Kaimusailing

The 3 end pieces, cedar, of beam #2 were glued in place all at the same time. It was tricky because they had to fit underneath the beam brackets, one at the end of the beam and the other at the inboard gunwale. I had to plan which surfaces get the epoxy “glue hard” mixture which is like mayonnaise and gets scraped off easily. The planks were clamped in place by wedges left over from scarf bevels. Also, a couple of bar clamps were used to clamp down on them.
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I had an urge to start planking the top of the beam, but now was the time to attend to the bolts that hold the crossdeck framing in place and also the bolts that pass through the beam on the centerline of each hull. I had neglected to do the centerline bolts on beam #3, so that had to be done also. It is difficult to access the web portion of the beam after the top planks are glued in place.
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The centerline bolts pass through the wall of the beam trough, then through the beam, and are secured by nuts against the beam. These bolts hold the beam against the wall of the beam trough and also prevent the beam from sliding in and out of the trough. The length of the holes, plus the distance needed to pass through the trough wall meant an ordinary drill wouldn’t go far enough. Also these bolts are 3/4“ diameter which is too large for an ordinary drill bit in my drill which only goes up to 1/2“. I wanted to drill the holes oversize so that the bolts could be bedded in epoxy mix to prevent moisture from getting into the beam. I used the same 1“ speedbore bits that I had used on hogging out the skeg slots. First I drilled a pilot hole with a long thin auger bit. Then I drilled from the other side with the speedbore extended with a bunch of socket fittings. I used a hex to 1/4“ socket drive adapter, then a 1/4 to 3/8 socket drive adapter, then a long 3/8 socket extension, followed by a 3/8 to 1/4 drive adapter, and finally a 1/4“ hex socket that fit the shaft of the drill bit. After drilling the 4 holes, one in each hull in each beam, the holes were packed with epoxy “glue hard” mix, which is 4:1 silica:milled fibers, and the bolts were screwed or hammered home and tightened with nuts. Large stainless fender washers were used to distribute the pressure under the bolt heads and nuts.
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The foredeck framing has four bolts passing through beam #2 and originally also passed through the middeck framing, but that was a bad design, the bolt holes will never line up perfectly. I changed it to bolts only passing halfway through the beam, bedded in epoxy mix. In fact the bolts are not screwed into place, the deck framing was propped up in position and the bolts pushed into the epoxy mix until it hardened. Then the props could be removed. A generous amount of epoxy mix was built up around the bolts in the gap between the framing and the beam. The bolts for the middeck framing will be done later, they pass into the pyramid that sits on the beam. Wharram calls the pyramids “wedges”.
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Planks had already been got out with their scarf bevels for the top of the beam. They needed to be prefinished. The first layer sits on top of the cedar webbing and overlaps it, so the prefinish only goes on the edges of the planks and on the thin overlap margin. The top of the plank is bare to glue to the layer of planks above it, and the bottom has a bare strip wide enough to glue to the cedar web. The prefinish consists of priming with raw epoxy, then a coating of 50/50 phenolic microspheres/silica. The top coat is arctic white.
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A steel cruiser was relaunched after a long stay at the boatyard. The crew has said their plan was to go out to the Gulf Stream and turn left.