Rudder blanks

I decided to use a lightweight ceder core for the rudders.  The challenge becomes working out a method of sandwiching the rudder shaft between the cedar stock so that it can then be shaped, sheathed and vacuum encapsulated with epoxy.

My plan is to create two planks from a total of 20 pieces of 3/4 x 4 in cedar.  After this photo was taken, I mixed up a batch of cabocil and epoxy then slathered each edge and face with the mixture then placed the entire laminated block into a vacuum bag to insure that both planks were bonded well.

Next step will be to take a little time with a chisel and mallet cutting out a hollow portion that will allow the rudder shaft to be positioned between the two blanks.  Then another session of epoxy goo and vac bagging the cedar blanks over the rudder post to form a block with the rudder shaft in the middle of it. Once done, the fun part becomes shaping of  that the streamlined profile with a power planer.......at least that's the plan.

Play testing

Since I plan on mounting two 250 W solar panels and a 10 ft. dinghy off the targa bar, I vacuum bagged multiple layers of carbon fiber reinforcements over the core.

This resulted in a  super lightweight and strong  piece that showed very little deflection when loaded.

The photo is somewhat mis-representational in that the curve of this composite structure is molded in and I have not yet reached my full body weight. The keen eye may also take note of the clever use of a middle eastern camel saddle being used as the support for the Targa Bar.

As a final note, It's also safe to say that throughout all of written history, this may be the only time that a sentence containing both targa bar and camel saddle has been produced. If I may go further, this may also be the only time that a carbon fiber targa bar has come into actual contact with a sinew laced leather bound middle eastern camel saddle whose marriage resulted in a fine teeter totter which we enjoyed immensely.

Targa bar post cure oven

One advantage of not being burdened by corporate sponsors such as BMW and Oracle is that I am allowed to construct impromptu post cure ovens made out of things found inside a 20 ft. radius of the shop.........make that "Facility".

 

After disassembling the post cure oven, I am seen here performing a series of deflection test on the horizontal portion of the targa bar assembly.  As specified in Mil Hdbk 5, the test being performed here, involves placement of small vehicles along the upper surface.  To arrive at the streamlined cross section of the targa bar, I made thirty c clamps from 3/4 in plywood and pounded them onto the sides of this clamping jig.  

Two 6082 alloy aluminum Rudder shafts

?

How would you like to try to get these through airport security. They sort of look like special edition, anodized AK 47s.

Truth be told......they were built according to the fabricated parts book that is part of the licensing of the F-44SC Super Cruiser by Ian Farrier.

These beauties were fabricated from a particularly difficult to find 6082 Aluminum. ( for reasons unknown to me, this alloy is readily available in europe, england and other locales but is next to impossible to find state side.)

6082 Aluminium  (Al Si1 Mg Mn)

Aluminium alloy 6082 is a medium strength alloy with excellent corrosion resistance. It has the highest strength of the 6000 series alloys. Alloy 6082 is known as a structural alloy. In plate form, Aluminium alloy 6082 is the alloy most commonly used for machining. As a relatively new alloy, the higher strength of Aluminium alloy 6082 has seen it replace 6061 in many applications. The addition of a large amount of manganese controls the grain structure which in turn results in a stronger alloy.

Fairing before the storm

At present,  there is a low pressure about to slam into the Pacific NW so I am taking advantage of the decent weather and applying the first of three fairing coats.  Although System Three offers a product called Quick fair, the cost factor is orders of magnitude different that mixing up medium sized batches of resin and microbaloons.  System three boasts that Quickfair is superior because of it being formulated under vacuum therefore eliminating air in the mix.   At $150 bucks a gallon, to me, I have decided that it isn't worth the little extra effort of mixing up my own fairing compound.

Targa Bar

So....Targa is an old word for targe, "shield".    I suppose it may be possible for this Targa Bar to one day act as a shield but I think I would have other more significant problems if that were ever to be the case.  Regardless, the upper portion of this structure follows the basic curve of the cabin top ( unless you opt to mount your mainsail traveler on it, in which case, the Targa bar is configured differently )  Personally, I don't like the idea of mounting the main sheet of my boat to an ungainly portion of the boat......I want it mounted to something solid as heck....mainly the center of the aft box beam structure.  The cross section of the upper portion of this Targa Bar structure is called out in the plans thusly. 

Since I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to build this Targa Bar, I'm starting things out simply by fastening the foam onto a curved form and gluing the central center rib in place.  Tomorrow, I plan on making things up as I go to work out a way to create this streamlined curved form. I have some ideas in mind but that's the fun in building sometimes.....not knowing exactly how to do something but having just enough of an idea to make you think it can actually be done. So far, I've been lucky and sometimes I've actually woken up in the middle of the night having figured something out........then of course when I wake up the next morning, I completely forgot it.

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.