Lost Supervisor Leo today

after a couple of weeks of infirmity.

His malady progressed so fast and none of our interventions succeeded.  He will be sadly missed. His last job three weeks ago was inspecting the centerboard blank.

One of his first jobs: checking the workmanship of my sailboat B'lisss, a Stevenson's Weekender in 2006.

Centerboard construction falls into place

at the providential time.

With the basic parts of the cockpit done, the only missing part among the longitudinal structures of the hull is the centerboard box. In Graham's design, this is offset to port to gain walking space inside the cabin and connects to the port cockpit seat. While the length of the box is given, I'd rather let the finished board dictate the box width.

Mid-June 2013.  As luck will have it, but then maybe because I've always been on the look out, I come across perfect lumber for the centerboard: heavy pine staves of just the right size and length, each individually wrapped for a reason nobody can guess.

Staves are sorted and grain direction lined up.

Assembling the centerboard


Setting up a gluing clamp board using two cabinet doors.

Testing the clamping board.

Gluing has to be done in two stages after running out of glue for the first few staves.











Sliding wedges apply the clamping pressure. Sliding jaw pliers make perfect adjusters.










The cut off at the bottom of the centerboard exactly fits the upper part. Clamp board rail is adjusted for diagonal gluing.





























Trimming and shaping

Full size pattern lofted and transferred to the blank.

Centerboard cut to size. Which is a mistake because it would have been easier to monitor the NACA profile shaping if the lower end were kept square.

Groovy!

Centered with the help two bolts on the router base plate.

NACA drawing from the plans are enlarged to actual size for three stations, printed on card and are used as templates to check shape while fairing with an angle grinder ...

... to produce a respectable-looking foil.  Photos belies the size and heft of the 56.5 in. board.

Swivel hole filled with epoxy bushing made from fumed silica and wood flour.

Cockpit seat tops

will be great for sleeping under the stars.

May 2013. After a couple of months of inactivity, the seats are cut to shape and dry fitted.

With the extended stern, they end up to be 8 ft. long.

Supervisor tests them for comfort.

The outboard motor well

is a particular challenge.

Here we are in uncharted territory, at least as far as my experience is concerned. The details of this modification is based mainly on the pictures of what builders of other boat designs have done.




February 2013.  

The upper edges of the hull is now more stable with the installation of the coamings that define the side decks.

Lazarette bulkhead


The original transom is now the lazarette bulkhead and the pattern is laid out on the temporary frame.

The cut out for the motor well determined with a mock up.

Lazarette bulkhead is cut and fitted as well as the top and bottom stringers for the cockpit seats.












Motor well doubler glued to bulkhead.

The cleats for the well sides in place. Did I say I don't like stitch and goo? I'd rather do stringers or even frames.








Motor well is cut out.

Outboard motor slot 

How much courage does it take to cut up your hull?  The minimum width for the lower unit is drawn and the jigsaw goes for the tilt slot.

There's a hole in the boat!

Test fitting the outboard

Lowering the outboard with a hoist. 

It turns out that the slot is a bit on the narrow side so the prop has to be wiggled in. The forward end of the slot will need to be widened enough so the motor can be more easily put in or taken out, especially when the boat is in motion at sea.

The upper end of the slot is conservatively cut short and it takes a few additional cuts to get it to the proper height.

The estimates turn out fine: there's just enough clearance for the prop to swing at the bottom corner of the transom.

There's also enough clearance inside for small adjustments including lowering the mounting height if needed later.

V-berth bulkheads

are set up with levels and cardboard patterns.

By mid-January 2013, cross members are set with levels and fixed to the hull sides.

The cardboard patterns made by taping pieces together following the bottom contour prove to be quite accurate when transferred to plywood.

V-berth bulkheads and partition are all in. Arched forward deck beam has been installed in preparation for the coamings.

V-berth will have a removable insert in the aft foot well to make it into a double berth.























Quarter-berth mock up with the simulated cockpit seat top shows the bunk top needs to be set lower to provide enough knee room. Ingress might be an issue because of the narrower access and the companionway ladder.

Starting on the interiors

takes precedence over flipping.

The build instructions call for flipping the hull at this point before it gets to be too heavy.  But I feel there is not enough stiffness to prevent it from deforming in the process.  And then there will be the problem of setting it up again when the hull flipped back upright after glassing the outside.

The decision then is to proceed with the interiors until the hull gets the rigidity from the bulkheads and other partitions. And it is an easy decision to make because no other part of boatbuilding matches the fun of doing the interiors. It is also the time for unrestrained playing make-believe as you visualize the activities to be done in the boat and the functions of the different parts.

It is in one of these sessions when the Admiral thinks it would be nice to have a shower inside the cabin for those days when propriety makes it indecorous to do it in the great outdoors. Her wish is of course my command. After a lot of pencil-pushing (well, actually mouse-scrolling) I am able to squeeze in a sit-down shower by stealing a bit from the v-berth and moving more of the quarter-berth under the cockpit. The head will migrate from under the companionway to double as the shower seat. Water will be supplied from a pump-up garden sprayer. A removable cover will turn the area into a table when not in use. At least that is the plan.



Mocking-up the shower space. Partial Port Bulkhead #2 is also the forward end of the centerboard box.

Fitting the partial Starboard Bulkhead #2. Cutouts like that in the corner will be reinforced to serve as handholds.

With the shower area defined, the technical details are worked out such as the slope, the framing for the floorboard and the additional bulkhead aft.

The trick is to gain enough space to fit the head and allow elbow room. The upper part will be enclosed with a shower curtain to contain the water spray.

Raised floorboards drain aft into sump where water can be pumped into pail or overboard.

Fitting inboard partition.

Shower compartment epoxy encapsulated and successfully passes wet test.  Less than two centimeters of water is left in the sump after pump out.








A useful suggestion is to put a drain hole with plug inboard of the sump so that any substantial amount of water that gets into the cabin floor can be pumped out the same way.



With the shower compartment done, the inboard side of the centerboard box and the starboard quarter-berth partition are dry fitted in to see how they relate to the modification.

New transom takes shape

and puts closure to the hull carpentry.

It's December, 2012.  The Belhaven has a designed length on deck of 19 ft.  The pattern for the top curve of the new transom made from scrap is screwed to the shearlogs at 21 ft., the modified length arrived at after innumerable days of deep contemplation.  Looking back, it now seems to be another proof  of "Two-Footitis," that severe affliction that strikes sailors and boatmen and makes them believe that their present boat would be the ideal one if it were only two feet longer.

My decision is of course based on strictly rational arguments, the best of which is that I want the auxiliary motor inside the boat, not hanging out on a mount off the transom. By their very nature and by the immutable law of Murphy, the motor will quit on you and you will vainly try to revive it by yourself. And this will inevitably happen when the wind and waves toss your vessel around while you are half out over the water bravely fiddling with the motor parts, hoping none of them nor your tools will be forced out of your wet grip this time by Newton's laws of motion.

The least rational argument though possibly the most convincing is that the boat will look lovelier.

The revised plan then is to use make original transom station of 19 ft. into a bulkhead on which to mount the motor and to enclose the motor in a well. A cutout in the transom will allow the motor to tilt up when not in use with very little of it showing outside. By meticulous measurements and estimates the exact additional length needed is--you guessed it--exactly two feet.



With the hull level to the designed waterline, an 18 degree angle is scribed on the side panels inward from the transom top pattern and the sides are trimmed to this line.

The pattern has been replaced by a curved frame. The transom panel is held against this and the sides ...

... to scribe the proper curves for the transom bottom.














After the lower edges of the transom  are cut and positioned, the curves of the bottom panels in turn are traced and trimmed ...

... to get a perfectly shaped and fitted transom.  A small triumph but with an immensely satisfying sense of achievement.














All of which do not perturb a supervisor on the worktable mocking me by resting his head on one of my early miscalculations.

Working on the longitudinals

stiffens the hull somewhat.

This early in the build you do get to see how the hull looks like once the panels are joined together. But stitch-and-glue is work never done. Or so it seems. You keep going at the exact same place over and over and over: Loose stitch - Adjust - Tighten stitch - Tack weld - Wait for tack to cure - Unstitch - Fillet - Tape 1 - Tape 2 - Tape 3 - Wait for resin to cure - Sand tape edges. 

Meantime the build does not seem to move forward because there's hardly any noticeable change in the appearance of the boat despite all this effort and time. In plank-on-frame boatbuilding, for each construction step there's a palpable progression, a more instantaneous gratification for the effort; you can actually see the boat grow.

To unstitch the keel the hull is hoisted to get enough clearance under. A small butane torch heats stubborn copper wires.  Lemongrass lamp drives away mosquitos.

Stem to stern batten determines new shearline which is 4 to 5 inch higher than that indicated in the plans. Seems to be the best compromise to increase the cabin headroom without making the boat look ungainly.  It should also make for a dryer cockpit. 

After the sides are trimmed, the inwales are glued on with the help of a thousand clamps. Well, almost. Also visible in this photo are the wires tensioned with turnbuckles to keep the bow symmetrical.

The side stringers then go in and a double layer of biax is laminated to the 5mm plywood at the bow. Rather than trimming the cloth at the chines, frugal me decide to run it up all the way up the sides.

Plans indicate diagonal stringers here but other builders of similar design commented that the stringers get in the way of cleaning the area.  

Meanwhile a supervisor appropriates the tool caddy.

The keelson is glued on. Keeping the transom open up to this point makes it easy to get in and out of the hull.

Everything including the kitchen sink is employed to glue down the 5 mm doubler in the cabin section. A fairing compound made of Micromix and fumed silica smooths the biax layers.