Some painting complete

I have finished painting the foredeck, the anchor pulpit, the handrails, the foredeck side of the Portuguese bridge, and the bulwarks. Pretty much, all of the fore deck is finished with paint. I did this on Friday, and due to some family things I have to do this weekend, I wont be able to finish the wheel house side of the Portuguese bridge and the outer deck of the wheelhouse until sometime this week. The weather forecast for this week is on the stormy side, so Ill be able to take off work the 1/2 day I need to finish painting what I did not get finished on Friday.

The fore deck was a lot of work to paint, and used about a gallon of paint. The paint mix is 5:1, so in terms of product used, I sprayed about 1.25 gallons. That might not seem like a lot of paint, but it is a fair amount given the paint type. The fore deck and handrails is a really cut up area to paint, and was a pretty physical day for me. At the end of the day, I was feeling the workout. This is one of those deals that you cant stop once you get started, so no matter how worn out you get, its best if you suck it up and finish.

Because I decided to paint the hand rails, I had to scaffold the outside. I have a rolling scaffold I used, but that required many trips up and down the scaffold as I moved around the boat. The rolling scaffold does not fit between the boat and the barn wall, so I had to set up a 16 walk board and a ladder to do that area. Slow, thoughtful movements are the key when working 12 off of the ground lugging around a full paint pot, air hoses and safety clothing. My basic paint plan was the same as all the other painting I did which involved getting a decent first layer of paint on the surfaces, letting it tack up a bit, then come back and apply a second and third coat. With the handrails, the exposed frames of the bulwark, the bulwark cap and underside, the anchor pulpit, hatch, and cabin ventilation tubes, there was a lot of trimming in that had to be done. All of the fixtures that I just mentioned not only required trimming, they also added some square footage. Most of this area was painted at odd angles, on my hands and knees, bent over while avoiding the roof trusss. I now have a better understanding on why certain boats are more expensive to build than others, and why items such as handrails, bulwarks, and the Portuguese bridge add costs to a job. Im so glad this job is completed.

Youll notice a cubby hole on the port side of the anchor pulpit. That recess is for my wash down hose connection and a connection for an air hose. Ill explain the air hose connection at some other time, but I felt like I wanted an air hose on the bow of the boat for maintenance.

The handrail is made of 1 1/2" stainless steel with 1" stanchions welded to the bulwark cap. I had intended to hand polish this rail and leave it as shiny stainless. Like I said in earlier post, I had serious doubt about being able to get the polishing job done well enough where the handrail would not be a constant battle with rust. I think I made the right choice in painting it. Im also happy knowing that when the rail gets chipped, it will not rust quickly due to the stainless.

The paint scheme Im doing on the boat is pretty similar to the picture at the top of the blog. Because of the Portuguese bridges white color, I carried that paint line around the outside of the hull. Its nice seeing some more shiny paint on the hull as I look up at it from the shop floor.

Like I said above, Ill finish inside the Portuguese bridge this week. Now that all this paint work is completed, I can get some more finish work done while the boat is in the barn. Ill be able to install the hatch, install the dorade boxes, install the Portuguese bridge door leading to the foredeck, and install the wood cap on the Portuguese bridge. Ill also be able to install the deck plates for the two water fills, and the gray water pump out station for the 50 gallon tank located in the guest cabin. I will install the bulkhead fittings for the anchor winch and the door on the pulpit.

Im not to happy about the quality of the finish on the deck. There was a fair amount of grit on the deck from the other painting, so Ill have to take a close look at a re paint. My goal was to get the deck protected with that tough paint Im using, and thats what I did. I plan on doing a non skid deck treatment, but that will not happen until launch time. Given the additional coatings I will be doing on the deck, I think Ill let it go until launch now that it has two coats of acrylic urethane and it can now handle weather and finish work.

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Some Thoughts on Capsize in the Atlantic

I am back home in Virginia Beach and working my way through the mountain of email, progressing toward normalising my work again. I have swapped the Southern Hemisphere for the Northern one, summer for winter and cruising the Brazilian Bay of Islands for a blizzard that is coming later today. What else is there to do than to dig right into the pile of work that awaited me?

A relaxed holiday on the sunny beaches, mountains and waters of Cape Town gave me time to absorb and reflect on the whole experience of turning a big boat upside down on the ocean.

Many people have said to me that it must have been a frightening experience but I didnt find it frightening at all. I remember thinking "Oh, we are upside down, was that a wave or have we lost the keel?". My next thoughts were about the safety of Sean, who was alone in the cockpit. I saw through the companionway that he was hanging on tight then my eyes and mind went back to what was happening inside the boat.

Sean says that he wasnt frightened either. The wave broke over the top of him and he was entranced by the mast spearing the water as "Black Cat" rolled over. He wondered if the mast would still be standing after she righted herself. He says "Rather a surreal experience more than frightening. BC ("Black Cat") felt safe somehow."

In contrast, Gavin had what might be considered a more normal reaction to what had happened. He got a big fright and his reaction was to move into the cockpit and stay there, where he felt safer (in the event of another capsize) and from where he was able to pump water from the bilge with the pump that is mounted in the cockpit seat. Gavin is the youngest member of the crew but has almost as many seas miles in tough conditions as the rest of us and can cope with anything that is thrown at him at sea.

I think that the big difference between Gavins reaction and that of Sean and myself is possibly due to our different experiences in waves. Gavin is not a surfer but both Sean and I are. We have spent countless hours in breaking waves that are sometimes big and frightening. As with all things in our lives, our minds get sensitised by our experiences and it takes progressively more intense experiences to break through that sensitising and make an impression. That sensitizing helps us to keep a clear train of thought in intense situations. This situation involved being thrown around by a big wave and was less out of the ordinary for us surfers than for the non-surfers in the crew.

It was also a lot more frightening for those on land than for us on the boat. We knew exactly what our situation was but loved ones on land could only speculate. They were hearing very sketchy reports from multiple sources. They knew that we had hassles and they knew that there was a very violent storm hammering us. Their minds were having a field day imagining all sorts of things happening to us on the ocean in wild conditions. Whether or not our actual experiences surpassed their imagined ones I dont know.

A few people have asked if I would rather not have been there or if I would have preferred it to have happened to someone else. Truthfully, a definite no. I am glad to have been there and to have experienced this. I am pleased that it happened to me and not to someone else. If I could exchange what happened for anything else, it would be that we did not break the rudder and were able to continue our Cape to Rio Race as planned. But that was not to be. We did break the rudder, we did get blown back into a very violent storm, we did get turned upside down by a big breaking wave and we did all survive with minimal damage to the boat or injury to the crew.

The result is that I went through that roller-coaster washing machine and I did it with my eyes open and my analytical brain switched on. I was able to observe for myself what happens in this situation, what happens to the boat itself and to everything that is inside this kaleidoscope tube as it turns through 3D space, jumbling up crew, stores and equipment and leaving them all relocated in whatever positions gravity and rotational forces happened to have thrown them.

I consider myself, crew and boat to be fortunate to have come through as lightly as we did. I also consider myself very fortunate to now be one of what must be a very small number of boat designers who have this experience in their backgrounds, an experience that is foreverafter there to influence how and why we do what we do in every future boat that we design.

I was told a few months ago by an interior design specialist that she wanted to work with me to design interiors for my boats. She said that on boat shows and in magazines she had seen some really bad interiors and the fact that she was talking to me on this subject seemed to infer that she thought that my interiors could do with improvement. I asked what ocean sailing experience she had, which proved to be none at all. I told her that my interiors were designed to be safe for a gyrating boat on the ocean, not for boat shows or drinking cocktails on a marina. My interiors and all other aspects of my designs come from my experience at sea, gained over many thousands of miles of cruising and racing in conditions from delightful to horrendous. From now on they will also be influenced by my experience of being tossed out of control inside a capsizing boat.

To see our range of boat designs, please go to http://dixdesign.com/.

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Some more Hells Bay Boatworks photos and history and other past history

Today taking a break from a design commission Iam drawing up, a small house, I have found these photos from my past. Its very rolly and windy today with guts in the 30s . Even anchored well behind and what would seem to be the lee in these big islands the anchorages here can be uncomfortable. You have to imagine getting in and out of the bath tub and thats how the seas make it around the corners of these islands. 

This is Jack Nicklauss  yacht " The Bear" with three HBBWs skiffs on deck.We knew a Captian that knew Jacks Captian that said Jack was interested in our skiffs. I took three of our skiff models down to West Palm to meet up with Jack.

We spent half a day riding around in each skiff with me trying to show him how to drive them. At first he just did not understand that you had to run these skiffs like a sports car. Once he got the hang of it he loved our boats. He orderd all three models. I had a great time with him and meeting his wife.

He was to be leaving for the Bahamas to go fishing for a few weeks so I offered to come back in a few days to measure his boat for all the skiffs cradles to be made and bring him a loner skiff to use for his trip. It would be awhile before we had his skiffs built.

When I returned a few days later his Captian was ready to put this loaner skiff on deck. We had a brand new Guide for him to use. I brought along an employee to photograph this skiff being lifted onto the deck of Jacks boat. We had just really started getting into putting skiffs on decks of yachts. The deal was the Davits that lift these skiffs can only lift 1,000 lbs or less. Our skiffs all weighed with fuel way under this load so we had the market all to our shelfs. When hooking up the lift cable I explained to the Captian that he had it on wrong and when it was to be turned it would put a huge strain on his hook and tackle. No I was wrong according to him and his mates. Up goes the boat with me saying its no good and when they went to turn the boat to lower BAM !!! Breaks the hook and the cable with my skiff bouncing over Jacks yacht and over the side. No one was hurt physically except the captains ego. 

Iam the guy thats pushing my skiff away from Jacks new boat. We lowered the Guide down to the dock . I now retied the lift my way and we lifted it up on deck and all worked fine. The damage to this Kevlar Guide consisted of two minor scratches that I could fix no problem. Jacks new aluminum yacht had four 4 cracks in its deck with the davit being the worst having broke away partially from the deck.

I looked the captain in the eye and said I wont tell if you wont , and Ill fix my damage and you can deal with yours. Yes please he said . Shit happens . Ive always wondered how he explained the repair bill.

This is the Marquesa skiff plug starting. I have just cut out all the stations and installed them on the building jig. You  can see the two chine levels going in and the foam core planking going on. Thats Stan Nash walking by. Having guys like Stan Nash working at HBBWs from the beginning really made the difference.

One side of the core skin almost on. Once on you can glass over this and pull off and glass the inside and then you have a cored hull . In the past I used cedar as it was cheaper.

I loved this cover. We had hired my sister whos a professional photographer to take pictures of all our skiffs. Flip had this idea of a shot. The shuttle was going up while she was in town so lets get as close as we can and set it up. During that time a few unmanned rockets had exploded and the shuttle was always being postponed. I thought this was a waste of time. Flip knew exactly where to go. Flip and Hal with the Guide skiff are in 1 of water anchored bow and stern. We are in another skiff with ladders in the water in about 2 of water. Flips wife  Diane has a camera with one lens size and my sister with another. Iam standing in the water holding up these two ladders for the girls so they are steady grumbling to myself of what a waste of time. The radio is tuned into the countdown,its a beautiful day... Suddenly its 9 8 7 6 .... The water around us starts vibrating like a shaking pool . We are 11 miles away from the launch site but its so big it seems weer going to get the smoke . 2 1 blast off ,and up she goes.

The picture used here was taken by Diane Pallot. We photo shopped the anchor line out of the picture.

When taking all the early morning sunrise pictures with my sister I would lay in the water and hold the skiffs still. 

Chris Peterson, whats Hal Chittum doing in this advertizement?

Sailing in the Bahamas at the age of 19 in my little sloop. Looks like shark for dinner.

In todays sailing world a flat top mainsail is all the rage. This is one i fitted to my sailing dinghy 28 years ago. Iam sailing onto the beach in Cat Island Bahamas. Way ahead of my time ....no ,I just only had so long of a mast.

This is Dick Negleys Scooter boat I built in all Kevlar. Iam in the Laguna Madre in 6" of water with my feet holding the skiif still.

Rachel next to Hogfish Maximus showing off Hoggys nice box shape.

Ah spear fishing below Andros on the Bahama banks. All shot on one coral head free diving. Thats Cress Newbold the best man at our wedding in Spanish Wells 26 years ago.

Chris Pinder in red and Rupert Sawyer with a morning catch of crawfish- lobster. No sun protection back then. 

Johnny Pinder coming up with a few 

I will leave you with this shot from the 70s of a bahamian sailing sloop hauled out on the shore in Lisbon Creek Andos. Theyre all gone now.

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Chine runners for flat bottomed sailboats some thoughts

32 years ago I owned a 21 San Juan centerboard sloop. I had bought it for $1,000.00 with the mind to clean it up sail it a bit and resell her. This fiberglass design had a long drop cast iron keel that you would hoist up with a hand crank trailer boat winch through a big hole in its trunk. I learned very quickly that this set up was a nightmare to try and stop the ingress of water into its cabin. I also learned that when you hit the bottom with this heavy metal keel it would shake the boat like you had just lost all the ocean out from under you and dropped to the sea bed. Needless to say when in anything that looked like shallow water up it went and away would we start sliding to leeward on our crabbing passage to our anchorage. I learned I would never want this set up. I sold the boat for $3,000.00 which you could still do back then. I at times owned up to 8 boats that I was buying with the mind to fix up , learn it bit and then resell. Ive never lost money on a boat... Yet.

When I met and sailed with Jim Melchor on his Phil Bolger designed Mannatee yawl I got hooked on shallow water capable sailing vessels. I loved the way he could just sail about in 2-1/2 -3 of water without worry. The mizzen sail offset on the stern was so radical. Who was this guy Bolger that said you could do this and not follow convention ?

Jim sailing Alert in shallow water. The leeboard acts like a a simple long low aspect keel. Its design has been around for centuries.

Jim Melchor asked if he could finish one of his sons Bolger Black Skimmer leeboard Yawl designs in my custom boat building shop " Back Bay Boats" in Tavernier in Key Largo. Sure! After Jim launched we sailed that boat every chance we got.

I loved just watching the water flow around its simple exterior 2x4 chine logs. Who would of thought of doing this to make it easier for amature builders. Oh yea, to hell with convention.

I owned a Herrshoff Prudence sloop at time that I had built with all matching bronze hardware. Here was a designer I could follow in my own personal life. 

This boat was very stiff and fun to sail but had a wicked weather helm at times. The hull scantlings were way too light for me. The hull looked like it would not last long if not looked after carefully. In reality it did not. These boats with butt blocked plywood panels and one layer of Dynel cloth just do not hold up.

The next intresting boat I came across I had only heard about through my sailing  friends Michel and Idda Little. They had built a smaller Bolger double ended leeboard cat rigged 30re. They only sailed it a very short distance from Key West to the Marquesas keys to camp out on for the winter. You could do that back in those days. They have written a great book on camp cruising small boats.

From them I heard of this kid that they had met named Matt Layden. They said he was living aboard and crusing in a 13 cat rigged flat bottom dinghy that had a cabin top. And the thing that they wanted me to know was that it had no Keel, leeboard, daggerboard or anything. They said he sailed everywhere on just the chine !

It would take many years later before Matt and I finally met up in the Exumas. 

See pictures in an earlier blog.

During this time frame I decided to design and build my own shoal draft yawl. I wanted a very ocean capable boat but also very capable to really sail across very shoal waters with out the need for an engine. Between this time frame I looked up Henry Scheels keel design for reducing draft on production standard keels. The Austrailans had won the Americas cup with a wing keel. 

I had seen how easy the water flowed around the Bolger 2x4s.

This guy Matt was sailing all over with just his Chines. 

So what I figured was that I would kjust spread out a Scheel keel to both sides of the hull bottom.

The boat only sails on one side of its keel at a time. The hull sides would act like a leewards low slung flat surface... Except that I could use the whole side of the boat.

I ended up putting this chine edge down the whole length of the first Hogfish design. Pete Culler in his book on Skiffs and Schooners goes on to say you should never have a hard chine boat with a protruding exterior chine or the boat will trip and be very unsafe. Well Bolger must have not read Petes book. 

This chine protrusion, lip, extension, winggy thing what ever I feel works very well to stop the slipping you would otherwise get with out it. I have learned much since meeting Matt Laden, comparing boats and ideas. Now mine are very short. As in 12 long on HFM. Not too big. 

I can see how they work when I pull up my daggerboard or when I raise the centerboards on the other two Hogfish designs. 

BUT they do not give lift, not like some wing Keels can. They work best when the boat is hard pressed and heeling over in a breeze. If its light winds and we are trying to sail to weather in 4 of water the sails cannot be sheeted in too tight. As the breeze increases then you can see and feel the dig. You can see the grip by looking over the stern at the wake.

This is very low tech stuff here.

Lots of people dreaming of a shoal water simple boat would love to not have to build a board into their boat and also give up that space.

A Chine keel- wing like this WILL NOT WORK in anything bigger than maybe 18.

Why because you will need to use human ballast to lean the boat over to get it to dig in. This is impractical. Windage comes in to play. 

Its a good addition for gunk holers as a simple thing to add when building your boat.

This is what I would suggest putting on my H-28 for about 8-10

Heres showing what I feel is the difference between a traditional vee bottom and the Hogfish types.

See the difference in vee in going to windward in a decent breeze. The vee bottoms bow gets flatter.

Notice the freeboard. Must reef earlier in the upper boat.

Thats as far over as the HFM sails in 20-28 knts with one reef in the main.

Showing a box boat. Ive never seen a picture of one in strong winds so Iam only speculating here.

If you have some pictures in a strong breeze please send me some. 

To finish up heres some thoughts on rudder depths. Some loose drawings of contemporay designs and their rudder depths. Ill go offshore in any of those that go below the hull bottom. The others will be very hard pressed in a breeze as they will have to shorten their sail to handle the speeds and loads.

If you have no offshore sailing plans than no big deal. 

Rained all this afternoon today so no more work re installing Wild Birds deck Hardware. Time to write a post while Rachel cooks dinner.

Its Movember , mustache month. Rachel and I having lunch between squalls today.

Later...

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Porch ceiling soffit and some wiring

Historically speaking, this is always a bad time of year for me. Work is back with a vengeance, but funds have yet to start flowing back my way. Im almost booked up for the rest of the year, and everyone I know that does my type of work is for sure not complaining about the amount of work out there. Because cash flow is not working so well right now, Ive had to start using material Ive purchased last summer to keep things moving forward.

My latest project has been getting the aft deck ceiling installed, installing the salon soffit, the port, starboard, and aft steaming navigation lights, the aft deck ceiling lights, along with the salon soffit lights. I also wired the salon ceiling for lights as I intend to install the ceiling in the salon before we head to the launch site.

The aft deck ceiling was built using BC plywood which I painted. Because I wanted to be able to remove the ceiling with not to much trouble, I used stainless screws with finish washers to fasten the ceiling. Instead of hiding the joints in the ceiling, I covered them with battens pinned in place with some stainless brads. Because I have so much Cherry lumber in the barn, I made the battens out of Cherry and left the bright with a few coats of urethane. Well see how the bright battens suit us against the painted ceiling. 

Every light on the boat is LED. Last summer I purchased 40, seven watt 12 volt can lights. I purchased direct from factory in China, and have to say Im pleased with the quality of the light. The lights are aluminum with an aluminum heat sink. All the machining is top notch, and the penetrations from the wiring are epoxy sealed along with having the wiring tinned. I purchased 40 lights so I could get to a certain discount level, but I also wanted to have spares on board for replacements. I checked every light when they showed up and every light did what it was supposed to do. To date, I have about seven lights working on board now, and Im totally impressed with how bright they are, how cool they stay, and how much electricity they dont use.

For lighting the aft deck ceiling, I installed two of the seven watt can lights. Because of how the ceiling is framed, I can easily add another light using a fish tape in the future, but I doubt Ill need it as the two lights I have installed give plenty of light.

I installed a LED work light on the aft deck to illuminate the swim platform. I will also have two work lights in the mast along with one more work light on the bill of the wheel house. The work light for the swim platform is switched from inside the salon door.

The salon soffit overhangs the salon walls about six inches. I decided to install a one watt LED light over each of the three windows. These lights are blue, and my intent was for accent. I think the lights will look pretty sharp while were at anchor or at a harbor.

I do  have a design complaint regarding the aft deck ceiling. The trim piece of metal that makes up the salon soffit is about 4" tall. As the trim turns to wrap around the aft deck ceiling, it gets reduced in height to about 3". I dont know why this happens and it could be a flaw in the cut file. I saw this and knew it was going to be an issue when I was framing the super structure but I chose to do nothing about it. What this caused me to do was force the plywood ceiling up at the rear of the aft deck so that the plywood still remained above the drip edge of the trim  piece. The plywood ceiling has a  subtle curve upwards over its last 18" aft.  Not only does the plywood need to be above the drip edge, it needs to be above it about 3/8" in order to keep the reveal constant around the aft deck ceiling. The other big issue of having the plywood protected by the trim piece is to keep roof water from rolling around and getting to the edge of the plywood. It really did not look that  noticeable until I installed the cherry battens. I can tell you its a big job to fix and I doubt I"m going to fix it. It really doesnt bother me that much.  

There is really no reason why I cant install ( other than lack of funds) the ceiling in the salon now. Because its going to go much faster while in the shop, I went ahead and made all the preparations to install the ceiling. The first thing I did regarding this was to make sure all the timber frames were installed to catch the bead boards that will make the ceiling. Once the framing was complete, I located all the lights and light switch locations. The basic layout is that as one enters the salon door, youll turn on six can lights from a switch by the door. Another switch in the galley will turn on three lights; one above the sink, one above the range, and another above the fridge. There will be another light in the half  bath.

Since I was wiring the ceilings, I decided to go ahead and run the wiring  feeding the switches, and also installed a switch for the aft deck work light, the aft deck ceiling light, and the salon ceiling lights. The soffit lights will be switched from the wheel house and the feed has not been established.

The wheel house will also be switched from a wall, but I want to have some red lights in there along with a few of my already purchased can lights. So given that, Ill probably have two switches for the wheel house ceiling lights. 

All my wiring connections were made using heat shrink crimp type connectors. For larger connections where more than two wires joined, I used potted wire nuts. Some purists might frown on a potted wire nut in a marine environment, but I have 100% confidence in them. Ive been using potted wire nuts for assembling splice boxes in septic tanks and sewage lift stations for 25 years. I have yet to see corrosion in those wire nuts be and issue and I can assure you that ocean air is no where near as corrosive as the inside of a septic tank. Potted wire  nuts are pricey, but you get what you pay for and theyre worth the money.

My immediate goal is to complete the salon ceiling, and build the salon door. I  have to be able to lock the boat up once at the launch site, so a proper salon door is a must. The salon door is going to be wood, and the wheel house door is going to be aluminum.

A large piece of wiring and carpentry has now been checked off of my list. Having good reliable lighting is a must and it feels good to have this part of the project working and off the list. Once the boat is at the launch site, the soffit I just finished will be about 16 in the air, and since I have  no side decks I would have had to use scaffold  to do this work. It was a good thing to be able to quickly do it in the shop while it was only 7 off the ground. 

Cheers

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