4 burner

With the hint of winter sneaking up on the Pacific NW, I decided to get a few of the main galley assets to work with in laying out the interior.   I chose a nice Marine SMEV 4 burner with folding glass top.  It's very light weight and should serve us well.  I opted for the smaller broiler version thinking that we'll do our share of broiled fish.  I may even work out a way of baking bread in it too.

Harken the Harold angels sing.....

Nothing like the click of a brand new Harken #50  in the morning. You should have seen the bubble wrap flying around the house.  Hard to believe that $20K can fit on a 4 ft. dia. coffee table.....nothing but the best.

Hitting the ground running on my cat...

The forward member that ties the two bow sections together requires a large radius "fillet" on thr under side of each end the beam where they penetrate the hulls.

                                                   For clarification, here's the situation

Next I have created two foam core shapes that sculpt to a pleasing shape in preparation of several layers of unidirectional glass and for good measure a bit or carbon Uni to make me feel a little better.

just for the heck of it, here that cat taking shape:

Lions and tigers and bears .........

Oh My.....

forgive the tangent post

hi guys....headed back to Alabama to get my dad's John Hanna Gulfweed "Lyncoya" back in shape for a nice sail in mobile bay with friends and family then headed back up to Hood River, OR.   Too bad the cooler's not big enough for all the cold drinks we'd need for all you blog followers.

I'll be back in oregon in two weeks to finish the cat then we're gonna load up the family, sail down the west coast through the panama canal and stop in again  to Fly creek Marina in Fairhope, Alabama to make sure the bildge is dry in my dads boat.  From there,  it's on towards the west indease and maybe trace some of the return voyages of that Chris Columbus guy who decimated the local population of north america..

I'll place a few before and after shots of "Lyncoya" in the next post then I'll resume posting the rest of the build of this F-44SC Cat.  "Mariana".

Sorry for the tangent post.......

On-board sanitation

After researching marine sanitation systems, it was a clear choice to decide upon  "Air Head" marine toilets. With the boat being outfitted for both owner and guest accommodations, each hull will have it's  own bathroom ( head).  These are really nice units.  They are fully compliant with  "No Discharge" regulations as  U.S Coast Guard approved type III marine heads. USCG Certification

Here's the link:  http://www.airheadtoilet.com/

Half a horse powered margarita

In full sun, these panels will produce about 360 Watts of power.  With one horse power being 746 Watts , that's a half a horse galloping up on the cabin top. In addition to this, I plan to balance this out with another 500W of wind power.  Since the sun and the wind are still free, it's nice to know that once all the systems are in place, we'll be able to put frozen reverse osmosis water into a 12 volt blender and make margaritas in the 90 degree heat of the tropics.

These big panels will most likely be mounted on the cabin top......or.

It may be nice to create a slide mechanism that would allow them to articulate aft over the cockpit; similar to a bimini  which could provide additional shade. 

window opening edge detail

I chose to use the strongest of the three edge detail options that are specified in the plans by Ian Farrier.

 Although my technique was certainly not the most elegant, I was able to create high density cores around the edges of the window openings by filling the1 inch voids using gallon sized zip lock bags full of epoxy/ microbaloon filler with the corner cut off.  I then ran 1 1/8 wide strips of  a heavy synthetic roofing membrane along the edges which created an edge  mold to keep the goo in place. 

 The corners and sides were smoothed down and the straight portions were backed with wood strips held in place with duct tape.

This worked beautifully and resulted in strong 1 inch high density rims around each window opening that will require very little finish sanding. 

Next step will be to sheath the edges of all of the window opening with 6 inch wide double bias stranded mat glass tape and epoxy. The finished windows will be of  8mm thick polycarbonate which will be bonded and bolted in place. I am confident that these windows will be able to withstand  full-on broadside blue water impact.  

trampoline study

These days, knot-less dyneema netting seems to be all the rage for high performance multi hulls. The going rate for a couple of forward nets is about $2000.   In my attempts to decide which type of netting to use, I decided to do a quick mock up. I used common construction twine to determine how much webbing would be needed to sew a set of nets. The strings were set up to represent a hole size of 1.5 inches when using 1.5 wide polyester strapping. Next step will be to wind up all the string, measure the total length multiply the length by the cost per foot of webbing then multiply that by two to determine material cost.

a foam core removal tool

 I designed and built a custom foam removal tool that allowed me to strengthen the edges of  the window openings.  This tool uses four water jet cut "blades" fastened to a spindle that has an aluminum hand grip on one end. This tool really works and removes the foam core while leaving the fiberglass edge reinforcement. 

 Since I was taking this photo with one hand, I was not able to show myself holding the aluminum support handle with my other hand.  With one hand on the drill and the other supporting the end, this tool does a fine job removing foam core. This open space will later be filled with a mixture of epoxy and glass microbaloons. The edges will then be covered over with a wrap of DBM tape. Once complete, polycarbonate glazing will be fastened along these reinforced edges. 

 here is the finished window opening after using the foam removal tool to create a  1 inch a deep foam free edge.    

 I plotted the dimensions of the windows onto butcher paper.

 

 I then positioned these templates as described in the                                                                                                                           plans

 I spent a little time transferring the shapes onto the cabin sides markimg inch and a half offsets with a sharpy. I then spent and hour or two cutting the window openings using a carbide blade on a nice Bosch saber saw. Ian is correct in stating that the positioning of the windows is crutial to the overall characteristic look of the Farrier boat. I imagine round Popeye port hole would make for an interesting look but usually it's considered in poor taste to change the basic look of a licensed boat. Some people go as far as suggesting that you will burn in hell for eternity so I didn't want to risk it. I think they look pretty good. If it didn't blow the weight budget, I'd go with the 2 inch thick laminated bullet proof polycarbonaet for those coastal cruises off the coast of Somalia.

youthful cockpit seats

Once the two cockpit seats are glassed, the shell of a catamaran will be screaming out for unending amounts of detail work.  At this point, this is where most people spend another twenty years making things perfect.  It happens all the time.........next thing you know the kids are grown, the wife made off with the UPS man and your sitting alone in your shop with grey hair and a perfect boat. 

Not me, I don't mind sailing an imperfect boat so the plan is to get this ship in the water before I loose my  youth............"use it or loose it"

mast step steps

the White Oak mast step was bedded in with a thick mixture of cabosil and epoxy then given a nice 1 inch radius fillet.

with a little patience, it is possible to pull the edge fibers outward while pressing the triaxial fabric over the mast step so that one piece can be used

I decided to vacuum bag the entire mast step lamination in place so I've surrounded the work with vacuum tape and pre positioned the bag. 

After covering the mast step with two layers of 24 oz triaxial glass and epoxy, I then used a vacuum pump to insure that the mast step will be rock solid.

glassing the forward deck

A wet epoxy deck is no place for a butterfly.  I applied two 200"  x 51 1/2" lengths of 34 oz. triaxial glass crossway's over the forward deck overlapping the seam 3 inches.

Spinning the bow pole

it's pretty amazing what can be done with the judicious use of clamps.  Seen here is  an embarrassing arrangement of clamps that allowed me to spin the bow beam so that a final carbon braid sleeve could be applied and wrapped with shrink tape. The horizontal clamp provided a method of adjusting the RPM of the tube.

starboard aft cabin top

The aft cabin tops become an integral part of the sail handling system so it' important to anticipate mounting positions of the hardware. Here, I've laid down a few layers of 32 oz.Tiraxial glass reinforcement panels over the high density inserts, pulling the glass down and around the corners of the structure so that the forces applied to the winches and rope clutches will be distributed to a large area.  I plan on covering the layers with full large lengths of 32 oz. triaxial glass all at the same time. Unfortunately, the heat build in the shop till late in the evening so I am forced to begin the lamination in the evening as things cool down.  Even with the "slow" hardener, I don't like to feel like I'm trying to beat the clock, so working on the trailing edge of the heat seems to work out better during the summer.

port side rudder box panels

.......on to boxing in the port side kick up rudder box panels. It still surprises me that this involves dealing with twenty two individual panels in all.  After this vac bag batch, I'll have all panels needed to box them all in.

Here's a shot of the aft cross beam final exterior lamination.  Again, the process that I settled in on is pre-cut the glass, put it in place, flap a portion back onto itself then roll out the epoxy, flap the portion back down and roll a good coat over the top then do the same to the other portion, place peel ply over the lot and squeegee all excess to the sides.

paper patterns

After trimming about 10 panels in an unusual way, I discovered that it was fairly simple to tack butcher paper in place with a few trim nails and use a box knife to cut out the pattern and transfer the pattern to the foam.

Self made Bow poles

Done.......now I guess I'll go out and buy myself $8,500 dollars worth of  TV dinners with all the money I saved......maybe I'll even get the kind that has the baked in brownie desert.