Making sawdust....

Robert came by today with his beautiful daughter, Eliane. Reducing the 10'x0.75"x8" boards to various sized stringers & chine logs is a job for more than one person. With both Robert and Eliane on hand to help, we cut all the parts for two boats in a little over an hour with my table saw in the driveway.

I bought "select" grade pine stock from Builder's Warehouse, and I had bought two 10' boards extra above Eric's Bill of Materials. Figured that the knots & grain problems with "select" grade wood would necessitate a few rejects. They did.

Before we started on ripping the wood, I gave everyone ear plugs and introduced Eliane to Roz, our gentle 13 month old Husky/Shepherd puppy. Eliane stuck with Robert & I for a good 45 minutes before she got a splinter in her finger, which necessitated a visit with nurse Roz after a session with Doctor Papa. I was surprised, Eliane's attention span during noisy wood sawing was better than Thomas' would have been. Thomas opted for a third week at Science and Tech camp at the University of Ottawa this week.

Both sets of raw (wood) materials are now complete and Robert, Eliane and Eric are starting Eliane's build tomorrow at his house. For future builds, the only slightly complex saw work was cutting the angled chine logs, but I dusted off my trigonometry before Robert & Eliane arrived to calculate the size a straight blank that could make two chine logs in one pass through the saw.

Eliane is naming her boat "Plouffe-plouffe", she has colors all picked out and she's enthusiastic about getting a "tippy boat" just like her dad who singlehands a modified 29er on the lake they live on.

Just for the record, here's the designer specified cutting today for ONE boat:

qty    description
-------------------------------------------------
8    0.75 x 0.75 x 10' stringers
8    0.75 x 0.50 x 10' stringers
5    1 x 0.75 x 0.475 x 10' with 35 degree cut (I'll post a diagram later) chine logs
1    8 x 0.75 x 6' board for daggerboard & rudder

We actually allocated 10 of each of the stringers and 8 of the chine logs per boat so there was replacements if any were rejected due to knots etc. All measurements in inches unless marked as feet (').

Took Sunday off ....

Yesterday was offline for the Microskiff project. Went for a nice long bike ride with my wife on Sunday Bike Day. For people that don't live here, the national capital area shuts down a bunch of local parkways to cars Sunday mornings so bikes, rollerbladers and walkers can move without fear of cars. After the bike ride, I went out sailing in the Falco, although there wasn't a lot of wind.

Sailing in the Falco never ceases to amaze me on light wind days. I think it never fails to amaze the local keel boat sailors as well. Yesterday it was very light with wind from 0-5 knots. As Pornstar (one of our local I-14 sailors) said - it's the reliable Ottawa afternoon seabreeze - all 100 square feet of it. Ottawa is known for little random patches of wind surrounded by huge glassy expanses of nothing. The Falco often can sit in one of these patches, planing with the kite up - ripping along at 8-10 knots while the keel boats 20 yards away are sitting dead with sails slatting and drooping. One of the keel boaters yelled across at me (half trapped) "Where is the motor in that thing?". He's completely becalmed and I'm half trapped, planing with the kite up 20 yards away. The thing you have to be aware of is sailing right through the patch of wind (since you are going much better than windspeed) and teabagging. On the way back in to the dock, I was able to keep up with an elderly Tornado/tanning platform.

I've figured out how to single hand the Falco a lot better. Getting in and out of the water is the big challenge. You have to drop the rig across the dock (like the International Canoe folks do) and just let it sit there while you deal with dolly and ramp issues. Capsizing the boat intentionally across the dock isn't pretty, but it is the only way to buy time to get things done. I also concluded yesterday that I've got to get a new rudder headstock/tiller built, as the one I'm using right now has the tiller extensions attached too far aft. The tiller extensions just aren't at the right angle, and combining poor sensitivity with awkward angle just makes steering uncomfortable.

Sail plan ....

Eric just posted this sail plan line diagram on the Sailing Anarchy thread ... using high grade Tonkin bamboo (probably referring to the Tonkin Gulf in Vietnam). This is construction-grade bamboo of the kind used in the far east for construction scaffolding. I've got to order some from a supplier (bambooworld.com) on the left coast and have it shipped here.

Here's what Eric had to say:

Here is the new and final sail plan: a modernized lug rig. It requires very little hardware: halyard, sheet, Cunningham, five blocks total plus two cleats - all of which can be purchased at the local hardware store.

The rig as shown is designed to trys to accomplish a few goals:

• good performance both upwind & down
• low center of effort as this is a kid's hiking boat
• using simple unstayed bamboo spars
• using a simple, home sewn Tyvek sail (this does NOT mean unsophisticated)

I guess the closest proper description would be a balanced lug rig with a diagonal batten supporting a square top. I'm hoping Eric will elaborate on the choices and compromises he made arriving at this rig at some point.

Impulse control issues

I'm going to try to go to the local Builder's Warehouse lumberyard today to scope out the pine planking. Hopefully they've got some relatively clear stuff I can use to make the stringers and chine logs. The snobby part of me wants to buy western red cedar or nice douglas fir instead of lowly white pine.

I've been dealing with the temptation to go buy a big jug of West System epoxy and saturation coat all the plywood. I know this project is an attempt to prove we can build a low cost, low tech boat, but the desire to use proper epoxy is strong. The plan is to use tubes of construction adhesive, primer and paint instead of epoxy.

I have to have faith in the design/build plan and not upgrade materials until it is proven necessary.

<insert dramatic pause here>

Returned from the lumberyard - haven't bought anything yet as I was driving the little Toyota Tercel and it is not exactly 10' plank friendly. For the two boats I have to buy 8 x (1"x8"(undressed) x 10') and 2 x (1"x8"(undressed) x 6'). Even their best quality "clear" pine isn't exactly clear so I'll probably end up buying 2 extra 10' boards so I can throw out stringers with knots that are going to break. I could go down to Adams & Kennedy / Woodsource and buy real clear pine at twice the price, but that isn't in the spirit of the el-cheapo build.

The 2" foam isn't exactly cheap either - a 2'x8' panel was around $20 bucks per - and Eric's napkin math had us needing 3 sheets of 4'x8'. I want to re-confirm this with Eric as that's a hell of a lot of foam. $120 per boat plus tax for foam?

Postscript (July 16) - Later on I discovered that Eric was not planning on using the blue thermal foam - he planned on using the cheap beer cooler style white Styrofoam panels - about $7 per panel. Much cheaper and easier to see lots of people paying for. It does necessitate careful choice in the adhesive department - many adhesives and paints eat white Styrofoam chemically like free beer at a regatta

Postscript (July 17) - We actually only need 3 panels at 2'x8'x2". Robert has three unused panels in his garage I'll "buy" from him during our settling of expenses. The inside of the hull is not packed solid with foam - it is used to fill about 50-60% of the space more for structural support than flotation.

About Thomas

This is my son Thomas. This photo was taken in our back yard last year - he likes to use my whitewater kayak to paddle around the pool. As you can see he has his own wetsuit and likes the water.

Thomas has been sailing with me a lot and likes blast around on windy days, but has some concerns about sailing a boat by himself. Like most guys his age he likes technology, has a better iPod than anyone else in the family and just got his own cell phone so he could talk to his mom and I from Kid's Science and Engineering day camp at the University of Ottawa. His phone (fueled on a $10 pay-as-you-go card/month) is cooler than mine. Go figure.

I think he'll like sailing in his own boat if I let him use a GPS once in a while - so he can see his direction and speed. He's also suggested some waterproof VHF handheld radios so we can talk while on the water. He's not a fan of the spinnaker in my boat - it goes too fast and he's caught the boom with his head on an unplanned gybe.

About the designer ....

Eric McNicholl of Velox Design designed the Microskiff. This isn't the first project I've done with Eric - he designed the Falco single hand skiff I often swim from and sail (and built with him) from the Nepean Sailing Club in Ottawa, Canada.

(Falco photo credit to Arwenberg Photography, Chelsea, QC - thanks, Laura!)

Eric is full of ideas and willing to go far out on risky design projects that other people would not chance - brave, innovative and creative.

The Microskiff project presented here combines my original design brief with Eric's sensible social conscience, interest in environmentally safe designs and his willingness to teach people about his trade.

The plan

Here's the plan for people who haven't followed this blog's predecessor thread on Sailing Anarchy:

1) Assemble all the needed parts & materials for the build. I'm going to do the milling of the lumber myself for both Robert's daughter's boat and Thomas', so I've got to go buy the pine.

2) We are going to build Robert's daughter's boat first, with Eric so he can document the process and sort out the build, and then I'll build Thomas' boat with him. The build is "scheduled" to take place during a vacation week from school over the summer for Thomas. I'll work half days and build the boat with him the other half in the garage and driveway.

3) Once the hull is done, we'll work out rigging the boat. Eric has some ideas about using bamboo for the spars and Tyvek for the sail. I'm not afraid of sewing machines, so I'll probably end up making the sail for him. There are good resources on the web for sail design and panelizing. A serious consideration about the project is keeping with the low cost aspect, and that is why we want to try bamboo/Tyvek instead of just using a saiboard mast and a laminate sail. The good news is that if the "low-cost" design tanks we'll be able to just substitute a sailboard mast and appropriate sail.

4) Timing. I'm hoping we can get this thing done before we take off for summer holidays on Lake Huron at my parent's house. The "Microskiff" should fit inside my sailboat on the trailer and not even be noticed.