Building 23' catamaran. Build updates

[Chimo]

Hi Steve

Looking good. Have you sorted engine yet? What about the weight of these? http://www.evinrude.com/Content/Pdf/...f?version=1386

Cheers
Chimo

PS http://www.australianmarinecentre.co...e-tec-75-hp-l/

or http://www.evinrude.com/Content/Pdf/...f?version=1386

[stevemid]

It is a cold, rainy southerly blowing kind of day here on the Central Coast today. Better day to sit at the computer and talk about it rather than to open the shed door (faces S.) and actually do it.
Deck & Cabin.jpgDeck & Cabin Side-on.jpg
I finally got the deck and cabin done this week. Actually glassing on the cabin front and the deck and gunnels inside and out only took two days. BUT there was a lot of work underneath that I wanted to get done before closing everything up. Such as:

Sort out foam for collision/floatation chambers
Fair & paint anchor lockers
Fair underside of the deck (easier on the bench than doing it over my head in the boat.)
Install 40mm WRC supports under joins in the cabin front.
Holes in gunnels for fuel
Fuel tank connections.

To foam or not foam floatation chambers
I've been mulling this over for months. If you put in expanding foam, you cant get it out to inspect. If you don't put in foam or something in a water tight chamber, if the chamber is holed, water gets in and you sink. I came up with the idea to line the floatation chamber with black plastic and pour in the expanding foam in sections. That way if I ever had to get in there, I could cut a rectangular hole in the bulkhead and pull out the floatation bit by bit. I went so far as to line the chambers, and buy the foam but I just could not bring myself to pour in the foam. It was always going to be a major operation to get the foam out, even in pieces and I'd never get it back in with the deck on. In the end I decided to cut two 6" inspection holes to each floatation chamber, one from the anchor locker and one in the bulkhead that separates the floatation chambers from the berth area. I've found some very large plastic bags (about 4' by 6'). I'm going to stuff these in the inspection port and fill them with styrofoam packing peanuts. Then I'll tie off the bag and screw in the port covers. The bag will keep the peanuts from absorbing any moisture and I can always vacuum out the peanuts and have a look-see inside.

In this next picture you see the floatation chamber before I cut in the 6" inspection ports. Also shown in the WRC battens I installed. The deck is curved down to the bow and also has a fair bit of camber athwartships, and it takes a fair bit of pressure to force it down. I installed these red cedar battens to give me something to screw into when I first glued down (with cabosil-thickened epoxy) the deck. The glue held the deck in place while I got ready to glass it on the outside. Later, after I cut in the anchor locker hatches, I can use the inspection ports to glass the inside joins.
Port Floatation Chamber.jpgStb Floatation Chamber.jpg
This next picture is of the anchor lockers. I had asked earlier for ideas on what to paint this with (thanks for the inputs). Since I'm coming to the end of the build-the-shell phase and have a fair bit of material left over, I decided to fair these and then coat them with three coats of neat epoxy. I'll probably line the bottoms with some kind of foam to take the knocks from anchors, etc,
Anchor lockers.jpg

This next picture is of the Western Red Cedar (WRC) braces installed along the cabin front. Lots of different angles on these cuts but I finally found a use for my sliding compound cut mitre saw. After cutting and fitting the posts, I glued them in with cabosil-thickened epoxy. Then I glassed them in with two layers of 450 DB glass, which when forming a "U" channel over the brace becomes incredibly stiff.
WRC Braces.jpg
The last thing I wanted to do before glassing down the gunnels was to cut the fuel filler and vent holes and make the hose and electrical connections to the fuel tanks, before closing up the cabinets which provide access to the tanks. (I will always have access via inspection cutouts or ports to these areas, but it's much easier to do the initial installation with lots of elbow room. Here's a couple pics of the port and stb connections. The port side tank goes straight up to the gunnel without much curving. The stb side hoses do have to make some tight bends and although I rounded off all the sharp edges, I also put these inside protective hoses to counter future chafe problems. I plan to double clamp the fuel supply hose today. I also had to make the fuel sender electrical connections and I'd like to note what great service I got from Superior Terminals (Peterbo) in getting me down a complete connector kit (customised to my electrics plan) on a day's notice.
Port Fuel Tank Connections.jpgStb Fuel Tank Connections.jpg
Well, I can't procrastinate any longer. It's 10:30 and I'm off to the shed.

[Chimo]

Steve

Great work as usual.

Where do the anchor wells / lockers drain to?

Cheers
Chimo

[stevemid]

Chimo, Cormorant noticed that as well. The drains in the wet wells aren't installed yet. I bought some of these plastic snap together ones from Bias but they have "rot starts here" written all over them. Once I get the roof on I'll be putting wheels under the stands supporting the boat. This will allow me to push the boat away from the back wall and will then have have room glass proper wet well drains in the motor wells.

As far as the lockers go, the only drains I have planned are from the gutters around the hatches in the cockpit floor. These will drain into the tunnel. I did not put bungs in the bottom of the sponsons and I'm not planning to put in bilge pumps as there are six sealed bulkheads in each sponson.

Just the roof to go to have a complete shell!
Steve

[stevemid]

Hot Knife
I've always wanted one of these hot knives for cutting rope and more importantly sunbrella fabric. But I've found the $300 for an Engel a bit exy. Found this one at rope galore for only $100. with free shipping. That put it in my reach.

A job for every tool and a tool for every job.
Steve
Hot Knife.jpg

[Smithy]

For flotation your other options are pool noodles, plastic milk bottles and a boat I just looked at, boogie boards.

Sent from my V96A using Tapatalk HD

[stevemid]

For flotation your other options are pool noodles, plastic milk bottles and a boat I just looked at, boogie boards.

Sent from my V96A using Tapatalk HD

Boogie boards! Plenty of those around on clean up days. Yep, 'm definitely going to used something solid, like the noodles or the styro peanuts. The boogie board could be cut up to fit quite well. But I'm leaning to the styro packing peanuts in a mesh bag. My floatation chambers at the front of each sponson are really odd shaped plus I have to glass the underside of the deck through the 6" access ports in these chambers. I'm planning to put the mesh bag in first, and then blow the peanuts in with a reversed shop vacuum. (I can easily suck them out the same way.) When the bag comes out I've got the last of the little buggers AND no problem fitting/filling up the space with them.
Steve

[Smithy]

Scott Thorington's Freedom from Terrigal was what I was looking at and somehow Scotty had obtained a heap of boogie boards from a factory down in that Newcastle-Gosford sort of area.

[stevemid]

The cabin/cockpit roof is the last piece to go on to complete the shell. The roof extends about a foot forward of the front windows, covers the cabin and extends over 75% of the cockpit. The roof itself is big: over 2 metres wide and 3.5 metres long. It has a 40mm "doubler" all the way round and is curved to follow the curve in the aft cabin bulkhead.
Roof 1st Primer.jpg
The roof (and all parts) are already "pre-assembled" by virtue of the pre-routing and the panel joining schedule. I started building the roof by transfering the curve from the aft bulkhead to 4 pieces of MDF. After cutting these out, I had 4 male and 4 female support brackets which would allow me to lay down the roof either right side up or upside down on the floor. Two of the support brackets are on the floor in the next picture, the other two are sitting on the trestles.
Roof Underside & Doubler.jpg
I then cut the kerfs. Before I filled in the kerfs with bog and glassed over the entire underside of the roof, I laid in wire to the locations for cabin/cockpit lights, anchor light and solar panels. You can see one of the grooves for the wire to the "F" location in the next picture. Then I filled in the kerfs with bog and glassed over everything with 450gm/sq metre double bias fibreglass. Once this had gone off the roof would be restored to its original stiffness and would pretty much hold its new, curved shape. By the way, the wires exiting the conduit to the outside will actually exit to the inside of the doubler and meet up with a conduit which will be glassed into the join between the aft bulkhead and the roof
Roof Kerfs.jpg
As mentioned the plans called for a 40mm doubler around the entire edge of the roof to give the edge a thicker look. Of course the outside edge of this would need to be rounded off. This would require a lot of bog and labour so I decided to route out the edge and glue in 16mm electrical conduit to facillitate wiring and to give a consistent radius around the entire edge of the roof. The next picture shows a sample of that. There was still a lot of work routing, glueing in the conduit and fairing the lot.
Roof Conduit.jpg
On Frank's boat, the Spirited 230 built prior to mine, a boltrope had been installed to the underside of the roof to take the canvas which encloses the cockpit. As the canvas shrinks, pressure is put on the screws attaching the boltrope to the roof. The normal way to deal with this in balsa core is to drill the hole oversize, fill it with bog and screw into the bog. I decided to give myself some extra meat to sink the screws in to. So on the aft half of the roof, under the doubler, I glued in a 20mm wide piece of 3mm aluminium. I then glassed the doubler, the aluminium and the conduit as a unit, on to the roof structure.
Roof Aft Fixing Strip.jpg
The last thing that needs doing is to fair the roof. I am going to finish paint the top of the roof before installing it. I also ordered the solar panels and will install those after painting and before lifting the roof into place.

Steve

[stevemid]

Building a boat.....some weeks you make heaps of progress, and some weeks it seems like you get nowhere. If I'd a known building a boat is 70% sanding.....

I've been tidying up the fairing inside the boat in preparation to put the roof on. I'm almost ready put on a coat of hi-build primer- that'll show up all the faults that need filling/sanding--but is a landmark. I've had a really bad cold, that's descended into dry cough. The good news is I've found a great recipe for my mother's old cough syrup remedy: For one night:

60 ml scotch (2 shots)
60 ml lemon juice
60 grams honey 3T
1 cup very hot water

Drink half immediately (that's the part I'm particularly fond of)
Put half on the night stand. Sip every time you cough.

If you're really coughing badly, drink the lot and make another batch.

[Shark Poker]

" If I'd a known building a boat is 70% sanding.."

One of my laborers once asked if I had pre-named the (composite) boat that we were building. I asked "why, do you have a suggestion?"
He replied "Yes...... Sandy"

[Apollo]

Ha, they don't call it a torture board for nothing. I wasn't sad to see the end of that thing when we did a WRC yacht.

[stevemid]

Current state of affairs is that everything is faired except the joins for the roof. I've been fairing inside for weeks. I did the final coving in the cabin today and the cockpit tomorrow.

The roof has now been painted and goes on next, after I glue on the solar panels.

I plan to build and glass on fibreglass bow-rails instead of drilling 4000 holes through the deck to install stainless ones. I'm using 16mm underground conduit as a mould which will be covered with two layers of uni (the long way) and then wrapped twice with 100 mm 450 gsm DB tape. I've got some heat shrink plastic tape which will wrap around everything. This shrinks 20% when heated and will compress the wetted-out glass and give it a smooth finish. The bow rails will then be faired and painted white with the rest of the boat. Next I'll install windows and hatches being built (hopefully soon) by Sailfish Marine. High-build primer is next followed by fine sanding and paint.

Yamaha have $600 off per motor through Aug 31. Yippee!

I'm sanding by day and planning by night. Here's a couple photo's:

Roof.jpgSlide6.jpg

[The Woo]

Great to see you're progressing well mate!
And I hope you're back to good health.

[stevemid]

Great to see you're progressing well mate!
And I hope you're back to good health.

Thanks mate. Yep Rollin' again now. Ya know its a 7M boat and a 7M shed but the bow rails stick out about 200mm. I had to modify the shed. And it is a good thing I painted it because we got an east coast low today and it's raining like a cow pissing on a flat rock.
IMG_0945.jpgIMG_0946.jpg