Boat and a Ukulele, Cliche?....Perhaps, but OK with me

I've got a three week hiatus on my hands to take a 3 week vacation in Peru. I'm going to use some of that downtime to learn to play a Ukulele. I know it's a bit hackneyed but who really cares.  As far as I can tell I have only a very small or totally absent talent for music (I've tried and essentially failed at the saxophone and mandolin already). But that trifle has not deterred my desire to play. So here is the Uke I just got, I went for the concert Fluke.

 

Ama Planking Epoxy Chore Continues

I've finished 3 and half sheets of 4 of my plywood epoxy application chore. It is raining constantly now, but with short periods of more intense rain. When it comes down hard inside the boat shed it sounds like God has come to take me away, and might be a little angry. I'm done for the day, but have to confess that I will be lucky to finish the last epoxy application before year-end. We are taking 3 week vacation to Peru.  Hopefully I will find my way to a boat while we are there, if so I will post under "Sailing".

Doubling My Rate of Progress

So after a few days off from boat work, I got back to it today. I set things up so I could apply an epoxy coat to 2 sheets at once.  Its no fun tip-toeing around two sheets of plywood in that small space, but its better than doing it for more days than necessary.

Amazing Disappearing Boat Shed Leak

I've been dealing with a bit of a mystery.  Last week I thought my boat shed roof was leaking. I had a fairly even coating of water drops spread over most of the ceiling of the shed.  I figured (hoped) that it was because the tent material wasn't pulled as tight as it could have been (my fault) and there were some areas of standing water on top of the shed.  So yesterday I went out to remedially tighten the shed. Here is the mystery, despite almost constant rain over the last week, the shed ceiling was bone dry.

A couple of notes,
I did leave the heater on in there to assist in curing the epoxy on the first planking sheet. Also although wet it is much warmer this week. So now I think it wasn't leaking I was seeing, it was condensation.  For now I left the heater on a low setting. Longer term I'm not sure how to address.

Also after tightening the tent it still had some areas at one end that could have standing water so I gave it a bit of a peak with a piece of furring strip to prevent any standing water on the roof.

Update: So this was condensation, I've been leaving the heater in the boat shed on at a low setting and problem is solved.

Planking Preparation

I'm now cursed with having thought about this too much. As much as I would like to start setting up frames if I did that now I would not have space to epoxy coat the plywood sheets to be used for planking.  So I'm coating the sheets now.  This will take awhile 4 sheets (my guess) 2 coats, 1 day per coat.

Things That Make You Go Hmmmm

Putting the rudder jig away I found this when I turned it over:

I have no idea when this happened.  Looks like it was caused by the reaction to a rudder compression force. The "V" shape of the jig trying to be pushed open.  If I do decide to make new rudders in the future, I will pick a better material for the jig.

R4 Looking OK

Pulling R4 off its fences this is what I found.

I think this will work. The leading edge is a little messy but nothing that some sanding and a few applications of epoxy-filler paste won't fix.

Getting More Than I Thought

I've answered the question of how I chose the boat, and why I figured I needed to build it rather than buy a commercial boat.  That said I feel like there is something missing in all of that.  There is something else going on here that is compelling me to build this boat.  It comes from deep and I know it's tied to the experience of sailing but, it's more, or at least different than sailing.

I should confess when not sailing, or boat building, I am reading or thinking about sailing or boatbuilding, that is not too much of an exaggeration.  From what I can tell, I'm not unique in this regard.  Its gets under your skin and into your bones.

I think that sailing is the starter drug.  It requires thought and can be challenging, but is enjoyable and can be social.  If you have taken the bait with sailing, then you may move onto boatbuilding.  Again you are engaging in something that requires thought and it's rewarding in the small victories it offers. The common thread is that both are at some level about independence.  There is no authority on your boat telling you how and when to do things, and in my shop I'm alone to figure things out.  As I work on this boat I can feel myself gaining skills and growing in the extent to which I am comfortable relying on myself to do new things.  Maybe the insight here is that self reliance is another name for freedom.  So I am discovering freedom as I pursue the thing that I thought of as my conveyance to set myself free upon the water.  The water.  Needed for life and teeming with it, itself is dangerous, and I can't help but suspect that the freedom I seek is also dangerous.

I didn't expect to find so much about myself in building a boat.  I thought I wanted a certain kind of boat and this was the best way to go about it.  And I've only just begun.

Rudder Planning

Despite recent success with R4, I am not that happy with its shape.  At least I wasn't until I compared it to the shape of the successful test rudder (TR2).  The test rudder is too blunt at its leading edge, I think R4 is too fine.  But the variation between my 3 successful rudder bends in a weird way makes me feel better about keeping R4.  The thought being that maybe I could build 10 more rudders and still not get a shape that I like. So I'm going to keep R1 and R4 as my go-forward rudders for now. Its time to move on.  I like the comment I got from Ed T. on a previous post, that if I feel strongly about it after I'm sailing, I will rebuild them then.

R4 Carbon Fiber Installation

I am very happy with how this went. Uncharacteristically for me I took some time and set things up carefully and deliberately. Here is a picture of laying out the strips of carbon fiber fabric.

And here is the ready to get started picture.  Since I have the spar already epoxied in place I could do this part on the bench and it was nice to not have to be bent over the entire time as I was when doing this on R1 (it was in the jig).

I couldn't take in process pictures because I didn't want take the time to mess with glove replacement, or risk getting epoxy on my cell phone.  The synopsis is that I took my time and made sure I had each layer well wetted out and well seated on the inside of the rudder faces.  The only drama was on the 3rd layer where one side flopped over and wanted to make a mess.  So I just jammed my gloved hand in there to get it seated correctly.  It wasn't that easy to do with fingers, it would have been impossible with sticks or brushes.  Here is the a picture of the profile as I left it.

Once again, I used almost every clamp I own to close this up.