Kaimusailing

A Wharram Pahi 26 had been anchored in the river nearby the boatyard and was hauled out with the travel lift. I went around to look at it and talked to the owner couple. I was surprised that it had been built in Martinique in 1988. The boat is more than 30 years old.
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I planned to watch the Super Bowl on my TV aboard Kaimu, but Geoff and Karen invited me to watch it with them and have some shrimp gumbo dinner. I biked to their house, the longest ride I’ve taken since Crisfield. The gumbo was perfection, the shrimp came right from the docks in Fernandina, as fresh as you can get. The game started out as a defensive slug fest that began to morph into a continual display of offensive genius by both teams. In the end Patrick Mahomes threw a touchdown pass to Mecole Hardman in overtime to win the game. Mecole was on the NY Jets to start the season, now he will get a Super Bowl ring.
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I biked back to the boatyard very late. The road is not well lit and I took care not to run into anything. After a long phone call to Hawaii I got to sleep well after midnight. The next day I was slowly going about my business and hoping to watch my daughter’s wedding via the link she sent me by Skype. Alas, the video was not kept long enough and after a late breakfast I realized I had missed it. Later it was reposted and I watched and shared it with family in Hawaii and Pennsylvania.
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The next day we planned on going to Yulee to buy plywood. After looking at online home improvement stores I decided to try the local Lowes store. I was looking for BCX or ACX, basic plywood, not marine, although ¾” marine plywood was available, I was looking for ¼” and 3/8”. I had trouble finding the plywood and the checkout said someone would come and help me. It ended up I found the pile of ¼” and grabbed a couple sheets. The plywood looked acceptable to build a dinghy. Nearby was some nice ½” ply which I grabbed. I liked the looks of it and it would suffice to replace the 3/8” called for in the plans for the bow and stern transoms and the seats. When I checked out I received a 10% discount because I am a military veteran.
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Komputer Ken who was transporting me and the plywood received a Chinese lunch at China Wok. I could not finish my lunch special, shrimp in garlic sauce, and saved it for later. We brought the plywood to the boatyard and stacked it on sturdy sawhorses. I gathered tools for scribing cut lines on the plywood and began trying to decipher the D4 plans, which are a .pdf file from long ago. There are some dimensions that are difficult to read.
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I worked my way over the top sheet of plywood and all went well. Took a while to plot the points to make the cut lines. After plotting and drawing the outline for one hull side I squatted down and tried to determine if the lines were smooth and fair. They looked good. I went on and plotted the lines for ½ of the bottom. The dimensions on the plans were not straightforward and the result on the plywood wasn’t fair. I quit for the day and pondered what the effects of the unfairness would be. The unfairness was in the forward chine edge of the hull bottom. It looked like just making it fair to the eye would do.
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I had the remainder of the chinese shrimp and couldn’t finish the leftovers.
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I redrew the chine edge and ignored the one point that wasn’t fair. I dug out my makita circular saw and began cutting the plywood dinghy parts. The plywood panels were fastened together face to face with the bad sides in and the good sides out. The first two cuts were following the chine edge of one hull side and the chine edge of one hull bottom half. This left just a small strip between the hull side and hull bottom to be cut. The forward edges at the bow were cut off but the stern edges were left uncut. I remember there being a discrepancy at the stern when I built the previous dinghy in 2018. The stern ends will be trimmed after the hull is wired together.
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I made a jig to drill the holes for the wire that is used in “stitch and glue” construction. The holes are about ¼” from the edge of the plywood and 4” apart from each other. The jig rests against the edge of the plywood and it has a small sheet rock screw that can fit into a drill hole in the plywood and it has a drill hole 4” away from the screw. The procedure is to drill the first hole, then use the jig to drill all the rest of the holes in that edge of the plywood.
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The seam between the pair of bottom panels must have the holes perfectly lined up when the panels are paired together. The same is true for the hull bottom chine edge and the hull side chine edge. I chose to start the chine holes at the front of the panels where the bow transom would be attached. All these panels are in pairs, left and right, and all have been fastened together face to face so that drilling puts holes in both exactly identical.
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The panels are unfastened and the job of wiring them together begins. I started with one hull bottom panel and its adjacent hull side panel putting a short piece of solid copper wire about 3” long through the first hole near the stern of the panels. I reasoned that the panels narrow toward the bow, so leaving the bow at the end of the wiring would be easier to manage than going the other way.
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This job took about 2 hours just to wire two panels together. It was extremely difficult to do it alone. The panels want to collapse flat and when that happens the wires get pulled apart. There is a lot of leverage in the panels to undo the wiring. It took time to hook up weights, clamps, and ropes to hole the panels in place as well as the difficulty in getting the wire in through the holes and twisting it. Sounds simple to do but is not easy to do.
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Geoff the chemist came by and said he couldn’t see how the panels would fit together. I didn’t want to spend another 2 hours to wire two more panels together so I changed my technique. I started the second pair of panels at the same point but then went to the middle of the panels and wired one hole there, then went to the bow of the panels and used a long piece of the same wire to bring the bow end of the panels together. To keep the panels from collapsing I jammed the wire stripper tool which had rubber handles and a sharp tip between the panels to force them into an angle where the chine edges were aligned together. This wiring session took about 45 minutes and didn’t need any clamps, etc.
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Finally I placed both pairs of panels together at the centerline seam of the bottom and wired the hole at the stern end, a hole in the middle, and finally the hole at the bow. Then I put spacers to warp the hull sides and bottom panels into shape. I could see that the chines and keel were fair. There was about ½” discrepancy at the stern where the transom would be mounted, but that will be trimmed after fitting the transom.
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The next step is to cut out the bow transom and the stern transom. A pram has two transoms. The bow will be lined up and fastened to the front edges of the bottoms and the sides. The stern transom will be fastened to the rear edges of the bottoms and the sides and they will be trimmed to fit the transom.
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The original design had 4 bulkheads that supported seat edges and also define the angle of the bottom and side panels, so I will have to make at least one fake bulkhead to hold the hull into shape while fiberglassing the seams. My plan is to fiberglass tape the interior seams, then flip the hull over and fair and glass the whole bottom. When that sets up the hull is in its final shape. The interior is glassed, then seat stringers, centerboard case, mast step, seats, and gunwales are attached. I hope to accomplish all that in about a week. Finishing will take about another week.
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The image is of the progress of day one, bottom panels and side panels wired together.