Some late summer short trips

 Fortunately we still had some opportunities to sail a few short local trips before winter storage. The boat is now on the trailer on the driveway under a cover. I removed the wooden parts which are in the garage now.

Below some impressions. I also (trial)camped in our local “marina” (large word for what is is here 😉).

 

   

Finally: Sails

 One of the few things that I didn’t make myself were the sails. This is a complete different profession and needs different tools as well. 

Fortunately we have a very good sail maker - specialised in small home built sailboats - in the neighbourhood (Groningen).

Rigging was easy and I was very pleased with the result.

Oar & Sail

Mast boomgallows bowsprit boom and gaff

 What is there to say about making the wooden spars of the boat. Probably a lot with the risk of getting too much into technical details.

Apart from the mast it was quite straight forward woodworking. Shaping it needs appropriate tools and one power tool I lacked for a while was router. 

The mast was a bit more complex. Not only because of the accurate routing but also the gluing with epoxy needs a fair bit of attention. My main concern was to get the mast as straight as possible. Surprisingly the mast came out straight right away despite of the separate parts being crooked. I guess 2 (or 4) times crooked = straight…

Galley box

 And of course I needed a Galley Box...

Inspired by Roger Barnes and many others on youtube I started to work out some ideas and tips:  Compact fitting in the far end of the bunks, a wind breaker for the stove, constructed so that pans and kettle fits exactly without the risk of falling of the stove.

And naturally it had to be made of aluminum 😏. As with the boat all similarities in construction with wood cease and so I had to make my own “inventions”.

I Started with the size of my kitchen gear and the stove. I absolutely wanted an alcohol stove as this is save, not pressurised, no gaslines, (almost) no moving parts in the stove and easily obtainable. Only disadvantage is that it has a bit lower burning temperature.

I also wanted my stove stable and easy to control and those types are a bit more rare. Most alcohol stoves are very small and only can be extinguished by putting a lid on. The bigger stoves are usually quite expensive. I found a very interesting stove in China.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003842529126.html

Companion way (continued) and solar power

 As I mentioned in a earlier post I had to consider additional measures to prevent water draining into the cabin. I had a piece of pvc (?)  from an anti wearing mat for furniture. That neither welds nor glues very easy so after some fitting and testing I riveted to the hatch. The hatch now is complete rain resistant.

Solar Power

For the solar power it took a while before I found a flexible panel with the right size. Of course there are lots of small panels available but to have a reasonable output it became a quest for the biggest panel that fits on the companion way garage. And dat was not a standard size. Besides that lots of small panels were equiped with "so handy" usb connectors wich I - obviously - did not like very much because of the poor water resistancy.

The Charger/regulator was another aspect. I found a (very popular) model on the internet which could do the job considering the specs. Thes model apeared to be faulty and I had to replace it. My habit is always not to replace it with the same brand and model as it allready "proved" not to be completely reliable.

Below the faulty one where you can see the problem: output on the regulator 12.8 V and on the panel just a mere 7.8V ???

It now works very fine and charges a AGM battery of around 50AH. I mainly use this for the cabin lights, to charge my cell phone and tablet and for navigation lights.

As you can see in the pictures below the LED navigation lights creates i nice "christmas treee" 😀

The top light was a bit more work and creativity. I decided not to insert a cable into the mast during the build of the mast. I thought that would be possible afterwards as well. (which proved correct)

    

Yes the bulb is a LED too...

In the picture above you also see that I made some changes in the rigging as well. I plan to paint the top of the mast white in the winter.

A pile of updates...

Looking at the blog-page and comparing it with my latest pictures I became aware of a substantial "gap". In my idea the progress wasn't so big but after all I did quite some things. So here we go:

Firs of all I wasn't very satisfied with the companion way hatch. It turned out to be skewed a bit and that bothered me. With aluminum the solution is: cut it off and weld it again (and then straight).

So that is what I did. I ended up with a shorter hatch but that was still within the limits to be rain-proof.

Probably I'll do some rain-test and decide if I have to install a small water-strip on the back-side. With heavy rains the water should drain into the garage instead of the cabin.

The new front welded in a backward angle, in line with the back wall of the cabin for aesthetics and the "old" handel in place again.

As Erik (my collegue) pointed out that the hole of the centreboard-line would wear out the rope I had to install some solution. This is a piece of 10mm alu rod cut in half and tooled to smooth.

Probably overdone but I thought it would be wise to install a Bilge pump. This one is situated in the port seat bunk. 

Also installed: Battery, switch panel, main switch and led lighting.

It took a while before I knew how I wanted to "upholster" the cockpit. It took another 3 months to get the materials from China 😏. This is the result:

 

In the next pictures you see the tabernacle welded in place. As this is from 10mm aluminum and the cabin wall is 3mm this could be a tricky weld (differences in heath dissipation). With some preproseccing and beveling the welds succeeded very well however.

Behind the tabernacle you also see the 30 Watts solar panel in place.

And the last pictures of this post: some wet testing and trying out the modifcations of the trailer.

These modifications didn't turn out to be very useful. I had quite some difficulty to get the boat on the trailer again. More on that issue in a later post.

It also wouldn't get off the trailer easy...

But with some "encouragement", wet feet and some help of a friendly neighbour it did...

Donald & Daisy

As you can see Donald & Daisy (the air scoops) arrived and were installed. 

Every step the boat becomes more of a beauty. And with every new piece of deck fitting the boat "doubles" in worth... Well not acurate of course but if all the expenses were expressed in weight, the boat would capsize 😊

Also fitted some other new deck rigging in order to be able to establish the forms of the anti slip mat wich I orderd in the mean time.

In the pictures below you see those fittings and also a first porthole pane installed...