Beams

Back in the days when we were planning this project, we had imagined building first one hull per year, then in year three building the beams and deck structure.

That's not what happened. Because we finished the boat-shop a bit later than we had intended, plus took time off in the summer to go sailing, winter arrived before we had completed our first hull. And a cold winter it was, too! Much too cold to keep working on the hull in our boat-shop. We can heat the shop, but to heat it adequately would be $20 plus per day for propane -- neither ecologically nor financially sensible.

So -- we decided to move to Trevor's heated shop for the winter and work on the beams we had planned to build a couple of years from now.

Our beams are not standard Narai beams. We bought the design improvement package from Wharram, which is based on the Tiki 38, and hence we are building Tiki-style beams which will be lashed rather than bolted.

Assembling the beams has been a long and painstaking process. Each beam is essentially an I-beam with a curved top. The "I" -- the web -- is made from four layers of 3/8" ply, glued together. (The plans called for two layers of 3/4" ply, but we did not have any of that.) The top and bottom of the I are fir -- two layers. Flanges connect the web with the top and bottom pieces; they are also fir.

All the pieces are glued together with epoxy, and held together with bronze ring-nails. The top edge of each beam will be glassed.

In addition to the basic I-beam shape, there are solid mahogany inserts in six locations on each side of each beam. This is a total of 48 mahogany blocks.

Although we'd already bought the wood for the boat based on the cutting list included in the original Narai plans, we had to go shopping again when it came to beam-building time. This was both for the mahogany inserts, and for the top and bottom wide boards on each beam.