Tampa, FL BRS 17 on first sail

I got an email yesterday from Dave, mentioned earlier on the blog, from Tampa, FL. He has been using his BRS with a motor only, until this week. He finished all the sailing bits and took it out sailing for the first time. Here's his account of the outing, with photos.

"We launched just south of Gandy Bridge on Tampa Bay. Winds were forecast at 10 knots from the SW and bay waters with a light chop. We were on the water by about 8:30 AM in order to miss the scattered thunderstorms. Set up was a breeze. I had the sails furled around the masts and bungeed. They were lashed down on top of the boat in two crutches placed into the mast steps. All I had to do was to unlash and step them before launch. I had my daughter motor us out of the boat launch canal (right into the wind) while I unrolled the sails, clipped on the sheets and set the sprits. Then we fell off the wind, killed the motor and were sailing.

I rigged the boat just like the plans indicate and everything worked as advertised. We had 5 people in the boat (570 lbs) and I left the 6hp/4stroke dragging in the water (tilted up would interfere with the sheets). Using the GPS we clocked our progress at around 3 knots close hauled and up to a little over 5 knots on a reach. On the way back we set up a run for the boat ramp and were able to sail wing-and-wing at about 3.5 knots then the wind kicked up and we reached 5 knots. It was very easy to manage and both my daughters caught on quickly. I didn’t spend a lot of effort with tweaking trim and balance or sail shape. I did adjust the snotter position and tension a little and it was not hard to do. We were able to sail straight up the canal, past the boat ramp (traffic) and luff up in a turning basin downwind. I released the snotter, removed the sprit, rolled up the sail and unclipped the sheets and fired up the motor to dock. I am not a good enough sailor to try to dock under sail at a busy public boat ramp – yet"















As you can see, this is not some tiny little dingy.

seat tops, rudder blade, and centerboard

This picture shows the rudder blade roughed into shape. I used my block plane to remove some material and then my Makita sander/polisher with a seven inch 36 grit disk. I'll have to clean it up a little with a lighter sander and fill some nail holes in it, but it's close to finished.








This is the centerboard roughed into shape. I took these pictures about a week ago. About two days ago, I was doing some more work on the centerboard and one of the glue joints failed (it's a lot of strips of wood glued together with epoxy). I think what went wrong was that the wood (mostly "yellow pine") drew too much of the epoxy into the wood, thereby starving the joint. I did precoat the wood with epoxy, but I did not thicken the second coat with anything.

Several of the joints failed, but some did not. I beat the laminated pieces that remained intact against my table to see if they would come apart, after I heated them with the heat gun. I beat them and beat them and beat them. The joints did not fail and there was no sign on the wood of the abuse - pretty tough stuff.

I put the pieces back together by first sanding them, second, wiping them with acetone, third, pre-coating with epoxy, and fourth, gluing with epoxy thickened with cabosil.
These next two pictures show the seat tops cut to shape. I will not glue until after my centerboard trunk and some other parts are installed. I think the boat looks good with them in though.

Seat sides, outwhales, outer stem - a lot of work!

In the past couple of weeks I've cut the seat sides to shape, joined them with butt joints, and epoxied and fiberglassed them into place. The last step, epoxying and fiberglassing, was the most time consuming. All the joints require thickened expoy - you can see there are many joints - to the transom, the bottom, the side bulkhead, the stringer between the side bulkhead and seat side, and the forward bulkhead. I failed to get a picture of the framing for the seat sides. It was not difficult to cut and fit all these pieces, but work on the rest of the pieces for the seats could not proceed until these were glued and cured.

This photo shows the outwhale and outstem dry fit. These pieces are yellow pine. I cut the gunnels out of two pieces and then scarfed them to get the full length.











The rest of the photos show the finished work. I took about 3 hours to do each seat side - just the epoxy and fiberglass work. I did one side one day and the other the next day. I am please with the results. My fiberglass and epoxy work is not flawless, but it is pretty neat.






















The outwhales and outer stem took about one hour to glue up. It was in the 90s yesterday when I did these pieces. I sweated a lot, but because the humidity was only around 55 %, it was not too bad. Which leads me to the following conclusion: I don't care what they say in Phoenix, dry heat is nowhere near as bad as humid heat! It actually felt very nice with a breeze yesterday.




It surprised me how long these steps took.

Misc.

This is the piece of wood I am planning to use for the outer stem (the very front of the boat - the part that will like hit docks and various other obstructions). It is old growth yellow pine (I hope it's longleaf, but I can't tell). It is completely saturated with sap and very dense. I have to do some research to determine if I need to treat its surface before I glue it on. I've read that with some "oily" woods like teak and white oak, you're supposed to wipe them down with some chemical before applying the epoxy in order to get a proper bond. I don't know yet about pine sap.

It's not easy to see in this photo, but the bottom of the side stringer (the lower horizontal piece) was originally flush with the bottom of the piece running horizontal across the transom. This was incorrect and so I had to partially remove it and re-glue where it lies now. Fortunately, this was not too difficult. I just chiseled it loose from the side. I did manage to rip one layer of the plywood from the port side. I think the only reason this did not happen on the starboard side is because I did not have a very good glue up there. I was glad to be able to fix this without too much trouble. Had I left it the way it was, the seat would have been too high at the stern.
This picture shows the side frames partially glued in place and how the boat looks without the temporary center frame. The plans have these as solid pieces of plywood. I cut the centers out so that I can utilize the entire length of the storage areas which run almost the length of the boat on either side. I want to be able to fit fishing rods in there.







This photo just show the pine boards I found in my shop. They are both 16' long, yellow pine. The one on the bottom is knot free and very nice. The one on the top is nice but for a few knots. Because the bottom piece is 16' by about 6", I can get all but two feet of both gunnels out of it. I will then scarf the remainder from the top piece, cutting so as to avoid the knots.

Keep it movin'

I got what felt like a lot of work done on the boat the past couple of weeks. It does not look dramatically different, but all the work was necessary.

On the left is just a picture of what I used to mix the epoxy and thickener when doing my fillets and fiberglass work. I was able to do all the joints on the boat (I will have more to do later when I add more pieces to the boat) in about 2 hours.

I used epoxy with slow hardener and fiberglass tape I ordered from B&B Yacht Designs - the folks that designed the boat. In the picture you'll see a paint mixer, a plastic Folgers container and a plastic measuring cup. I measured out the epoxy and then mixed it using the paint mixer installed in my cordless drill. The way I would have done it before would be to stir it by hand using a mixing stick of some sort. This can get tedious. So after the epoxy was mixed in the measuring cup, I poured it into the Folgers container and added the cab-o-sil and mixed it again with the cordless drill. Then, I made all my fillets.

After I had the fillets done, I took the glass tape, which I had already cut to fit at every joint, and wet it out in my "glass wet out box." This is just a piece of plywood with scrap wood around the perimeter to form a lip. I put a sheet of plastic in it so I'll have a clean surface. Then I lay the glass tape down, mix the epoxy, pour it on the tape and squeegee it around until the tape is saturated, and then apply the tape over the fillet.


Here you can see the joints. I then installed the side stringers. The starboard stinger I applied the glue and then shot sheet rock screws through it to clamp it. The wood split in several places from the screws, but only minor ones.

So, when I did the port side stringer, I drilled holes in it for the screws first and this prevented any splitting.

I scarfed the gunnels and have them dry fitted in this photo. I plan to glue them up today.

This is a photo of the rudder blade. It is made of two layers of 3/8 plywood. The plans provide a grid to transfer to the workpiece to help with cutting the shape. I cut the top a little too flat, but I don't believe this will affect much as it will not be in the water. I still have to shape the blade to the correct taper.








Here you can see the joint of the inwales with the stem. On the port side I took my time and shaved a little bit here a little there, until I got it just right. I got hasty on the starboard side and cut it too short. I'll have to fill the gap with thickened epoxy.

Wojtek's maiden voyage

Here are a couple of videos of Wojtek's maiden voyage in his BRS in Poland last week:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9s1JlxPIyg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyxNpVpVXHU

I wonder what the water temperature is?

Flipped!

Well I got the second bottom panel glued on yesterday. This afternoon, I was going to wait on some help from some friends to turn it over, but when I picked up one side to test the weight, I just kept lifting and next thing I knew I had the boat resting up on its side. I went ahead and finished turning it. Fortunately, nothing cracked - at least not that I heard.













Then, I noticed a problem. You can see here that the temporary center frame is not quite centered. It looks a bit worse in real life than in the the pictures.










I measured each side from the chine to the keelson. One side measured about 29 7/8 inches and the other side was about 29 5/16 inches. An eighth or less I can live with. But 9/16 is more than 1/2 an inch and this seems like it would result in a severe twist being built into the boat - it may have already happened.

I clamped the bottom of the center frame to line it up with the center of the keelson and this helped. I think that brought it within a 1/4 inch. I don't want to glue the side panels to the bottom until I either fix this or determine it does not matter. I'm gonna need some input from others on this one.

I took the same measurement (chine to keelson) at the bow and stern and detected no noticeable difference - they seem to line up perfectly.