Roughly speaking

Today I sanded down the rudder repair block to shape.  The curve was drawn from memory of the old shape.  The NACA foil was approximated by carrying the taper of the foil shape down horizontally.  I really doubt much lift is achieved this low in the board.  The main goal is to reduce energy robbing eddys (turbulence) from forming due to sharp edges.  That is the reason for the rounded off trailing edge and rounded of foot.
Unfortunately, I am out of Interlux two part epoxy fairing compound. I will fair and sand until very smooth. Then I will use e-glass 6 oz cloth and encapsulate with epoxy.  Next I will use the yellow cloth you see in the picture which is Kevlar and sheath the surface that might drag in shallow water. This will protect the wooden board from intrusion by water.  Finally I will fair over the entire surface blending the margins of the glass.  Kevlar cannot be sanded so it has to be faired up to the protruding margins much as I did with the centerboard on Belle.  When finished I will coat with 2-3 applications of Interlux Interprotect 3000/3001.  The final coat will be Awlgrip off white above the waterline (because I have a can of it and antifouling below the waterline.  I haven't yet decided on a color for the antifouling.  Meanwhile I await an order from Jamestown Distributors.
Update: I found the cans of Interlux two part epoxy fairing compound.

So here is the rudder, faired and with the Kevlar edge glassed in place. The hot weather had the epoxy kicking fast--so fast the pot was burning my hand.  Luckily we got it done before it set.

And the UPS man brought my cyanoacrylate glue.  I was able to mend the chip in the mast track.

It's the Little Things

Here's a couple of problems solved.  We were forever finding the halyard line sunk into the mast track groove. If you think about it, putting a sheave mid mast puts about a two inch offset on the pull angle.  The angle gets more obtuse as the sail head reaches the top.  When you pull the sail down, it just threads the entire luff groove.  Imagine the aggravation trying to repeatedly jerk outward on the halyard line while balancing in a pitching sea.   You get the idea.



So my cure is a small block of teak about one inch by one-half inch square placed at the top of the luff groove as a stopper.  I hollowed out the back to match the radius of  the mast. A carefully drilled hole in the lower third of the block was drilled with deep taper to accommodate a one-inch flat head stainless #8 screw.  I contemplated using cyanoacrylate glue to secure but decided a nice tight screw would hold fine as I found my drill sinking through the solid block inset to the mast tube.  If the piece should crack and fail, I would want a lot of grief removing it.  A strap eye was bent from flat to clevis shape to serve as a fairlead.  The fairlead was bolted through a carefully drilled transverse hole drilled through the upper third.  A transition rounding was filed in the pass-through section of the wood.  This arrangement should stop the sail luff at the top and re-route the pull to an angle just outside the luff groove.  The fairlead will keep the line from falling to the side and becoming fouled as the sail reaches the top of the mast.  Click on the picture for a more detailed look.

 Tridarka's rudder sustain substantial damage on the way back from Cedar Key.  I had carefully attached it to the mast with a couple of bungees but apparently it worked loose and dragged on the pavement for a few miles.  Note the flat spot where the rudder met the road.
I have decided while in the process of re-shaping the rudder to core-drill and put some lead shot in each hole.  The idea is to reduce neutral buoyancy so I will have some steerage when leaving from a beach.  Once in deeper water the rudder is cleated in the down position with a break-away cleat. I need just a little rudder into the water to maintain steerage when the rudder is not fully down.  A few ounces of lead should help.

I opened up an old dive belt and used a few ounces of pellets.  My plan was to take pictures of the six one-half inch holes I drilled in the foot of the rudder. Unfortunately, their is no photographic record.  Alternately I poured shot and epoxy until the holes were full.  Then I glued with thickened epoxy the wooden cap on the rudder from which I will shape the bottom of the rudder.  Here it is drying in my shop.

Four pounds of shot hold the cap in place.

We're really happy with the shelter.  It's a great place to work on boats and masts.  It's not a bad place to park the Smart care either.  Mr. Kitty thinks it's pretty cool too.  He loves to hang out in the new shelter/shop

The shop is looking good too.  Karen keeps this nice and clean.  Thanks to her for her organizational skills. They are priceless, indeed.
We are waiting for the cyanoacrylate glue to repair the mast track on Tridarka.  We are in search of some lead shot to place in the bottom of the rudder as well.

A big whoops happened on the way back from Cedar Key.  We did a few miles with the rudder hanging down.  Notice the large flat spot ground at an angle by the road. I figure the abrasion looks about like a 20 grit.  I am taking this opportunity to drill cores in directly into the base of the rudder where lead shot can be pored along with epoxy.  You can see the glue-up in the vice that will serve as a cap to reshape the rudder.

Well, it's done.  The shelter is ready for boat building.  We joked that if you the price by the cussing, well it couldn't be more than 50 cents.  The final results are great.  This winter we will buy the side panels so we can enclose it and work inside during the cold.  Despite all the hard work, we like the results.  

Today was "sea trials" day.  As you can imagine, we looked forward to seeing how our repairs would stand up to the real water world.  Belle looked a little bit "dismastulated"  my word describing removal of the important symbolic organs of motivation.  Never mind, the idea is to see if she leaks.

 The weather was lovely.  And yes, I am at the controls.  My pendant controller is running the autopilot.

We stopped at Aqualand Marina for lunch.

The Dockside Burger I enjoyed was awesome.  Karen enjoyed a special salad.
We traveled all the way to Browns bridge.  Then we noticed a very threatening cloud with lightening.









On the way back we found to our horror two inches of water in the cabin. De-Javu all over again to coin an oft used phrase.  Here is what we found when we removed the centerboard trunk case.

"Strong stream," says I, "must be a young one:)
Well, there you have it.  Too much water pressure for the RTV silicone.  I believe 3m 5200 will do the job.
We were just pulling onto the trailer when the squall hit.  30 knot winds and driving rain.  Glad I took heed and headed back when I did.

We're ready to put up the new shelter..except; we are missing one tube.  It's supposed to be here in 3-5 days.  Next weekend we hope to finish the shelter project.

We finished the final painting of the mast which was damaged by the clamp. Thank goodness the masts are finally done!

I wired in the new 80 amp breaker. Now we have full power to all devices.

The bilge pump is completely shorted out.  It will be replaced on the way to the lake.  We plan on doing the sea trials tomorrow.

We Near Finish on Belle's Mast Project

You should have seen us fretting over the manual riveter.  One-half a day was wasted as we stumble trough one tenth of our riveting job.  At the last minute we checked the Northern Tool catalog and rushed up to the store 10 minutes shy of closing.  We knew our luck was changing when the clerk offered, "we have that."
We polished off the rest of the job in less than an hour.

We used two tubes of 3M 5200 to bed the mast track.  We are very pleased with the job so far.  A small amount of re-caulking the margins will be necessary.

We are continuing to prepare for the shelter installation.  Today we bought a post driver. Wow is this a fine piece of equipment.  We looked on the web all over the US completely unable to find a 4 inch driver.  On a hunch we check our favorite hardware store (Handy ACE).  Sure enough, there it was.

Karen spent the last two days digging holes.  After digging a shallow depression she repeatedly soaked the hole.  After many hours of hard work, She finished twelve holes 12 inches deep.  We plan to drive 2X4's along the line and bury 4x4 corner posts. All will be poured with concrete and sawed off to level.  The final step will be to screw 2X6 planks to the posts which will serve as the level base for us to connect the uprights for the shelter.

A New Boat for the fleet

I got this one from Bill Moffitt, an inveterate builder of Jim Mchalak's boat designs.  This one is a Mike's Boat named Ember's Watch.  Bill is moving on to a new boat, D'Arcy Brin, a cabin boat of about the same length.  I have discussed this before on this blog.

We built a kind of strong back to place her on for her much needed rehabilitation.  Now we have four boats to finish.  This should keep us out of trouble for the next few years. Mike's Boat is a great fast and shallow beach cruiser. She should nicely fill the niche of the SeaPearl 21 which we miss.