Still some things to post about

With the start of the new sailing season, I thought it was time to invest some money into proper equipment. Like these two high end fenders (thank you, kids). I'm not much of a salty dog armchair-sailor so these can remind me which is port (green) and starboard (red).
Also, I made a ring of tube (held in place with a bolted eyelet) on the end of my boat hook to be able to dock with a bit more ease (provided there is a pole on the dockside to grab with the ring).

Below is one of my high end fenders. I can use the loop of rope to drag it to the bow of the float. When not in use I can flip the fender to the inside side of the float. Having a fender at the bow of the boat is the only way to safely dock the boat moving forward.

I also made an extra support for the mast. The hole in the support (see first picture of this post) is to put the maststep-ball into, and locks the support in place. The black strap is double sided velcro. Very handy for tying ropes to the mast. You can buy it at marine stores for $$$$$ but you can also buy it at AV-companies for normal prices (about 2 dollars per meter).

I didn't bother to put a masthead on my mast - can't see the benefit. With a bare mastend it's easy to fix the (in europe) compulsery marking sign for 'long cargo'. The sign is held in place with a piece of 6 mm rod sticking through the mast and secured by two rings.

In the category things breaking: with one float unfolded the pads on the beams sometimes bind/jam a bit. I ground the edges of the pads already, but not enough. When I stamped on the beampad to put it in place, the epoxy glue snapped. Not sure if this happened because the surface wasn't prepared well enough before gluing, or because the epoxy is not flexible enough to handle this kind of peak pulling forces. I will clean and sand the gluing area, and then glue the pad again, using pu-kit-glue. This glue is superstrong but also a bit more flexible than epoxy and won't snap as easily.

We tested the diy roller furler (see earlier post), it seems to work ok. Watch for yourself.

This saturday me and my brother will join a 50-miles doublehanded sailrace. Just for fun. I only have the main and jib, and no lightwind sails so we will probably be smoked by at least the other 8 multihulls which will be in the race.

diy endless line furler (25 - 30 dollar)

For some time I have been toying with the idea to make a endless-line furler from standard automotive parts. Below is my fist try. It's made of an aluminium pulley (10 euro = 14 dollar), a standard skf double row ball bearing - type 3200 if I remember correctly - (10 euro), some stainless steel bolts and eyes and some plastic parts made of cutting board.

Since I have a backup forestay I can take some risks: even if the furler will fail nothing serious will happen.

The drum is a standard aluminium v-belt pulley (type Z). This pulley is 8 cm diameter. I would rather have a bit bigger pulley, but couldn't because my lathe is not big enough to handle bigger diameters.
I drilled 8 holes through the pulley (hope the photo shows the idea) to make sure the furling line won't slip. Big succes - the line locks in the pulley beyond my expectations.

Below the furler before assembly. From right to left: tang to mount the jib, cap made of cutting board to seal bearing, M10 bolt, bearing, the pulley with a recess for the bearing (made that with the lathe, of course), 3 rings to form a spacer, line-retaining drum made of cutting board (also on the lathe), piece of cutting board with an eye to feed the line, ring, nut with a hole and shakle.

I put the bearing in a liberal amount of grease, and sealed the bearing-recess with a plastic cap. I think this should be watertight enough.

The eye for feeding the furling line is held in place with a small recess in the furling drum (below).

Below a part I'm not too happy with yet: I used a 10 mm bolt to mount the shackle of the furler. Because it's threaded it's effecively less than 10 mm diameter, and with a 6,5 mm hole drilled through there is not much steel to hang on to. To fix this I drilled through the bolt and the nut, hoping this will be somewhat stronger. Added benefit: the nut is locked in place. I will probably replace this bolt by a unthreaded 10 mm rod.
Other part I'm not too happy with is the tang on the topside of the furler. there was not enough space above the bearing to just 'bolt through', soI fixed the tang with two short M6 bolts. Because the shape of the tang (wide, v-shaped), the forces on it will be quite high. I will probably think of another solution, but not before I have done some tests to see if the furler works.

Movie to show the furler: as you can see it can turn and swiffle in all directions, and it's not much work to put the line on the drum.(PS the movie is often down, I'm sorry)

Working on details

I added cleats in the center of the floats - will make tying up to a dock much easier.
Detail of my new halyard-routing. The halyards exit the mast about two meters above the deck, and run through two blocks, then to an organiser and then to the cockpit.

I found handling the jibsheets without winches too heavy with a bit more wind (even with 2:1 setup) and therefore added two winches. It's a shame in a way the boat gets cluttered more and more with stuff. My plan was to keep the rig very simple and to use as little as possible hardware.

Something I should have known: make sure there is a hole in the anchor locker hatch to run lines or chain through to the locker. I had to make this hole off center because there is a tab in the center of the anchor well to support the hatch.

I messed up most of the trampoline grommets because I didn't have the proper die set to fix the grommets, so I replaced them with a piece of webbing (sandwich webbing-trampoline-webbing).

Without the grommets the trampoline is not so 'bling' anymore, but I believe the webbing-loops will spread the loads much better thant the grommets. I didn't remove the grommets closest to the hull, because the lashings to those grommets have to be loosened every time you fold, and with the lashing throug a grommet that's easier than with a lashing through a webbing.

Detail: the webbing runs through the holes of the former grommets. The 'eye' of the webbing will be on the lower side of the trampoline.

Next project will be: making some sort of removable galley with a kerosene burner because next summer I will be sailing with my family for a few weeks and I want some cruising comforts by then. My plan is to make a sort of box which will stand on one half of one of the cabin-seats. Ideas are welcome....

Just a perfect day

It is winter now in the Netherlands, and I've finally got some time to catch up updating the blog.
About three months ago it was nice weather, and I went sailing with my wife and kids for just a day. Some pictures to show this boat is a nice (albeit small) family-cruiser.

Some improvements

After the first sail with the boat I went on a vacation with my family (camping, nog boating) and since have been sailing only once. In the meantime I've been busy adding some improvements to the boat.

I ordered some 8mm 'anti torsion rope' at www.allspars.co.uk. It took them ages to send the rope (and they sent it to the wrong address), but in the end it arrived.
This stuff is really stiff. It's a sort of bundle UD (believe it's kevlar) with a normal mantle.
My sailmaker replaced the wire of the luff of my jib with the anti-torsion rope and at the same time shortened the luff a bit (the luff was a bit too long - with the roller in place I couldn't hoist the jib properly).
Big succes! The jib now furls with no problem, even with a lot of wind. That's a relief as I wasn't really pleased - understatement - with the hank-on setup. Probably OK for racing, but not for cruising.

Because I have no pulpit I needed something else to put the mast on while trailering. I welded a sort of aluminium 'fork' and made a flanged insert of a piece of PVC-pipe and a brace made of wood.
Below the setup: the insert is on the foredeck and when trailering I can just stick the fork into it. I still have to shorten the fork. Will do that when I've got the mast down. It will be easier to judge how long/short the fork should be. I'll try to make it as short as possible, so the forces on the fork and insert are as low as possible.
I also altered the setup of my halyards. My choise to keep all the halyards on the mast proved to be a mistake. Now both halyards are led back to the cockpit. It seems to work fine, although I'm a bit concerned it will inhibit mast rotation. The halyards exit the mast 2,5 meter above the deck, are led to two blocks at the base of the mast, and then run through an organiser. I'll add a picture of the setup later on.
I put the organiser on a piece of perspex to lift it high enough for the halyards not to rub against the deck.

I also replaced the 'bare' dyneema sk75 halyards with dyneema rope with a mantle (will hold better in the stoppers) and made them 2:1 for less compression in the mast and easier hoisting. This also is an improvement. Downside is there's a lot of halyard in the cockpit. Below is my trick to attach rope to the mast: I make flanged bushes of HDPE to prevent chafe, put it the mast (flange inside of course), put a rope through and fix it with a double figure 8-knot. I also used those bushes to attach the line for the trampoline to the wall of the aft beam mount recess.

To prevent chafe of the jibsheets I glued a piece of pvc pipe cut into quarts to the cabin.

That's it for now. More to come within a few weeks.
I'll be sailing a multihull race the weekend of 3/4 october and will certainly post about that weekend.(NOTE: the race was cancelled due to bad weather).

some good advice

Tom Siemerink (www.f32.nl) sent me some good advice about handling the boat under power wich might be of interest for other builders.
I tried to translate it, but I'm not sure about the english nautical terms so I hope it's understandable.


Congratulations on the launching of your boat, it's looking good.
I'll give some unasked advice, hope you will benefit from it. We met a lot of the same problems.

To 'park' the boat we use at the bow and stern of the float a big round fender. This is the only way to avoid damage and it works really well.
Mostly it's better to dock backwards than going forward. With a lot of wind it is in any case difficult to dock on the windward side and difficult to get away from the side downwind.

You're right on your site: the boat is square and light and will drift quickly. On the downwind side we like to dock against another sailboat, because you can use the round shape of that boat to sail away (motor a bit forward while keeping the back docking lines attached and then motor away backwards, or the other way around). While docking it suffices to use one docking line on the middle of the float. When you fix this line first, the boat wil go nowehere and you've got plenty time to fasten the other docking lines. In the lock we only use this one middle line (now that's the good thing about owning a square boat).

Video footage

A compressed clip from Luis Matos with some video of the sailing in Holland. Hope you will enjoy. Thank you Luis.