on the Pamlico

We started our Spring trip in North Creek which is located near the mouth of the Pamlico River in eastern North Carolina. Here our boat is tied up at a friends dock.

I took this photo the morning after our return everything is pretty quiet. That was not the case when we left the dock on Wednesday morning. I was debating how much to reef when a gust of wind came through and I opted for sailing out under mizzen alone. We were not in a race. This early in the season the water is quite cold so I thought it best to be cautious. Sally was also more comfortable with less sail up. As we headed down the Pamlico toward Judith Island the wind freshened and then eased and sometimes a strong gust seemed to come out of nowhere. The wind was from the North West and we made 5 to 6 knots even with only the mizzen up. Here Sally is taking a turn at the tiller.

As we sailed down the Pamlico we spotted a huge flock of birds a mile or so ahead and to the south of us. They were moving North and as we got closer it became apparant we would be sailing right through the huge flock. I would say around a thousand birds,cormorants, terns, gulls, a smaller diving bird maybe a grebe and the occasional pelican It was a mad chaotic feeding frenzy. The terns wheeled and dove from above, the diving birds would surface then take off in a rush to reenter the water near the front of the school of bait fish that remained invisible to us. The air had a distinctly fishy smell as we passed through and I was grateful that we did not catch a cormorant in our sails.

Judith Island is a huge area of marsh composed of spartina grass and a few shrubs but no trees and no high ground. Because it is so low it is invisible from more than a couple of miles away even in clear weather. When we reached the mouth of Rose Bay we hove to and switched from mizzen alone to double reefed main and mizzen. Skorpa does not tack or head up wind very well on mizzen only and I wanted the extra maneuverability in order to sail through Judith Narrows and into Shell Bay. As we got with in a mile we could see the edges of the grassy island but it was very difficult to distinguish features that would locate our position. The GPS was a big help here.

We sailed easily through Judith Narrows, which actually seemed quite wide, into Shell Bay I began looking around for a possible anchorage. The area felt a little exposed so we hauled our sails in tight and made for the cut leading into Deep Bay. We made the cut and started tacking up to the north side of Deep Bay where the chart showed a promising creek winding into the marsh.

We dropped anchor in a quiet spot when after several attempts we could go no further. The water had shoaled to a depth of about a foot. We dropped back to the deeper water to anchor and left some room to swing as the wind was predicted to shift during the night. We started cooking our rice and vegetables in the cockpit because it was so beautiful, but the mosquitoes and flies eventually drove us into the cabin. We installed screens on the door and hatch and soon had a bug free zone. The boat was noisy for a while during the night when the wind switched to the southeast and blew in across Deep Bay, but then it moved back to the west and grew quiet.

We had hot cereal for breakfast. Made from a seven grain mixture purchased at the co-op this takes a few minutes to cook, but we  much prefer it to quicker breakfasts as long as we have the time. After eating I was anxious to be underway. Why????  Sally was not quite ready so I decided to row over the shallows to see if we could find the head of this creek.

I love exploring areas like this. How far does the creek go and where does it lead? My oars from tip to tip are about 22 feet so we got to a point where we decided to turn around.

Sally took the oars for awhile as we headed back out towards deeper water.

 We headed across Deep Bay for the cut that would lead to Swan Quarter. When we got to the cut we noticed a 2kt current running against us. The wind was light and almost dead astern. I pulled the main across to windward in a technique know as sailing by the lee. This put both sails in clear air and gave us the extra power we needed to make good progress against the current.

This put us in a  position to reach Swan Quarter. The ferry to Ocracoke lands here but this is the first time Sally and I have been to Swan Quarter. We could not see much of the town from the water just a glimpse of some buildings set back away from the water. We headed for the fishing docks. There is a narrow channel lined on one side with docks and boats.

After visiting the work boats of Swan Quarter we headed south down Swan Quarter Bay to a little creek that looked interesting. In the narrows between Judith Island and Swan Quarter Island we worked our way up into a beautiful little cove and anchored for lunch.

I guess you have to be partial to water and spartina grass because that is about all there is to Judith Island but it was paradise to us. On our return up the Pamlico River the wind began to build shifting from South to Southwest and back. Skorpa was soon up and planing. We would slow down as her bow worked into a wave then surge ahead as we broke through. We came tearing into North Creek where we brought the main down and then dropped our mizzen just before getting to our dock.