Forward Deck Glued Down

 I decided to go ahead and glue down the forward deck rather than wait for the completion of a few things that I have to do in the cabin of the boat.  Most notable is fabricating installing the bow prod.  I'm still debating the merits of having an internal assembly for this, or to put it on top of the deck.  I've more or less decided against having an articulating prod (ability to move side to side).  So I decided to commit the deck to epoxy, and then crawl around inside if necessary.

 You may see in some of the pictures, small holes along the edges of the deck.  In addition to using weights to hold down the deck while the epoxy cured, I used 1 1/4 screws to make sure that I got a good seal along the gunwales.  The screws were removed after the glue set. 

Cockpit floor and sides are in.

 I cut the cockpit floor for the boat quite a while ago but it turned out that I did not make it wide enough at the front end of the cockpit.   Also with all of the other work going on in the center and aft end of the boat, I did not glue down the floor.  I removed the floor and scarfed on a couple of side pieces and re-cut the floor to match the cockpit side pieces.  Once that was done, I "flow coated" the bottom of the floor,  then mixed up a whole bunch of epoxy goop using West system 403 filler, coated the tops of all of the support members and then glued the whole thing down. 

Of course it's important to get good contact between the floor and the underlying supports while the glue dries, so I used weights and some of the lead ingots that I bought for the keel bulb to hold everything down.  


After the floor set up a bit, I then filleted the cockpit sides and floor joints.    My plan is to reinforce the outside of these joints (inside the boat) with glass biax tape.

Keel Crane Well

 We are planning on sailing this boat in lakes where we need to get in and out of fairly shallow water.  Because of this, I've wanted to have an arrangement where I can easily retract the keel while still sailing.  I decided to build a keel crane but need a place to secure the crane while it's in use.  So borrowing a bit from a Melges 24, I decided to create a well just aft of the keel.  So i could have made the well out of almost any material including wood, but since I'm planning on constructing my own bow prod and sprit out of carbon fiber sleeves, this presented an opportunity to practice vacuum bagging a tube.   I bought carbon fiber sleeve material from Solar Composites and went at it.  I was extremely pleased with the result.  Three layers of heavy carbon fiber sleeves resulted in an extremely stiff tube. 

 Next up, I needed to construct a platform to hold the well-tube. I built a platform out of three pieces of 3/4" hydrotek (left over from previous laminations).  One was used as a base, the other as the top of the platform, and with the third I cut a hole slightly larger than the OD of the well tube.  The platform is supported by two pieces of 1/4" plywood, and the whole thing is reinforced with 12 oz. carbon fiber cloth.

The picture to the right shows the completed well.  The carbon fiber tube will be trimmed to the height of the deck after the cockpit floor is glued on.

Chainplates are in

 I'm getting to the point where I want to glue down the deck and I wanted to install the chainplates before that event.  A few builders installed the chain plates after their decks were installed.  Needless to say they were working in very cramped quarters trying to get those things in.  In any case, I looked around trying to buy chain plates and finally I asked where people get these things.  Jon from Critical Twist sent me drawings done by Kevin from Pipe Dream.  When I saw the drawings I figured that I could build these things myself.  Of course this kind of thing would be pretty easy to build with a nice milling machine, but my drill press with a crummy cross vice would have to do.  To start off I ordered some 316 stainless.  I thought that I pressed the button for 1/8th inch mirror finished plate, but I received 3/16th in mill finished (dark).  In any case after cutting the metal to size with a Porter Cable Tiger Saw (I tried a cutting disk, but a couple of those broke apart) I used the cross vice to get the holes aligned and spaced evenly.  I then built the backing plates using the same methods.  The backing plates were smaller than the ones in Kevin's drawings in order to save a bit of weight.  I figured with the thicker material that this would be OK.  Finally, it took a whole lot of work to clean up the 316 to a nice shiny finish.

 As everyone recommends in their blogs, I over-drilled the size of the holes in the chain plate gussets, filled them with epoxy/filler mix and then re-drilled the holes to the appropriate size.  The picture to the right shows one of the chainplates installed on the gusset.  

 The picture to the left shows the backing plate.  As you can see, this is quite a bit smaller than the chainplate itself.  

Finally, the picture on the right shows the chainplate protruding through the deck.  The slot that I built on this side of the boat was perfect.  The one on the other side was not so great, however I'll fill the gap in when I glass the deck.


Next up, I'm going to remove the chainplates, finish fitting the deck together and glue everything down.  I'm still thinking about how to add flotation to the boat.  I'm thinking about adding foam under the entire length of the deck.  I might do this with normal pink foam from Home Depot, or use expanded polyurethane foam.  

New sticks for the i550

 I took a week off of building the i550 for vacation in Maine.  We took along our e-scow.    For those who haven't sailed one of these they are a real hoot, however in a good blow they are a handful (and more) and you really need some beef on board, just to hold it down.  They also, have dual bilge-boards (you retract the one not in use), running back-stays, and a whole lot of strings to pull.  In fact when we decided to build the i550, I was looking for a high performance boat that two of us could sail alone.  It is definitely simpler - we'll see if it is easier. . .

On the way back from Maine we took the opportunity to stop by at Dwyer Mast to pick up a couple of sticks for the boat.  The e-scow worked out pretty well as a shipping vehicle.  We just duct taped the new spar to the mast from the scow.  We bought a 29' 6" DM4 mast and decided to go with the DM5 section for the boom.  Jay at Dwyer suggested keel stepping the mast, so we won't cut the spar until I make the decision on cabin top vs. keel mounting.  I also did not buy any accompanying hardware yet because I'm still deciding how to rig this thing.  I'm thinking about creating the spreaders out of carbon fiber.  

Deck fitting

 The forward half of the deck has been fitted to the boat.  I'm extremely pleased with how well this came out.  The deck fits perfectly with the cabin top.  I used the West System scarfer to angle the edges of the three plywood panels that make up the front 2/3's of the deck or so.  These joints were very well aligned and will take only very minimal amounts of fairing in order to be perfectly smooth.  

 The boat made its first trip outside of the garage this morning.  I moved it out in order to get better pictures.  However, I took the opportunity to clean the garage floor that was under the boat.  The  following pictures show the deck trimmed to match the hull.  

The last panels to be fitted will be the sides of the cockpit.  Hopefully these will be finished this evening.  After these panels are fitted, there are a handful of items internal to the boat that need to be managed before everything is glued in place.

Fitting the deck

Creating and fitting deck panels took quite a bit of time.  The picture to the left shows the back deck panels, the cockpit floor and the curved sections on the inside of the cockpit

There have been quite a few broken rudder attachments on i550's, so while reinforcing the rudder tab on the transom I added an extra inch of hight.

I also cut out the companionway.  The top hatch is going to fit flush similar to the hatch on Critical Twist.