Masthead Fittings

07 Thursday Aug 2014

In changing over to (or originally building) a junk rig, one of the questions that needs to be resolved is how all those many lines will run to and from the top of the mast, or masts. Sorting out a plan, and then implementing it, has been a process.

The most common approach seems to be having a special cap, with an array of attachment points, either cast or fabricated. Some Wharram catamarans deal with masthead attachments using two horizontal rods, one above the other, at 90° to one another, which make places for either lashings or loops tied around the mast to catch and avoid slipping down. Another alternative is a small eye strap screwed to the mast at the backside of each lashing; the lashing is supported sturdily around the mast, and is prevented from sliding down toward the deck by the eyestrap. I’m partial to the methods that avoid putting substantial holes through the mast… In the previous AUKLET rig, that last method with the eye straps is what I did for the halyards, and it worked well.

The tricky thing about a junk rig is how very many lines need to be connected to the top of the mast. Some folks still do it with lashing, and that was my fallback plan, but I was hoping for something more like a proper fitting. At the same time, I was not excited about trying to sort out the fabrication process (welder? foundry? galvanizing??), and there was some question about the appropriate diameter for the fittings for the two masts anyway; waiting for that clarification meant that fabrication could not be started decently ahead of time.

Considerations on the diameter question have been that the original wood mizzen mast, which we are still using, is taller than needed for the halyard and other lines for the junk sail, but I have wanted to keep that extra height (flags!), and the mainmast that we had been using really needed to be changed out. As a result, there were questions until very recently about the mast fitting diameters. As far as I know, there is no place to get stock, already made junk rig masthead fittings.

But there’s another option! Traditional gaff rigged sailboats make use of a fitting called a “mastband.” This is a slightly tapered ring, generally with either two or four eyes arranged at equal distances around the ring (photos follow). The eyes can be used for shackling on blocks, or for tying lines directly. Mastbands are not perfectly easy to find – they are not something available from the ordinary sailing catalogs – but fortunately there is a company that still makes them. That company is Davey, in England, and they make a variety of sizes, in either bronze or galvanized steel. Their hardware can be found in the US in the R&W Rope catalog http://rwrope.com/ , as well as through Toplicht http://www.toplicht.de/en/index/, which is located in Germany – their online catalog is now in English as well as the original German. (As always, I’m not receiving anything for these mentions or links – but both those catalogs sure are fun!)

Standard mastbands with four eyes are pretty close to the typical five attachment points of a custom junk rig masthead fitting. With an extra line looped around the mast immediately above the fitting, prevented from sliding down by the fitting itself, I think it’ll work out fine. (This looped line will be the “mast lift,” for those who follow junk rigs more closely.) The mastband will be oriented so that the eyes are positioned on the 45° diagonals, relative to the centerline of the boat – this way one of the eyes will be at the appropriate angle for the halyard, which is the highest stress line that hauls the sail up, and for a junk rig is supposed to be at that 45° angle, somewhat off to the side.

The next questions are the particular choices, and how these mastbands will actually be secured to their respective masts. There’s a bronze band for the wooden mizzen, and a galvanized one for the aluminum mainmast. Bronze hardware and aluminum masts do not fare well together, so it’s galvanized there, and bonus, it’s more economical – but the bronze is very pretty, and I sprung for that for the smaller mizzen. On a wood mast, typically there is either a small shelf carved into the mast for the band to rest on, or small wood stops are screwed to the mast, to prevent the band from working its way down. Neither option seemed particularly exciting, because of compromising the already small-diameter wood, and as it turned out the position that would be ideal for the band is above where the band that we have would rest naturally, and below where the next smaller size would fit.

Here’s a photo of the mizzen sail laid on top of the mast, to help figure out the mastband placement (really, the sail goes on the other side of the mast). It’s important that when the sail is raised, the halyard attachment is a decent amount higher than where the halyard is tied to the yard. This is because of potential torque on the top of the mast when the sail is out to the side. Having a length of extra halyard between the masthead fitting and the yard prevents that torque – and potential mast damage – from happening.

Because the ideal position for the mizzen mastband is halfway between the two available band sizes, we have yet another experiment: securing the mastband is being done with small wedges made from cedar shingles, jammed up from the bottom, with top ones going down over the bottom ones wherever there are gaps. The lower wedges are seized in place with tarred nylon seine twine and trimmed, and the top ones are trimmed flush with the band and then caulked to prevent water coming in from the top.

I would’ve liked to have used dolfinite in this process – mast rot can be an issue, with everything so tight against the mast – but it seemed like it would be a hopeless mess to try to get dolfinite in there with all those shifting wedges and adjustment. So the theory here is that the caulk will prevent endless drenching from above, and the gaps between the cedar wedges will allow for drying from below. We’re hoping for the best on this, and will be paying attention to how it fares. The white caulk is a bit glaring now, but probably next year it will be time to paint the mast, and the upper part will be the traditional white, so it should all blend in.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Then there’s the mainmast…

Fitting the mastband to the tapered aluminum mainmast presented two problems: one, the mastband was not perfectly circular, so it rocked when placed on the mast. Additionally, because of the difference in taper between the mast and the inside of the band, there was a substantial gap all around the upper section of where the band would otherwise be meeting the mast. This contributed further to the rocking.

We decided to apply dynel fabric and epoxy to this situation. Dynel is nicer to work with than fiberglass – no splinters in your skin, and the fabric holds together a little better than fiberglass cloth when you’re working with it; otherwise it’s the same idea. The theory was to get one layer of dynel around the mast, extending above and below the band, and then to scrunch the epoxy-wetted fabric into the gaps, as well as creating a small roll below the fitting, to give the fitting something secure to rest against. An added advantage to this arrangement is that the aluminum and galvanized steel are electrically isolated from one another. Although these two metals are supposedly fairly compatible, it’s relaxing to know that there will be no galvanic corrosion to worry about.

In the end, rather than wrapping one piece of dynel around the mast, it was easier to cut pieces of dynel to fit around the mastband, dry, with temporary masking tape on the outside, and then to put epoxy on the inside section, and slide the whole thing onto the (previously scuffed) mast. After this, the masking tape was gently pulled off and the dynel stretched out above and below the band. Once stretched out, epoxy went on all of the remaining fabric, and then the fabric was delicately folded back toward the ring. Theo had a handy thin stick in one hand, and a narrow putty knife in the other, and with Suzanne taking care of brushing the epoxy onto the fabric it all worked pretty well. Theo used the little stick to help spread the epoxy and work it into the fabric, and then to help with rolling and tucking the whole business into place.

The only complication was that once the dynel was all folded and stuffed, it had a kind of puffy thing going on, and declined to stay scrunched into one solid lump. We ended up wrapping the whole business in Saran wrap, and then applying masking tape to press the dynel snugly against itself and the mast/mastband joint. This arrangement worked out fine, except for that the Saran wrap was not exactly ideal when it came to later getting it off the hardened epoxy. It did do a good job of preventing the masking tape from being glued into the dynel/epoxy, but my dreams of the plastic wrap neatly peeling off were quite far from the truth! Still, when we took it all off the next day, and spent about an hour of fussy removal of small broken pieces of plastic wrap, it came out pretty good. Sandpaper is next, after the full week of curing (epoxy dust is quite toxic before it’s fully cured), and then the whole thing should clean up just fine. The dynel/epoxy will be painted later, to protect it from uv.

So now there are two mast bands in place! Each of them feels quite solid and secure, and presently we’re working on mounting the brackets for the tricolor light and AIS antenna at the top of the mainmast. It’s going to be fun to start attaching lines!

Steering Rehab, part 3: the rudder stop

24 Thursday Jul 2014

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steering

Having made it this far in the steering rehab process (see previous two “Steering Rehab” posts), we are left with the issue of the rudder stop. The rudder stop prevents this:

After our first launch in 2012, and then a week or so at the dock getting things in order, a friend and I took the boat for its first sail, for a few hours in the Connecticut River. This was lovely. As we went along, we noticed a little bit of sticking when the tiller was all the way over, but at first it was mild. Then there was one of those moments when you really, really wish the boat would turn more than it is, and the tiller was put over solidly to one side. There it stayed. We thought maybe a stick from the river had become jammed, and we spent some time fussing with a boat hook, reaching over to try to clear whatever was going on. This problem of sticks, or who knows whatever else, jamming in the rudder is one of the big reasons why an easily accessible transom-hung rudder is preferable (for me anyhow) – the underneath rudder is the only thing about the Glasshouse Chebacco design that I have wished, from the beginning, was different. Anyway, there we were. We had launched the boat on April 20, and the river was still quite cold, so neither of us was in any hurry to jump in. We made many tries at the tiller, but felt that further force was more likely to break something than to resolve the problem.

Shortly after the rudder first jammed, and we started sailing in uncontrollable circles, we had put down the anchor and lowered the mainsail. We were already in back of a small island in the river, so it was a great spot to stop and consider, held by the anchor and thus avoiding problems from the current. When it became clear that we could not get the rudder unstuck, we furled the mizzen sail and resorted to the motor. With the electric Torqeedo on the back of the boat, steering by turning the motor sharply to one side, it was possible to overpower the stuck rudder and to steer the boat in a relatively straight line. Back we went to the dock, which was fortunately not terribly far away, at about a half a mile.

Tom Potter, the builder of the boat, kindly made a trek a couple of days later, from Narragansett Bay to Deep River, Connecticut, to figure it all out. We took the boat around the corner to the boat ramp, steering with the motor once again overpowering the rudder, and in he waded (in April!), tools in hand. Fortunately the giant crowbar was not necessary. But it did take some good, solid pulls on the rudder itself to get it unstuck. There were no foreign objects… the rudder was simply jammed against the slope of the hull.

This particular incident resolved just fine, but it sure wasn’t something that I wanted to have happen again at a bad moment. Before final departure from that dock we added some pieces of wood, screwed down to the cockpit sole to make a stop, so the rudder could no longer turn far enough to get stuck against the hull. Conveniently, the original arrangement at the top of the stock included a seized on wooden piece, that was originally there to support the tiller at the correct angle for the autopilot. This provided something for those additional pieces of wood to bear against, to limit the rudder’s swing. This entire “stop” arrangement is the bit that has needed to be redone, since the recent changes to the stock/tiller connection have made the earlier system unworkable.

An alternative to this stop arrangement in the cockpit would be fastening shaped wood pieces to the underside of the hull, on either side, that the rudder itself would bump against without sticking. However, that approach has its own complications: drag while sailing, bottom-painting obstacles, and being hard to check underway, as well as requiring drilling holes in a perfectly good, waterproof hull. I haven’t been so excited about that idea.

On the other hand, the cockpit rudder stop arrangement is complicated because of the question of how to fasten the wood piece that goes onto the stock, without drilling holes in the stock. Because of the strain on the wooden stock when sailing, I’m unwilling to take the chance of weakening it with significant holes, especially for bolts that would be heavy enough to secure the stop (my apologies for these words that are so similar). In the previous version, there was the longer stop, caulked and lashed to the stock with seizing, with a tiny pair of pins to prevent slipping. Now, with the tiller clamp in place, there’s not enough room to feel like the same thing would work – the stop block would be too short, and likely to twist.

As Theo and I commiserated on this situation, she came up with the suggestion of “coopering” – making a tiny barrel around the stock, which would grip the stock firmly by being compressed around it with something along the lines of hose clamps. The shaping of the pieces is pretty much the same as the technique for building a round, hollow spar – like a barrel. This idea seemed intriguing, and likely to be sturdier than simply fastening on a shaped chunk of wood, or two, with hose clamps or outer bolts. Theo disappeared into the workshop with some pieces of doug fir and a block plane, and we ended up with this:

The cutout area, on the lower half of the “barrel,” is the section that will swing above the comparatively smaller, wedge-shaped stop that will be screwed down to the cockpit sole. The intact part of the lower barrel will, in theory, be sturdy enough to prevent the rudder from swinging beyond the point where the barrel contacts the wedge. This will stop the whole works at a point where the rudder is a comfortable margin short of being able to jam against the hull.

For the final installation, rather than using a hose clamp we are going to try stainless wire, tightened with a nifty gadget called a ClampTite tool. The end result should be both elegant and less bulky than a hose clamp, along with doing away with the hazards of hose clamp rough edges in such a high-traffic area, or piles of rigging tape. For more on how the ClampTite works, see http://www.clamptitetools.net/ and, for a video demonstration, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBhkp-DZMrE (As always, I’m not receiving anything for mentioning these links.)

Presently, the barrel section is in the paint shop. Next week it will be clamped/wired, with dolfinite, to the stock, and then the wedge piece can get sorted out. In the meantime, the various other projects will be getting their turns: drogue storage, the new mainmast, and further work on rigging the sails.

There’s a lot of new stuff to test on this boat, when it goes back in the water! I’m optimistic, and at the same time rather full of suspense…

[A photo of the completed rudder stop installation will be added here, after all the parts are in place.]

Steering Rehab, part 2: tube worms, and tiller angle

21 Monday Jul 2014

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Now the keel has been rehabbed, where the pintle that supports the rudder bolts to the wood, and the rudder has been reinstalled. Before that reinstallation we also added copper sheet to the lower part of the inside of the rudder tube. This was to address the serious collection of unusual marine growth within that cavity. Tube worms! Looking inside that closed space, after taking the rudder out, felt like something to do with a National Geographic special. Quite a few mussels too, and some barnacles, none of this good on a wooden structure that is ordinarily completely inaccessible. (See photo above.)

Because we are using ePaint for antifouling, we couldn’t just paint the inside of that well. ePaint uses reactions with UV light in order to work, and that’s a dark spot. Regular antifouling would have been an option, but would not have been accessible for new coats in the future. So we got some soft copper sheet and, thanks to Theo again, and some intricate cutting and folding, that area is now lined with copper. It’s bedded in Dolfinite, which was its own huge challenge. Suzanne, who did the dolfinite part, said “put this picture on the blog, and tell them that I was singing ‘what I did for love…'” Which she was.

(You’d think this was an ad for dolfinite, but it’s not – we just like the dolphin picture (as well as the product). As always, I am not receiving anything for mentions of particular materials, or anything else, in this blog.)

At least we get some laughs, but it really was a pesky job. Still, it feels worth it – it’ll be good to not have to worry about a worm farm in there, and potential rot of that part of the hull. If somebody reading this is planning to build one of these Chebacco boats, and to use it for more than short stints in the water, it would be a LOT easier to do something about this during construction…

Once the copper was sorted out, and the rudder back in place, the tiller “clamp” went on, along with the tiller. There was an issue about getting the tiller to sit at the correct angle for the autopilot, and doing this without tearing up the clamp – during installation, paint was inadvertently scraped to bare wood in just a few rounds of fussing with the tiller. Addressing this issue involved a screw and washer on each side of the tiller strap spacers, and a little metal shield for the clamp. As I said in the previous post on this steering subject, we now have a fantastic conversation piece; in this particular part of the process, we’ve had some good fun with the idea of the tiny little armor outfit, available for sailing gnomes…

All of this steering/rudder work has been going on gradually for months. The rudder even got several coats of bottom paint while it was off and so easy to work on in the heated shop, and the aft edge of the keel got its own turn with antifouling before the rudder went back on. This brings us to the present, as far as the steering rehab, where we are now working on the rudder stop. The next post will talk about that process.

Steering Rehab, part 1: rudder/tiller connection

19 Saturday Jul 2014

Posted by shemaya in the boat

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When the boat and I came home last fall, the rudder/tiller connection was showing signs of serious distress. Looking into this, and repairing it, led to addressing not only the rudder/tiller connection, but other parts of the steering system as well.

The steering system, as designed for the Glasshouse Chebacco, is pretty basic. A wooden rudder, bolted to a wooden stock (what would probably be called a “shaft” if it wasn’t a boat steering part) of about 2 inches in diameter, with a bolt crossways through the top of that wooden stock, to connect the stock to stiff metal straps from the tiller. This is a low-tech way to address the subject, meant to be more accessible for homebuilders. In hindsight, knowing the kind of use to which I was hoping to put the boat, a more involved design and construction method probably would have been more appropriate from the beginning. Hindsight is so clear!

The more usual system for this type of inboard rudder involves a metal stock, attached metal “fingers” where the blade of the rudder is going to go, and then the blade built out of wood or whatever else, attached to the stock and that metal frame. Because I had gotten the “sailboat parts” from somebody else (who converted his Glasshouse Chebacco to a motor tugboat), I already had a Chebacco rudder built to the original design. So that’s what we’ve been working with.

Last fall, once we had the rudder off of the boat, it was an option to build a new one, metal frame and all; in the end, doing that probably would have been more efficient, but that wasn’t clear at the time. As it is, there has been wood restoration at the lower back end of the keel, under the fitting that holds the bottom of the rudder, as well as pretty involved work to restore the top of the stock, and to work out a system better than the original tiller bolt, that will still allow removal of the rudder without having to tear the wood apart.

In addition, this boat has had problems with the rudder jamming against the hull, if turned too far by either human or waves. So there’s a rudder stop, at the meeting of the stock and the cockpit sole. Adding to the agenda this past winter, because of the change in the tiller connection the rudder stop has also needed to be reworked. The whole business is not yet completely finished (yup, it’s now summer!), but the good news is that if we floated the boat tomorrow, we could actually steer it as it is right now.

Last fall, once the boat was in the driveway and the trailer up on blocks, the rudder was taken off and into the shop, and the whole process was begun. Removing the rudder involved first removing the fitting that keeps the rudder from dropping down. The news that was hidden underneath that fitting wasn’t as bad as the top of the stock, but it wasn’t great either:

The fitting is funny – instead of a rudder “shoe” which would be bolted on to the bottom corner of the keel, so that its special socket would hold the bottom of the metal stock, the arrangement on this boat uses a pintle – an upward pointing spike that is ordinarily part of a rudder hinge.

The bottom of the rudder, where the stock ends, has a vertical hole which fits over that pintle. The stock passes up through the boat in a rectangular “rudder tube” that comes up to the cockpit sole, where there is a piece of 1/2 inch thick plastic sheet with a hole in it, that forms the bearing that supports the upper part of the stock in its turning motion for steering the boat. (You can see this “bearing” in the very first photo at the top of this post.)

It might not make sense to go through all this description, except for that some readers might be here for the boat details – and rudder systems, for me, have been a long mystery. If nothing else, through this winter of steering rehab I have at least quadrupled my understanding of rudder systems! Maybe those systems have been the same kind of mystery for some other folks as well, so here we go.

In a boat with a rudder off the stern – like both the Falmouth cutter and the Peep Hen – connecting the tiller to the rudder is not a big deal. There is no stock, just an upper part of the rudder itself, with wood or metal pieces that make a sandwich for connecting the top of the flat rudder and the tiller, and some bolts to hold it all together. If you don’t like how it’s set up, it’s easy enough to strengthen it. We did this on the Peep Hen.

But in a boat that carries its rudder underneath the hull, rather than attached to the back on the transom, things get more complicated. You have to have a stock (the shaft from the rudder, up through the boat, to the tiller), which needs to be basically round. (Ours is slightly oval, which is its own complication.) Then at the top of the stock there is the question of how to attach the tiller, which is a giant lever that puts great strain on that stock/tiller connection. On a metal stock, one way this connection can be handled is by using a metal cap with either flat spots on the stock and inside the cap, or some kind of key so that everything turns together. That would be so nice!

When we first launched the boat in 2012, and eventually got sailing, after a couple of weeks that included some heavier sailing conditions the original bolt arrangement wasn’t looking so sturdy. There was play where it shouldn’t be, and the hole in the wood was “wallowing,” becoming wider as the metal pin worked at the edges of the hole. In to Narragansett Bay, and consulting with the builder and a machinist he works with… adjustments were made, with a new, bigger, shouldered pin, and a slightly bigger but more closely fitting hole. We all declared it good enough for the moment, and off I went, with a couple of wrenches for occasional tightening.

This held up perfectly well through the remaining 5 1/2 months of sailing in 2012, and for most of the four months last year – two trips from Connecticut to Maine, one of them almost to Canada. But by the time I was back to Gloucester, MA last year, I went to snug the bolts again, and an odd bit of wood pushed up about an eighth of an inch, right out of the top of the stock. No more tightening! Fortunately I was quite near to our haul out point, and things held together for that last week or so.

Opening things up, here’s what we saw:

This had been, after all, two heavy seasons of sailing after that initial “good enough” fix. It held up pretty well, considering! Now the task was to make a connection that would last.

My original hope was for a metal cap to fit over the wood, so the pin connecting the tiller could go through holes in the cap. This might have been possible, though complicated to make, and to fit snugly to the stock. If the stock was made thick enough to adequately support a bigger metal connection, then the rudder would not be removable, as the larger stock end would not pass through the hole in the bottom of the boat. We could have gone with a smaller metal cap, but the arrangement was not inspiring of confidence, especially with the image of the deteriorated original so freshly in mind.

Fortunately Theo, as I’ve mentioned somewhere before, is a high-end woodworker – an artist and sculptor who does assistant work for me a couple of days a week as her “day job.” I couldn’t be more blessed, and over these last few years her work time here has been devoted more and more specifically to woodworking. Taking on the question of the rudder/tiller connection, with the desire for the rudder to be removable without destruction, she came up with a unique solution. We have been calling it a “clamp.” I have no idea what the proper term would be.

In order to make this connection really tight, first the top of the stock was repaired, with additional wood laminated on with epoxy, and then shaped. Then small wedges were added to the upper bit of the stock, to create a shallow valley on each side. The “clamp” has corresponding wedge shapes that lock into those valleys when the whole thing is bolted together.

A bronze “saddle,” bent at a local machine shop, goes over the top of this to provide a sturdy pair of holes for the pin that holds the tiller straps. The pin has been machined with shoulders that match the saddle, so tightening the pin will tighten the tiller straps without crushing the wood. Lucky for us, Suzanne’s dad, Henri, has a big metal lathe in his cellar, and the skills to use it! His work shows up quite a bit, here and there on the boat.

There is undoubtedly a better, more efficient, way to have solved this tiller connection problem (besides the aforementioned starting over and building a new rudder with a metal stock). But we couldn’t think of it, so now we have a fantastic, functional, and sturdy conversation piece, ready for testing, right there in the middle of the cockpit. And the rudder is indeed removable, hopefully to be used this way for many years.
(the pin in this photo has not yet been trimmed to length)
Additional photos of this project can be seen here: http://smu.gs/1hn0kDE

Next up: copper in the rudder tube, to discourage the (no pun intended) tube worms!

Jordan Series Drogue, part 2: design for AUKLET

13 Sunday Jul 2014

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Jordan Series Drogue

(photo: oceanbrake.com)

The overall description of a Jordan Series Drogue (JSD) is included in the previous drogue post, from July 3, 2014. Now, here are design details related specifically to AUKLET. This includes the specs for the drogue itself, the arrangement for attaching the drogue to the boat when deployed, and a workable system for stowage. (This post is a little long, but it’s all written, and it seems silly to artificially divide it up.) First, the drogue itself.

The standard table for calculating drogue specs does not go down to boats the size of AUKLET, whose fully loaded displacement approaches 4000 pounds. The table begins at 10,000 pounds, and goes up from there. However, Roger Taylor’s MINGMING, loaded for cruising, comes in at about 2000 pounds, and he has had a successful experience in severe storm use of his JSD. It has to be mentioned that, due to an incorrect knot and resulting chafe, he did lose this drogue partway through that first big test. Where he talks about this experience, in the book MINGMING and the Art of Minimal Ocean Sailing (pp 327-331), he concludes that the drogue functioned beautifully, regardless of the problem that he had with the knot. Reading the story, that sounds quite true, and as he says in the book, the knot issue is easily avoidable. His second drogue experience, described in MINGMING and the Tonic of Wildness (pp 63-73), was also interesting, though complicated by the issue of difficult retrieval. Regardless, based on his experiences in his smaller and lighter boat, I have felt good about working up from the specs that he shared.

The first big design questions are the number of cones and diameter of the line to which they are attached. Roger Taylor used 87 cones, having extrapolated from the standard table, and then, happily, having had the chance to check this directly with Don Jordan (designer of the Jordan Series Drogue) who concurred with this number. Don Jordan has since sadly passed away, but he left us all lots of information with which to continue onward. Roger Taylor chose to put his drogue together with cones on 5/8 inch braided nylon, acknowledging that this was overbuilt – being the size recommended for boats displacing 10,000 pounds – but definitely sturdy.

For further guidance, since I was planning to purchase a commercially built drogue, I had the opportunity to ask the folks who make them. One builder suggested 1/2 inch braided nylon, the other 5/8 inch. Interestingly, the builder who suggested the lighter line suggested 90 cones, and the builder who recommended the heavier line suggested 75. This smaller number for lightweight boats was arrived at through discussions that this particular builder had had with Don Jordan, specifically on the subject of JSDs for smaller boats, but it turns out that nobody, at least nobody known to that builder, has tested the smaller number of cones in a substantial storm.

Since Roger Taylor’s version has been tested successfully with 87 cones, and MINGMING is smaller/lighter than AUKLET, I decided to go with 90 cones. Also staying conservative, I chose 5/8 inch line. I ended up choosing the builder in England, Roddy Coleman at http://www.oceanbrake.com, partly because the price was better than the other folks’, even with shipping from England, and partly because he was already familiar with making bridles suitable for connection to attachment plates, and had a price readily available for doing it, which demonstrated to me that this was indeed routine for their shop. They also have a rollup storage bag available, which seemed like a really good idea. Roddy and I settled on those combined, conservative specs, of 90 cones and 5/8 inch braided nylon, with the standard recommended lengths for the section with cones, the long pennant, and the bridle legs.
This put the measurements at:
bridle legs (2.5 x transom width) = 15 feet each
pennant = 21 meters or 69 feet
90 cones at 20 inches apart = 150 feet, plus an additional bit for eye splices at each end, for attachment to the pennant at one end, and to 15 pounds of chain at the end farthest from the boat, to keep the drogue underwater when deployed.

Now it’s a few weeks later, and the completed outfit is here in Holyoke.

Here’s about what it would look like in its special storage rollup, except that the nearby tail end on ours has an eye splice:
(photo: oceanbrake.com)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Attaching the Drogue to the Boat

Then there is the question of attachment to the boat, which has been the most complicated part of this project to figure out. Some folks handle this connection by leading the plain bridle ends, with chafe protection, to cleats at the stern quarters. Others put eye splices with heavy metal thimbles on the ends of the bridle, and attachment plates bolted to the back of the boat, for connection with shackles. This is the version that I like, because it avoids the problem of chafe.

One of the biggest challenges in setting up the shackled version is sorting out the attachment plates. Roddy at Oceanbrake has chainplates available for this use, but they are too big for my small boat. Looking at coming up with something more locally meant figuring out what was appropriate in terms of width, length, and thickness. That took some doing! Related to this is the question of what shackles to use, and in the end the shackle size helped to determine the chainplate answer. Roger Taylor said that he scavenged 1/4 inch thick bronze shroud chainplates from a large boat, fastened with three 1/2 inch bolts, but he didn’t mention the other dimensions.

As it turns out, as near as I’ve been able to figure, the determining factor for the chainplate decision is indeed the shackles. From an Internet discussion, I gleaned that each attachment point should be sized, at minimum, for a working load of one half the displacement of the boat. (See this link: http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/boat-design/calculation-chainplate-series-drogue-40064.html) So that’s 2000 pounds, as a bare minimum safe working load for AUKLET’s drogue attachment. Suzanne suggested, based on a conversation she’d had with an engineer friend, that the shackles should really be American-made – as in, not from China, because of irregularities in both quality and size in these sorts of Chinese products. That narrowed the field, and I closed in on Crosby shackles, and next, to their list of available sizes, configurations, and metal types. The Crosby website itself proved difficult, but the following company (from whom, as always, I am receiving nothing for posting this) helped to make more sense of the possibilities: http://www.bairstow.com/crosby-shakles-s/1871.htm
Then the most helpful item that turned up, for me, was this write-up on the subject of shackles and their use: http://practicalmaintenance.net/?p=766 After that, for a specific shackle, it was back to this one: http://www.bairstow.com/v/vspfiles/pdf/specs/G209A716.pdf This page also includes a general table of shackle specs.

In dealing with shackles, it’s very important to note that the “size” of the shackle is NOT the pin diameter. The pin diameter is actually larger than the labeled shackle size, which is based on the diameter of the bow part of the shackle. So in thinking about what size shackle to actually order, it’s important to look up the pin size that will fit. It’s annoying, to receive shackles that don’t fit the hole you have in mind – I’ve done this before!

Based on all of that information, using alloy shackles that would fit in a 1/2 inch hole, we could have a maximum safe working load of 2.66 metric tons, which comes out to 5,866 pounds. That’s overdone, but consistent with nice heavy 5/8 inch line. And very relaxing. Also, that working load figure is for a straight line pull. As discussed in the “practical maintenance” article linked above, if the pull is from a 90° angle, the safe working load for a shackle is half of the stated figure. This isn’t likely to happen in this situation, given the overall bridle arrangement, but it’s nice to know that if it did, the shackle would be up to it. The other nice thing about this size shackle is that the opening, where the pin goes, is just wide enough to fit over the 5/8 inch line and thimble where the shackle needs to connect to the bridle.

The next consideration is determining the thickness of the chainplate that should go together with this shackle, and finding what’s actually available. This entire design process is a little bit like origami – you try out one parameter, see how it fits with the others, try out what works for something else, and work your way back to make them all go together. Design necessity, and size availability, for each individual part, and then for the completed whole, all need to match up.

Along the way in this process I went through trying out the possibility of a 1/8 inch thick chainplate intended for sailboat shrouds, but it seemed flimsy for the job. Then I read that if a shackle is connected to a metal bar, the bar thickness must be at least one half the diameter of the shackle pin, to prevent deforming the bar under load. Since a shackle with a 1/4 inch pin would not be strong enough for the proposed load – and isn’t even available in high quality shackles shown in the above links – the chainplate would definitely need to be thicker.

For a while I contemplated having chainplates made. Not living presently near a nice, working shoreline (Narragansett Bay would be different!) this was not simple. Looking into metals, with thoughts of making it here, it was even less simple – load ratings are dependent not only upon what the metal is made of, but how it is treated for hardness and who knows what else. I definitely didn’t want to be out in a storm somewhere wondering if the chainplates were going to crack because they were the wrong particular metal.

Back to following Roger – thank goodness for his work! – the field narrowed to 1/4 inch thick chainplates originally produced for sailboat shrouds. Availability narrowed the field the rest of the way – I’ll bet that a nice consignment shop by the ocean would have something workable, but again, here we are. And the advantage of new is that you don’t have to worry about possible metal fatigue from previous use. In bronze, you could likely see any problem, as it deforms before breaking, but stainless could go from looking just fine to cracking in pieces. Anyway, here we are, still, in Holyoke… no marine consignment shops in sight.

So it was back to the online marine catalogs. As it turns out, there aren’t a whole lot of choices. In order to have 1/4 inch thick plate, you then get 1/2 inch holes – one for the shackle, and five for bolts. At least we know that once bolted on, this plate is definitely not going anywhere! The other dimensions are fixed at 1 1/2 inches x 14 inches. There was a question about getting the kind of chainplate with an angle at the end, to accommodate the angle of the bridle. But doing a mockup of the bridle demonstrated that the narrowing of AUKLET’s stern actually made the straight chainplate more correct. There was in the end only one choice available (that I could find), which is made by Schaefer, and fortunately it looks good.

The chainplates are now installed, with 1/4 inch x 2 inch aluminum backing plates. This is material that I happened to have already, but I like it anyhow. Somewhere I read – maybe Don Casey? – that mixing metals for a backing plate is not such a bad thing, because it will only corrode if water gets in there, and if water is getting in to the back of your installation, you want to know. So with an aluminum backing plate, the white corrosion will be noticeable if there is any problem. With the aluminum at 1/4 inch thick, it feels hefty enough for the job.

Something to keep in mind with store-bought chainplates is the amount of material that is left around the hole that is intended for shackle attachment. With 1/2 inch holes, like we have, set back 1/2 inch from the end in a chainplate that is 1 1/2 inches wide, there is no problem. At the end of the plate and on both sides of the hole, there is 1/2 inch of material left. But for a bigger boat, another individual on the Internet installed chainplates with 5/8 inch holes (actually custom-made) and then started to worry about the much narrower amount of material left between the hole and the end of the chainplate. Engineers with whom he was consulting confirmed that this was not enough material to provide the strength required for the JSD for his boat. That discussion can be seen here (same link as the one included above): http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/boat-design/calculation-chainplate-series-drogue-40064.html
Commercially available larger chainplates also have the same problem. For some reason the manufacturers choose not to set the hole back a little further, which would help quite a bit. This is tricky, because the easily available larger rigging chainplates all seem to be done this way. It’s something to keep in mind, if one is setting up something like this for a bigger boat. The photo in the link above also shows the chainplate mounted horizontally – I would emphatically offer that, in my humble opinion, the chainplates should be mounted on the sides of the boat, so that the up-and-down motion of waves will be easily accommodated by the shackle.

It’s important to note that, as shown in the previously mentioned “practical maintenance.net” reference, something needs to be in place to keep each shackle centered on the chainplate. Some folks weld spacers onto the chainplate, though other folks talk about that there could be some concern with affecting the hardness and load rating of the chainplate in the process of heating it for welding. Stacked washers are also acceptable, and somewhat simpler. In our arrangement, three washers on each side of the chainplate comfortably fill the gap (see photo above). To make them easier to manage during repeated installation, we are sticking each stack of three together with a little bit of caulk in between the washers.

Here’s the starboard drogue attachment plate, and Suzanne cleaning off the last of the caulk just after she and Theo got the whole thing bolted in place. Thanks to both of them – and to Theo for the great photo!

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Stowing the Drogue

Once the drogue and its attachment to the boat have been worked out, there is the question of storage when not in use. Ideally, one can find an arrangement that allows for the bridle to be already shackled to the attachment plates, ready to go in case the whole thing is needed, and set up before venturing out where that might come up. For drogues that are fastened to the boat using bridle lines led to reinforced cleats, this isn’t such an issue (the issues in that situation come later, with potential chafe). But with the shackles to attachment plates arrangement, it’s not going to be so easy to reach over the back of the boat and attach everything while underway. At the same time, once they are in place but not being used, it’s good to have the bulk of the drogue stored safely out of the way, at the same time as still being readily available. All that is a tall order, on a small boat!

In addition to these factors, if the drogue does get used it’s going to come back soaking wet, presumably while there is still sailing to be done in a certain amount of remaining wind. My experience with braided nylon dock line has been that it’s almost impossible to get this stuff to dry, even wet with fresh water, and never mind with salt. The drogue storage is going to need to take this into account too.

Latest thinking on the entire storage question has been a sealable opening into the port cockpit locker, with a plastic tub below. Originally I was thinking of a large deck pipe (screwed down metal fitting, over a hole into a locker, with a nice removable metal cap), like the oval kind for anchor line and thimbles, and a cover that could be taped closed. But if the drogue is set up ready to go, there are going to be two bridle lines needing to lead into that special opening in the side of the deck pipe cover, or else the entire length of the bridle lines will need to stay out somewhere in the cockpit. The deck pipe and cover could be modified to allow for including both bridle legs, but then there is the more serious problem: the deck pipe will be easy enough to tape closed when everything is dry – but being able to do that in a storm is highly unlikely, with wind and waves and everything soaking wet at the time of drogue deployment. That’s the last time in the world that you want an extra hole in the deck that could allow a whole lot of water into the interior of the boat.

Plan B is evolving into a 4 inch plastic deck plate with a threaded cover, mounted on the vertical face of the cockpit bench, so that the deck plate opens into the port cockpit locker. This would be arranged with a regular flat screw-in plate for closing things up completely, and an alternate plate that has had the middle cut out, and the cutout area replaced with a waterproof coated fabric sleeve. The drogue bridle can be passed through the sleeve into the locker, and then the sleeve can be lashed snugly around both lines. For deployment, the lashing can be undone, and the drogue, previously arranged in its tub, can be drawn out through that sleeve, without having to open the locker. This is still in development.

With stuff like this going on, besides the junk rig and the steering rehab, it’s abundantly clear why the boat is still in the driveway, even though it’s the beginning of July! But it’s really interesting working it all out, and I’m having a tremendous time being home for part of the summer (and berry season!) for the first time in three years. Last year we put in a bunch of time installing a big Whale bilge pump, and this year it’s the drogue. It’s funny to put so much work into something that will very possibly never be used – but the peace of mind feels worth every bit of the effort.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

About Those Windows…

06 Sunday Jul 2014

Posted by shemaya in the boat

≈ 2 Comments

Yesterday I received an e-mail from a friend who reads the blog, very politely asking if, with all these thoughts of drogues and junk rig, and sailing far enough out to make these things relevant, WHAT ABOUT THE WINDOWS?? He was much more delicate than that…

It is not, indeed, that I have neglected to think about this! Here is what I have learned, over time, and my process on the subject:

The windows are, almost for sure, made of Lexan. That’s the trade name; the actual material is polycarbonate. This is a lot stronger than Plexiglas (acrylic), and Plexiglas is a whole lot stronger than glass. A small test to confirm that the windows are actually polycarbonate has been in the works for a while – because just like my friend, I do indeed have concerns about the window issue. This test will likely be happening on Tuesday when Theo is here. (For information on determining the identity of plastic, see here: http://www.consultekusa.com/plasticidentificationchart.html ) The bottom line is, if you burn it, Plexiglas smells fruity, and Lexan smells like phenol, which is the smell of hot electronics, more or less. If you burn a known sample for comparison, it’s better – last week we got a piece of factory-labeled Lexan from the hardware store, and are looking forward to trying it out. We’ll be shaving a little curl off one of the boat windows to burn, for comparison to a curl off of the Lexan from the store, and then to a curl from a piece of Plexiglas. Ten minutes of high entertainment, getting to play with fire!

Earlier in my thinking about the window question, I was considering storm boards – plywood inserts to cover the windows in case of being caught out in a serious storm. I have been told by two different boat designers that with windows of this size made of a reasonable thickness of Lexan – 1/4 inch in this case – storm boards are really not necessary. One of the boat designers said, “to demonstrate this to yourself, you could take a hammer…” Seeing the look of alarm on my face, as I contemplated anybody taking a hammer to one of the windows of the boat, she said something about using a sample of Lexan in a frame. But the whole suggestion did make the point. She was quite confident that the result of such a test would be completely reassuring.

Another individual, who designs sailboats with large windows, said roughly the same thing, as far as the strength of Lexan, and talked about commercial fishing boats in Southeast Alaska. Those boats have windows bigger than AUKLET’s, and work in a region where fast-developing storms often have winds of hurricane force. Some of the folks up there laugh that farther south, storms like the ones that they have routinely are here given names… Their boat windows are frequently made of glass, and still, waves smashing out windows is not the problem that you hear about. A couple of friends who sail up that way, and whose boat has Lexan windows larger and closer to the water than AUKLET’s, have indeed had no problem (knock wood!) in many years of Southeast Alaska sailing, williwaws and all.

And then here, in the Northeast, there are all the powerboat folks, commercial and recreational, some of whom are out in very wild weather, with large-area windows. Actually, none of this serves to make me feel completely, totally relaxed about it – but it has done quite a bit to calm my concerns. Writing this does make me think that it would be interesting to get a piece of known Lexan, put it in a frame, and invite folks to take a sledgehammer to it. Like after seeing the video of a family going to great effort to capsize a Peep Hen (which required an adult hanging on the end of the mast to do it, and when finally achieved, the boat floated high on its side, taking on almost no water, and none through the open companionway) I would probably feel a lot better after watching Lexan stand up to the test. Maybe we could make a video, and post it here!

My friend who wrote yesterday also mentioned the concern of the large deck house – another issue that has also given me pause. Because, following the general rule, the best oceangoing sailboats have low deck houses to go with their tiny portholes. The boat designers I’ve talked with have been unconcerned about this as well, referring to both the sturdy construction in AUKLET, with the sides of the deck house extending down into the interior of the boat, as well as to the curved shape of the deck house (in plan view as well as the crowned top) and the small size of the boat. The small size of the boat has the effect of making it overall far sturdier than larger boats that are built with the same half-inch plywood materials. From an engineering perspective, it is my understanding that the small size advantage also draws on the same physics as the strength of an eggshell, having to do with the curves relative to the size of the object – eggshell or boat. At any rate, it was comforting to hear their perspectives.

Where deck house size and height really do make a significant difference is in upwind sailing ability. AUKLET is really the design of a “motor sailer,” in spite of the fact that I am using the boat primarily motorless. For beautiful upwind sailing you want much less wind resistance on deck, like so many of the lovely traditional sailboat designs. I should also note that the Glasshouse Chebacco does indeed sail upwind – not as perfectly as it might with a lower deck house, but making headway against both wind and seas. And does that with my less than perfect upwind rig… The difference is mainly noticeable sailing alongside elegant traditional Maine racers, who pass by in two tacks out of a harbor, when it takes me a few more. Still, the trade-off with the Glasshouse Chebacco is fine with me: giving up some upwind sailing ability, in exchange for comfort, interior light, solar heating, and good visibility for sailing from within the cabin, all feel well worth the exchange. With some extra time, and attention to working with the weather (along with staying well away from lee shores), regardless of the upwind abilities issue you can still sail quite a ways!

I know that there are stories out there about deck house failure, and window failure, in heavy seas. I am curious as to details, and my process of picking up relevant information is ongoing. In the meantime, the arguments that have been made by folks who are way more knowledgeable than myself, about both the windows and the deck house on AUKLET being up to the task, have felt like enough to make me feel okay about proceeding with this boat, including somewhat offshore.

However, it does remain an intriguing question. If evidence comes along that this should be rethought, I will most certainly be doing that, and adjusting plans accordingly. WRC, thanks for the question!

Jordan Series Drogue, part 1: why choose this?

03 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by shemaya in the boat

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Jordan Series Drogue

There are a number of options for how to deal with seriously heavy weather at sea; I have lately settled on carrying a Jordan Series Drogue (JSD), as this feels like the best option aboard AUKLET. Getting this equipment sorted out has involved everything from the original choice of a JSD, to appropriate design for this particular boat, to the related subject of attachment plates, and where to get all of the various parts, as well as the drogue itself. Maybe we’ll never have occasion for the post about deploying it – that would be fine with me, and in the meantime I get to have a lot more peace of mind when on open water, too far out for a quick day’s run into a harbor when the forecast turns unexpectedly stormy.

This series of posts is going to include quite a number of references and links, and as usual I am not receiving anything for including those references in the blog. A ridiculous amount of time has gone into figuring out a specific drogue plan that feels both reliable and sensible, and then finding the materials to carry it out. It is my hope that by sharing these details, other folks who are interested might not have to spend quite as much time searching to come across the same parts and information. I also want to emphasize that I am neither a professional, nor any kind of certified engineer. This is not advice for anybody else – it is simply a recounting of what I have come up with for myself. If it’s helpful to others’ thinking on the subject, that’s great!

For starters, what is a Jordan Series Drogue, and why would one choose it?

“What” is the easy part of the question: a long length of line, as much as 200 feet, up to 300 feet or more for large boats, with small fabric cones, each of them 5 inches in diameter at the big end, woven into the line at intervals of 20 inches. There can be anywhere from 80 to close to 200 cones, depending on the size of the boat. This line with cones is attached to a “pennant” of some length that has no cones, between the boat and the drogue itself, and the pennant is connected by a bridle to the stern of the boat. The cumulative effect of the correct number of cones for a given boat is to reduce the movement of the boat during a storm to a slow drift of about one to 1 1/2 knots downwind. The hold of the drogue on the water keeps the stern facing into the waves, preventing broaching (turning crossways to the waves, and potentially being rolled), and the drogue also holds the stern down as the boat is lifted on a wave, preventing pitchpoling, or somersaulting of the boat over itself as the bow dives down. As mentioned above, there are several different approaches for managing storm situations – my interest in the Jordan Series Drogue has been an evolution.

Over many years, I have been a devoted follower of Lin and Larry Pardey; for those who are unfamiliar with their work, when it comes to storm tactics this means a parachute sea anchor, led on a bridle from the bow and the side of the boat. These are fantastic, tremendous heavy-weather tools. I carried one on board the Falmouth cutter, but never had occasion to use it. As I have been going farther out to sea in AUKLET, a parachute sea anchor was my first thought. But the reality of deploying a parachute sea anchor includes a line at the bow (not an easy trek aboard AUKLET in a storm), along with the bridle back to the middle of the boat. There are issues involving potential chafe on the lines, which must be attended to during use, and issues to do with adjusting both the bridle for correct boat orientation, and the length of the rode so that the parachute and the boat are in sync with each other in the crest or trough of their own respective waves, several waves apart. Adjustments, mid-storm, can be necessary for success, especially as the conditions of the storm develop and change over time. (This gear, whether parachute or JSD, is primarily intended for substantial storms, of some duration, with resulting large seas. Heaving-to remains my primary strategy for something like a quick moving front, or isolated large thunderstorm.)

One of the particular arguments for a parachute sea anchor that is led from the bow is that it keeps the bow to the waves, and the companionway away from the waves. I like that argument. Another argument for it is that other than for the occasional checking, it requires no active participation. There is no steering while the sea anchor is deployed. The boat is hove-to, and there is no necessity for constant exertion. On the other hand, most times when drogues off the stern are spoken of, it has been in the context of actively steering downwind, throughout a storm. In this active case, a drag device smaller than a parachute sea anchor – generally referred to as a drogue – is led off the stern to slow the boat, preventing the bow from nosediving into the next wave ahead. Steering is ongoing, often by hand, as autopilots are likely to struggle in these conditions. The steering is to ensure both that the boat continues on course overall, and that it does not turn crossways to the waves.

Steering throughout a long storm is absolutely not on my list of preferred activities! Besides being exhausting and unpleasant, that exhaustion can lead to hazards and potential bad outcomes. This is true even on a boat with crew, never mind for someone who is singlehanding. Since I was familiar only with the concept of drogue use that requires steering, I didn’t go further in considering them for storm management.

Then last year, reading more of Roger Taylor’s work about his travels in MingMing, it finally dawned on me that he was saying that when he deployed his Jordan Series Drogue in an enormous storm, he lashed his wind vane steering up out of the way. And once the drogue was deployed, Roger settled into his cabin for the duration. No steering! Not even any adjustments. He had attachment plates – heavy chainplates, leading aft – on the stern of the boat, to which the drogue bridle ends were shackled, and this arrangement completely took away the problems of chafe and related checking and adjustments. Wow. Added to this, because a Jordan Series Drogue is a long line of many, many tiny parachutes, the problem of being in sync with the waves also goes away, as the braking force is applied throughout different parts of more than one wave. Revolutionary.

This did leave the problem of the companionway facing the following seas. (Roger Taylor doesn’t have any problem with this issue, having changed his companionway to a watertight hatch.) I’m still not entirely relaxed about this question, but according to the writings by the JSD designer, Don Jordan, discussing both the many tests he did as well as reports received from users, and also according to writings of folks who have used it themselves in heavy storm situations, following seas running right into the companionway have not been a big problem. Don Jordan wrote a bit on the subject of explanations for why he thought this was turning out okay. His writings also confirm that this device is considered a “passive” heavy weather tactic, requiring no steering. Bingo.

The other reported problem for Jordan Series Drogues is difficulty in retrieving them. This is a noticeable issue. According to various reports, including from Roger Taylor, hand over hand it’s a terrible, long job, especially when the wind is still blowing moderately. It’s also important not to just wrap the part of the drogue that has the cones around a winch – some people have experienced enormous complications with overwraps, doing that, as the cones get tangled in the wrapping line. On the bright side, it works out fine (according to others’ accounts) to use one or two separate lines – dock lines or whatever – to a winch, with rolling hitches onto the JSD line, cranking in, switching the lines to the winch, etc. This could probably take some time, but folks with average capabilities have reported doing it in a half an hour. The most important thing is that when deploying the drogue, an extra line should be tied at the apex of the bridle, led loosely back to the cockpit, so that when it’s time to retrieve the drogue there is something to start with.

Searching for more recent remarks from Lin and Larry Pardey, the drogue retrieval issue was the biggest negative mentioned. Looking at all of the various factors, and options, their difficulties and their resolutions, I am feeling good about shifting my approach to the JSD. Work on this has been underway for a while now.

When I started writing this post, I had the silly idea that it was going to be all one entry. That would be a bit much, it appears! So I’ll leave it here, and begin again next time with how the design and boat modification have proceeded.

References:

the detailed technical report:
http://www.seriesdrogue.com/coastguardreport/

two sources of commercially made Jordan Series Drogues, with quite a lot of information on each site:
http://www.oceanbrake.com/
http://jordanseriesdrogue.com/

an extended drogue and sea anchor discussion at the Junk Rig Association:
http://jra.wildapricot.org/general_forum/592701?tpg=11

News from the Paint Shop

19 Thursday Jun 2014

Posted by shemaya in the boat

≈ 2 Comments

Almost every project going on here makes a run through the paint shop. Or several, depending on how many parts a particular project is made up of. Suzanne gets all credit for every bit of painting, and today we got a photo of many completed items. It’s a handy opportunity to show what’s been going on around here. First, a picture from some time ago, while things were in progress:
Various parts are laid out on the workshop table. Some are obvious, like the tiller, showing it’s heavily scraped area where it rubs on the movable slide board in the cockpit. The chunky thing in front is cargo boom jaws, explained more in a moment. Other odds and ends have to do with the rudder stock repair, and resulting changes in the stock/tiller connection. There is also a short drop board, which has two jobs: holding the bracket for the gimbaled propane cookstove, and new this year, having a proper gasketed lip to make a little barricade for unruly bits of water sloshing toward the interior of the cabin, while underway with no big drop boards in place. At the back left, those are not boat parts – pieces of the house have been patiently waiting their turn.

The completed paint collection includes the new version of beaching legs, for another try this year. These boards have multiple uses, besides holding the boat up when the tide goes out: they will be lee boards for secure sleeping in the starboard berth, and the two pieces will also go together as one, with velcro straps or lashings, and fit into the cargo boom jaws, as the cargo boom. The cargo boom jaws rest against the mizzen mast, on top of the partners (with a parrel line around the back of the mast). The cargo boom is attached to the jaws by that heavy pin on the left, and a block and tackle goes on the upper end of the boom. The cargo boom is supported at the upper end by a spare mizzen halyard, and together the whole business can be used for lifting heavy stuff like spare anchors from cockpit lockers. This is experimental, but I’m hopeful…

The tiller is finished, and Suzanne and I had some fun setting up a piece of leather and lacing it on, to protect where the underside of the tiller was getting scraped. Leather for this kind of project, which was originally a little bit hard to find, came from The Wooden Boat Store, where it is sold primarily for oar leathers. Off and on they have “scraps” available, at a much more manageable price. We did a similar leather project on the yard last year, where the yard had been getting worn against the mast, and it worked out well.

The odd shaped thing at the left of the completed paint photo is the rudder stock “clamp,” which will reinforce where the wooden stock (now repaired) had deteriorated badly from strain with the tiller connection. Now, instead of a large bronze pin through plain wood, there’s a completely different arrangement. Because of the rudder stock “clamp,” the tiller connection has needed to change, and will have bronze straps (one shows in the first photo), and the pair of wood spacers that show in both paint shop photos. The end result will be overbuilt, but sturdy! And removable, for dropping the rudder in the future. When this all goes together, after the rudder goes back on the boat, there will be a blog post devoted to the subject. But if anybody is curious now, there’s a series of photos that can be seen here: http://smu.gs/1hn0kDE

Also new, and somewhat experimental, is the belaying pin collar for the mizzen mast (shown below), to provide places to tie off the numerous junk rig and other mizzen lines.
There used to be a big plastic cleat on the mast, held with two screws, which has now been taken off. I’ve been averse to putting more screw holes in the mast, so the collar is going on with wedges, and is braced by that little stop block that uses the old screw holes from the cleat. Seizing will be going around the wedges, to keep them from going anywhere… It all feels pretty firm now, but we’ll see what happens in use. Belaying pins made from dowel, with little tubing stop-collars, will go in those holes. They too are just out of the paint shop, and are shown in the earlier photo.

With all this going on, I guess it’s obvious why the boat has not made it to the water yet! But on the other hand, I’m having a really nice time being home for a bit of summer. It’s satisfying to work on this stuff, even if a little alarming to have so many experimental bits running at once. It should make for an interesting month, as the parts get to actually go together.

junk rig, but which one??

11 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by shemaya in Junk Rig, the boat

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One of the biggest challenges in doing a junk rig conversion, for me, was the very beginning: deciding which design/sailplan to follow. Reading up, there are a number of choices, and then once a particular design is selected, there are more choices, including sailcloth, batten material and method of attachment, and specifics of overall rigging, as well as the question of camber, which is the curved shape that can be built into a sail, to help with going upwind. My process of resolving those questions went on for years, literally. Now that the selections have been made it’s quite a relief, and it seems time to share what I’ve learned about the deciding factors.

The book Practical Junk Rig, by Hasler and McLeod, provides an overview of the possibilities, and the website junkrigassociation.org has descriptions of those possibilities and more, including recent developments that have come up since Practical Junk Rig was first published in 1987. For a beginning on diagrams and photos, see: http://www.junkrigassociation.org/sailplans_early_days and http://www.junkrigassociation.org/sailplans_current

For a while I thought, oh I’ll just copy what Dave and Anke (at triloboats.com) have on their current boat… until it turned out that I would need something close to a 30 foot mast. Oh well! Then it looked like the Reddish rig, with its traditional character and proven, low-tech possibilities, could be a good fit. For a while there was a detour, and I was intrigued with the split junk rig, designed by Slieve McGalliard – who also did that nice article about yuloh design. I’m still intrigued, but the mainmast on AUKLET is too far forward for that one. Along the way it was pointed out to me (thank you Dave) that the most sail area for the shortest mast would come from the Reddish rig, and making low mast height a priority, in the end I came back and settled on that one.

Things are always so much clearer after the fact, and I now realize that the straightest line through junk rig decision-making (at least for me) is indeed the mast question. Mast height rules out some junk rig designs and enables others, and mast position does the same. Some people change the location of the mast on their boat, but I didn’t want to get into that. With AUKLET, having the mizzen mast provided some room for adjustment as far as location of sail area, so except for considerations with the split junk rig, mast height was really the deciding factor for the overall design. Now here we are, with a Reddish rig in progress.

Then there is the question of size, once the shape of the sails has been decided. Determining sail size is related to mast height, desire for sail area (and what the hull can carry), and locations of booms and sheets, as well as the relationship of the forces on the sails to the forces on the hull. Some tinkering goes into figuring this all out.

In the design process, it’s important to keep the combined center of effort – the “balancing point” where the wind pushes, for both sails – in roughly the same place as for the original rig. Sorting that out for this project involved starting with a scale drawing of the hull and masts, and then making cardboard cutouts, to scale, of potential sails. (It’s probably important that the cardboard is something like what comes inside shirts, and is not corrugated, so there’s no question of uneven weight distribution within layers.) Balancing the cardboard cutout on a pin serves to roughly locate the center of effort for each sail. Then the combined center of effort can be determined by first working out the square footage of each sail (counting squares inside a scale drawing on graph paper helps with figuring this without using big geometry skills.) Next comes drawing a line between the two centers of effort, and measuring along that line proportionally, related to the ratio of the areas of the two sails; this yields the location of the combined center of effort.

We had the original combined center of effort for AUKLET from the plans for the Glasshouse Chebacco, but you could find this from a scale drawing of the original sails, if you needed to, by making another set of cardboard cutouts from the original sail design. We actually did this for the Peep Hen a few years ago, though never took it further than the cardboard stage. However you get it, it’s handy to have the originally designed center of effort so that you can make the center of effort for the new sails line up with the original.

In the end, for the AUKLET junk rig design, Theo and I made an entire array of sizes of cardboard cutout sails, to try out the different possibilities both by eye and for calculated balance. It was pretty entertaining – it felt like being a kid with paper dolls cut out from the Sunday newspaper, but way more fun! Because of the yawl rig, when the potential mainsail pulled the combined center of effort too far forward it was possible to increase the size of the mizzen to compensate. We had everything from a 10 foot boom on the mainsail up to a 14 foot boom, and eventually settled on 13 feet, and a 6 foot boom for the mizzen. (Boom length determines measurements for the rest of the sail.) The sail area for this final arrangement is 175 square feet for the main, and 37 square feet for the mizzen. This is more than the original design, which was 149 and 27 square feet, respectively. Phil Bolger, designer of this boat, used to write about that nobody just sails nowadays, so it’s more appropriate to design sail area for those who motor in light winds, and the Glasshouse Chebacco rig reflects this approach. Myself being a bit of a throwback, as far as the motor question, increasing the sail area has seemed appropriate to the actual use of the boat.

Still, I’ve gone back and forth on the sail area question, and my thinking is continuing to develop, and to change back and forth, on this subject (see writings by Sven Yrvind for reasons for smaller sails). While I was swung toward the “wishing for more sail area” side of things, the time for an actual decision arrived, and now we have a really big sail! Necessitating a mast the height of the original Chebacco design, at 19 feet. These last two years I’ve been sailing with the borrowed short mainmast, which is 16 feet. I like that a lot, especially for things like squeaking underneath closed drawbridges, and the relative ease of stepping and unstepping the mast. Now that the junk sails are built, and the new taller mast is coming soon, I’m committed, but my thoughts keep going back to the benefits of a short mast and smaller sail. It’s a little late for a change, at this stage! It’ll be fascinating to see how the increased sail area feels – worth the compromise of height, weight and bulk? For extra headway in tiny wind? And just how much extra headway? I have no great need for speed, but reliable movement along the shore when the wind is minimal may turn out to be worth the trade-offs.

Regardless of the issue of mast height for the new sail, something had to be done about the overall mainmast situation. The one that I borrowed from the Peep Hen (a much smaller boat) is tapered aluminum, 3 inches in diameter at the base, with 1/4 inch wall thickness. It’s had a good deal of strain and flexing, over these last two years, and there are issues about work-hardening, with aluminum masts, that can lead to breaking. It’s possible that everything is fine, but I haven’t felt confident. As near as I can tell from material on the Junk Rig Association site, appropriate, somewhat conservative scantlings for an unstayed aluminum mast for this situation are 4 inch diameter and 1/4 inch wall thickness in the lower part of the mast, with the diameter tapering higher up. The best I’ve been able to come up with is an aluminum flagpole that is 4 inches in diameter with 3/16 inch wall thickness, tapering above 11 feet to about 2 inches in diameter at the top. Five inches in diameter at the base would be considerably stronger, but won’t fit in the existing partners, and they would be complicated to change. As it is, I think that the 4 inch version will certainly be fine in the early part of its life; if I really love the rig, there is probably another mast change somewhere in the future.

Other big decisions have been sailcloth, and the camber issue. Both of these questions completely stopped my process for a long time also. I originally wanted to go with acrylic sailcloth, such as Sunbrella. This would mean expecting stretch, and because of that, the sail would more closely resemble traditional junk sails in Asia, but would still avoid the mildew issues of cotton. This approach would have been taking a chance, but I rather liked the idea of the adventure. Then Suzanne, with a good practical eye for details of a question, looked at my sample of acrylic fabric and asked “how heavy is that going to be when it’s soaking wet?” That moment was the somewhat sad end of the acrylic idea, but I’m really glad that the question came up before I had a giant, soaking wet sail on my hands, too heavy to move. Maybe not a problem at first, when the fabric still had all its water shedding treatments intact, but surely as time went on.

The other thing that happened about sails is that I came upon a sailmaker with some experience with building “Western” junk sails, on this side of the Atlantic! This would be Stuart Hopkins, at Dabbler Sails. (You can see his work at http://www.dabblersails.com .) Commiserating together on the question of fabric, and on the question of camber, we settled on Dacron sailcloth, and a very small amount of camber in the lower four panels of each sail (stated for the record, Stuart heartily advocated for more camber – if this flatter design doesn’t work out so well, it’s entirely my responsibility!) Above the lower four panels, the top two panels are left completely flat, for heavy weather. It’s an experiment, all the way around, and we’ll see how it goes.

The argument for camber has to do with upwind sailing ability, which has generally been not so good for Western versions of junk rigs with flat sails. I’m intrigued by the theory that “fanned” sails, such as the Reddish rig, also develop camber as they twist. One can opt for an assortment of control lines, following traditional Asian practice, to make adjustments for optimal performance. That does assume that you know what you’re doing… Or are willing to take quite a while to begin to figure it out. But it does seem possible, and I’m looking forward to trying.

Along the way in the planning/design process, I’ve also given up on the idea of bamboo battens, going with the highly recommended aluminum tubing version, in pockets. There is a source of construction-quality (as opposed to garden quality) bamboo in eastern Massachusetts, and I was hopeful for a while. But it turns out that, issue #1, there’s a lot of finish work involved in bamboo battens – wooden plugs for the ends, and varnish, and then, the consideration that really sealed it, issue #2: that the traditional way to make bamboo battens work out well (preventing splitting) is to soak them in seawater for three weeks before beginning the finishing process. (Thank you Lesley, at http://www.huntingjunks.org) Here we are in Holyoke, about 80 miles from the nearest seawater. It could’ve been done, but overall there is the question of exactly WHEN we would like this project to get on the water… So aluminum battens it is, and they are in fact almost complete at this writing.

That’s about it for the major design questions. There are just reams of excellent information available at http://www.junkrigassociation.org and quite a bit of it is accessible to nonmembers. Joining is low cost, and opens up all the rest, including PDFs of all past newsletters. The book Practical Junk Rig, by Hasler and McLeod, is also loaded with outstanding, detailed information. This includes everything from junk rig details, to exactly how to go about making a mast out of a tree from the forest – a real mast, for a big boat. It’s an expensive book, but encyclopedic, in what it covers. (Nope, just like always, not receiving anything for any of the business, organization or book mentions in this post.)

Beyond the design question, there’s the concrete progress. Presently, the sails are complete, and here; yards have been built, epoxied, and painted; the battens are cut to length, and wooden end plugs (turned, grooved, epoxied, and painted) are ready to be caulked in; a belaying pin collar and belaying pins have been made for the mizzen mast, as a place to fasten the zillion lines for the mizzen sail; and mast hardware, loads of line, and assorted other necessary bits, are accumulating in corners. On it goes!

bottom paint, part two

06 Friday Jun 2014

Posted by shemaya in the boat

≈ 2 Comments

This process is so enormously routine for a lot of people – but it doesn’t seem that way as you’re figuring it out! Jacking the boat up, ensuring that it will stay vertical, and doing it again in order to shift wood blocks under the keel, all feel like an enormous big deal. I’m happy to say that the boat is indeed still vertical, and the wood blocks are now repositioned under the keel, allowing for the remaining repairs and painting to go forward.

The second round of jacking went smoothly, putting to use everything we learned from round number one. Stern lifted first, maintaining weight at all times on both stern jack stands, then up with the jack at the bow. Blocks of wood positioned between the hull and the outer bunks for additional stability and safety, then reaching under to move the 4 x 4 blocks under the keel. Then everything in reverse: blocks at the bunks removed, bow jack lowered, then stern jacks, until the weight of the boat was once again resting primarily on the keel. Assorted fiddling with side supports, and cushions kept between trailer guide-on posts and hull throughout the process.

Since the last writing, we added extra supports at the stern, shown in the top photo, so that the boat would be stable without the wood blocks at the bunks. This has eased some of the pesky issues with the painting. I would have sprung for regular metal boat stands to do this, but the position of the trailer rails wasn’t going to allow for orienting the angled boat stands correctly. It was a little bit fussy doing the wood version, because of wedges for the funny angles where the pieces fit together, but in the end it has been quite sturdy, and pushing on the side of the boat yields no movement whatsoever. That’s been satisfying!

Then there’s the paint. Regular bottom paint would be a lot easier, and if we had used it this process would have been done a while ago. Or, if we had a big, heatable shed, even the very particular ePaint would have been done long before now. As it is, I still think ePaint is worth it, and the good weather this weekend should mean that the hardest part will be done, and we’ll be able to put the boat back down on the trailer.

The paint we are using is EP 2000, which is one of the newer non-toxic antifouling paints, from the company called ePaint. (As always, I’m not receiving anything for mentioning this product by name.) I like this bottom paint because once it is on, it’s completely non-toxic, both for small creatures in the water and for people. No worries about letting the boat go down in the mud, or on a sandbar, and no concerns about rubbing off algae, or touching the paint with bare skin when swimming. It’s also nice for trailering, with a hard surface that doesn’t rub off on the trailer, and it’s unaffected by sitting out of the water for long periods of time. It works by reacting with UV light in sunshine, creating hydrogen peroxide, which the sea creatures don’t like. Algae is not perfectly deterred, but rubs off easily while swimming. My experience has been that barnacles do not grow on it, except for two or three on the entire boat over many months, and they come off easily using just a fingernail. That’s if there’s a decent amount of paint.

Last year, it was enough of a challenge to get paint on the boat at all, wherever it was possible to reach while the boat was resting on the trailer. The theory was that there was still a certain amount of paint on the hull, and leaving the unreachable parts with just the old paint would be a good test of how much paint thickness was needed in order to prevent growth. The paint is not ablative (the kind of bottom paint that continually sloughs off, exposing fresh surfaces), but in the process of the chemical reaction that creates the hydrogen peroxide, it gets “used up,” and gradually becomes thinner. We started originally with an alternate color for a marker coat, and that gray was beginning to show through the white, before painting last year. You can see this in the post from 2013 titled “kneeling camel,” when the boat was dried out on its side. (http://sailingauklet.com/2013/08/04/kneeling-camel/)

The results of the test are that more layers of paint are a good thing! Everywhere that got the new coats of paint last year made out fine over the course of four months in the water – and the places that didn’t, that were down to pretty much one layer of marker coat, eventually had a nice crop of small barnacles. They were easy to take off with a plastic scraper, but there were lots of them. Hundreds. This was the main inspiration for all the boat jacking this year (well, this and the big down-to-bare-wood ding in the keel, unreachable against the trailer).

Then there is the subject of ePaint’s fussy application requirements. At least 65° temperatures, and 50% or less humidity, for many hours after you put it on. On the bright side, if the temperatures are hot – 80 to 90° – the required number of drying hours is shorter. But still, in an outdoor New England setting, if you want to go sailing early, meeting those requirements can really set you back as far as timing. The folks at the company recommend having the painting professionally done… alas not so easy, so many miles from the coast.

[Note added after posting: actually, I misunderstood the temperature/humidity guidelines, in the process of following the table for required drying times. The temperature must be at least 60° throughout the drying time, and the humidity must be below 85%. Effectively, if one is doing this outdoors in the Northeast US, the daytime temperature must be warm, and the humidity low, in order for the paint to be truly done drying before the temperature drops below 60° overnight, which it almost always does in the spring.]

Last year was also a test of whether or not we had achieved something close enough to the various application requirements to work. The answer is “sort of.” One side of the boat worked out fine. But something must have been less than ideal on the starboard side (oddly, this was the warmer, sunny side of the boat in the driveway), because swimming with a scrub brush, taking care of algae at the water line, white stuff was coming off. Eventually I figured out it was the paint, but only on that side of the boat. I could scrub all I wanted on the other side, with no sign of sloughing. For the rest of the season, I cleaned algae on that delicate side very gently, and the paint agreed to stay put, continuing to prevent barnacles from moving in. It’ll be really interesting to see how things go this year – especially because some of that paint was of course still left (though less, after regular prep sanding), and we have now painted over it. Hopefully this has glued the remainder back in place! We’ll be finding out…

The other thing we’ve learned, through observation of the original paint that was done during construction, is that this paint really cares about being on top of either its own primer, or some other epoxy finish. Where it was painted on a bare bronze fitting, and then, as we found by jacking the boat up, where it was painted on bare wood on the bottom of the keel, it had cracked and curled, coming away from the surface. This is of course no fault of the paint – it’s a standard thing, for paints to need primers that they like. But it was interesting to see that it does indeed really matter. The guidelines actually say that it can be painted directly on bare wood, with a thinned first coat. We have no idea if that was done for sure, originally, but it probably was – and yet, the paint was busy removing itself. Coating the wood with epoxy feels like good insurance for the wood, as well as likely to be helpful for the paint.

This paint is also considered pretty toxic during application. It is water-based, but according to the can, a Tyvek outfit, real respirator, and goggles, are considered appropriate precautions for the painter. This has something to do with zinc…

So now the bottom of the keel has had dings repaired, remaining old paint scraped away, and a coating of epoxy. Most of it has been painted, and now that the wood blocks have been shifted, the remaining spots have been scraped and epoxied and are ready for their own turn, to be done along with some more coats on the rest of the “trailer section” of the hull in the next few days. What a production! Suzanne is the brave soul with the scraper and the paint roller. “Gratitude” is such a thin word, in the face of all that!

	shemaya on Still Out Here
	shemaya on Still Out Here
	Suzanne on Still Out Here
	JG on Still Out Here
	Martin on Telltale Compass

Sailing AUKLET

~ Small sailboat cruising and related thoughts

Category Archives: the boat

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bottom paint, part two