Friday, October 24, 2014

A bicycle built for Mom

Indeed, the boat is progressing -- in a "yet another coat of white paint inside" kind of way -- and it is exciting -- in a "yet another coat of white paint inside" kind of way. 

We've had other excitement, too -- our oldest housemate (Mary's mother) celebrated her 90th birthday in September. Here's her favourite gift.


The most beautiful bicycle ever.

Why? Because a couple of years ago, Trevor heard her say that she had never had a bicycle. "Now you do," he told her when she opened it. 

The pedals turn, the "chain" drives the back wheel, the handlebars turn, and yes, that is a hand-carved seat. It's about an extended hand-span wide.

Sometimes people leave you speechless.

Sunday, August 31, 2014

Framing the hatches

Every time something new is added to the boat, someone says, "Wow! Now it really looks like a boat!"

I will spare you. I do have a particular fondness for the frames around the hatches, though. It makes it look... well, you know.



Here are the pieces laid out, ready for gluing.

And here's a closeup of the way the joins work.

At first all the epoxy we purchased seemed excessive. 

Where there's glue, there's cleanup.



Hard as it is to believe that it's going to be September tomorrow, early fall has its compensations.

Saturday, August 23, 2014

What's a boat without a rudder?


For the moment, at least, there's no need to answer that question. Here's the rudder temporarily installed. Yes, it will need another coat of paint, won't it.

Top this!

Once a cabin top has its sides, and its holes cut for windows, and the frames glued in, there's nowhere to go but up. And up the top went, earlier this week.



The cabin top is assembled from two pieces. Here they are, reclining on the deck awaiting installation.


Gluing in process. It's possible that the glue crew noticed the camera.


Here it is, glued in, and with lots of squeeze-out scraped off. Squeeze-out: it's a good thing. Just a huge amount of sanding and six quick coats of paint on that and you won't notice it at all.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Window frames, deadlight frames, whatever you call them


... suddenly, in a veritable bristle of clamps, they are underway.

The cabin sides have the holes cut in them. The frames are glued on inside, so the glass sits flush with the cabin sides on the exterior.


Shaped frames, ready to install inside.

And here's some of them, glued and clamped. To be continued!


Saturday, August 9, 2014

Cabin top

The cabin top mockup, complete with Santa's chimney and hatch cover, looked great, at least if one squinted a bit ...






However, while the replacement isn't quite as complete, it will ultimately be a good bit more useful. And lasting! 

It's well underway now. No top yet, but it's definitely starting to look like a boat.


The plywood makes the shape, but there are lots of little framing pieces supporting it inside.










Every stick takes time and care to install. 

The end result will be beautiful.

In other less photogenic news, Robbie has been experimenting with a low-volume, low pressure paint sprayer, so far just in the aft hold. There is A Lot of painting on this boat -- two coats of primer and two coats of top coat for the interiors, and three of each on the exterior. That's a lot of brush and roller time, and we'd be delighted to speed things up a bit.

So far the sprayer seems quite useful. Even if we end up using it mostly for primer, or primer plus first top coat, it should save some time. I haven't included a picture of the mostly-white aft compartment -- we'll save that excitement for next time.

Monday, August 4, 2014

"It's like déjà vu all over again." Yogi Berra

As baseball's master of the appropriate comment said, "It's like déjà vu all over again." Once again, decks cover the formerly-open hull. Light in the berths is reduced, but the potential for water-tightness considerably improved. 

Much sanding is happening today, and the cabin top is underway -- pictures of those parts will follow.

Here are Robbie and Trevor working on the side decks. Fore and aft areas are glassed.
All but side decks glassed in this one. Featured on the left is the vacuum that starred in the last post!
 At this point, things seem to be going really quickly. I think this is partly because everything that is being done is being done for the final time. We don't have more decks to add after this. Today Robbie and Trevor are working on the final cabin top. We need to get glass cut for it -- but only once.  This is too wonderful a project to use phrases like "light at the end of the tunnel" for -- it's a happy build for us, and it's all light. (In fact, as you can see in the bottom picture, it's actually happening in a nice, light tunnel!) But we are getting a sense of the arc of the project aiming towards completion now.

Of course it's easy to ruminate philosophically at this point and ignore the reality of ten coats of paint (four inside, six out) to go! 

Déjà vu all over again indeed.


Three cheers for our vacuum!

The Festool sander we have connects to the Festool vacuum. So we've almost forgotten how dusty sanding is when one doesn't have an integrated system.

The other day Robbie was sanding outside, while Trevor was sanding in a compartment. Seemed only fair for Trevor to use the vacuum,  the better to enjoy the pleasure of overhead sanding on a hot day with. 

Here's Robbie after some sanding on deck. Good reason to use the vacuum! And the mask, of course, the outline of which you can see on his head.

And are these not the most styling glasses ever?


Swatch. From Geneva. Perfect for every occasion.

Thursday, July 24, 2014

"Sink" is a noun

Planning the galley has been a challenge. It seems spacious to us, sort of. (Remember, we are comparing to a Nordic folkboat with a modified cabin that provides hunching headroom, but at 25 feet gives little scope for gourmet efforts in the galley.)

We're delighted with the position of the table, and satisfied with the layout (stoves for heat and cooking opposite the companionway, counter space in a U with access to the pantry through a removable countertop, and a sink opposite the stoves.)

But what sink?

One decision we made early on was that we did not want drains through the hull. In fact, our current stance is that we don't want holes through the hull at all. We are expending considerable effort, after all, to keep water out. Through-hull fittings are counter-intuitive at best. This meant there was no particular reason to think about plumbing the sink in. We discussed having it drain to a bucket, and then in a spirit of parsimony thought, why not just use a bucket?

Well, there are reasons, chief among them that the depth of a bucket relative to its width gives you a very deep and narrow sink indeed, and makes it hard to imagine washing anything larger than a teacup. Since we don't expect to travel with teacups, this seems like a limitation.

Here is the elegant conclusion to the sink discussion.


It's a canning kettle, and we got it at the Home Hardware store in Nanaimo for around $25. A similar-size marine sink lists online for about ten times that, but lacks the handle. Admittedly, the marine sink typically would be permanently installed in the counter-top and wouldn't need a handle. There it would be, glowing in all its stainless steel glory, fed with water by its $60 foot pump via an $80 faucet. And in most cases, plumbed in to a through-hull fitting.

Our sink will be installed in the countertop, with a cutting board to fit over it when it isn't in use. Identical systems will provide salt and fresh water -- that is, we'll put either salt or fresh water in it. Carrying it up and down the companionway won't be onerous. It has a good strong carrying handle, and a single side handle for emptying. 

We are pleased. 

Decks and beam supports

July is great weather for glueing, and that is an excellent thing when there is much glueing to be done.

(Or possibly gluing. "Gluing" appears to be American spelling, while "glueing" seems to be the British. Like a good Canadian, I will proceed with the uncomfortable sensation that whichever I choose, it will look wrong.)

The first big project this week was glueing on what we think of as pads -- pieces of wood that support the beam, and other pieces on the side of the hull that stop the pressure of the lashings from prying up on the lashing strake. 

The masks are to protect against the additives, not because of the epoxy. Silica adds strength to the glue, but it's a fine, white powder that plays havoc with lung tissue if inhaled. (Never breath anything that has a disease named after it, I say.)


With the pads in place, it was time to mark and cut the plywood deck, then glue and screw it into position.
As you can imagine, the stack of plywood we began with is almost gone.



Here is the aft deck cut to fit, with the forward deck visible beyond the cabin-top mockup. The mockup is a bit the worse for wear, but it has been tremendously helpful in planning the interior. With the decks on, the boat shape appears. It's a wonderful point in the process.

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Really? Not since May?

Oh dear.

What with One Thing (the garden) and Another (work, mostly, and vacation. And haymaking.) I am really behind on updating this blog. 

There's been a bit of time away from Tiger, too, as Robbie and Trevor do a few things for Penna. Here are a couple of images from today:

The oiled cockpit -- much lower than the one it replaced. On the right you can see a winch, installed on a new winch-base -- there's another one on the other side. The whole boat looks terrific and now, with no engine, doesn't smell like old diesel. 





Here we are looking intrepid and seaworthy this morning. I am not sure I should tell you that we lounged about and went out for lunch. 



There has been lots of progress on Tiger. A lot of it -- things like the beam chocks -- are exciting for us to see but don't make such lively blog images. Nonetheless, here's a few images of what has been happening on the boat.

Here you can see the cutouts for the beams.
And here the line of sanding where the lashing strake will go. (Well, "has gone" by now.)

Here's our terrific neighbour Russ, who came over to help with the sanding.
Here's Take 2 on the galley table, made to fold down and allow access to the berth. Note that the wonderful glow of natural light apparent in the berth is only there because there is as yet no deck. It will be, sadly, dimmer in the future -- no skylights. And no deadlights. We're thinking cozy.


A stove! And another stove! Here's the cooktop and a little wood-burner in the galley mockup. We likely won't use this exact wood-burning heater, since it's from Penna the folkboat, but the cooktop is the one we plan to use. They're side by side on the side opposite the companionway.

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Aft hold access and shelving

Another clamping extravaganza!
Clamping...



... and more clamping...

And scraping....
And glued!

The galley mockup!

Trevor mocked up the galley last week.

I say this in a plain, bare sentence, just as if we haven't been talking about doing this for well over a year. And just as if it was a perfectly ordinary thing to do, which for me at least it certainly was not. I was finding it very hard to think about the space, and had spent considerable time sitting on the companionway steps staring about and trying to imagine things as they should be.

You may remember that a few weeks back I suggested that we go with a diet entirely composed of Cliff bars -- hence simplifying galley construction.



The complete food storage system
Can't say Trevor doesn't listen!

There's a bit more of a mockup than that, though.


The mockup includes cabin top (complete with deadlights) and hatch cover, since envisioning the space without closing it in is really difficult.

Since we're currently thinking of installing a wood stove for heat sailing around the Salish Sea, there has to be a chimney.

And of course, if there is a chimney, it has to be clearly labelled.


This is the wood stove usually installed on Penna, but removed for last summer's refit. To the left of the stove is a cabinet base for either a sink or a cooktop stove.
We're thrilled with the height of the table. Following the suggestion of our friends David and Neila, formerly of the SV Wind Chime (also a Narai Mk IV), we're experimenting with raising the floor in the seating/table area. This gives more storage space beneath, but more to the point raises the seats to the point at which the hull is wider. This means that four people can sit at the table, and also that when they are sitting there, they can see out.
The table is really spacious. At this point it's a trestle table, and we're just sliding it back and forth. We're thinking about options for folding up, taking down entirely, hanging from the ceiling -- any one of a number of possible ways to get it out of the way to create access to the aft berth. (The entry to the forward berth is under the table from this angle.)


Looking aft, you can see the companionway steps on the left. The counters facing each other will hold stovetop and sink. We don't plan to include refrigeration so there's no space built in for that.
Next steps? Living with the galley for a while. We've had coffee in it repeatedly, eaten lunch there, and will soon be entertaining dinner guests. Once we're sure how it works, the building-in process can happen -- much more easily before the cabin top is built.