Kaimusailing

Day two of the dinghy build started out with me finishing wiring the hull bottoms together on the centerline of the bottom panels. This was much easier than the wiring of the chine edges of the bottom panels and the side panels.
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Next I cut out a temporary form that was a bulkhead in the original plans, a bulkhead that formed the support for the rear edge of the middle seat. This was cut from scrap ¼” ply. Next the bow and stern transoms were cut out of ½” ply.
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When I tried to force the bulkhead form into place in the middle of the boat it wouldn’t fit. I tried to wire it in place, tried banging on it, prying it with a pry bar, it just wouldn’t go. I quit and went shopping with Komputer Ken and Doc, of Doc’s Chop Shop.
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Doc and Ken had cats that needed to see the vet. They dropped me off at Walmart to shop for epoxy tools. I needed individual small jars for the hardener and resin, plus marinade syringes I use to measure the epoxy. It turned out that they no longer carried the syringes. After finishing my shopping I had a Subway sub for a very late lunch. The dynamic duo and their cats did not return for a couple hours. The afternoon was shot.
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Back at the boatyard I ripped the bulkhead form out of the dinghy hull and remeasured it. It was cut correctly. Perhaps the CAD design had not taken into account the thickness of the planking.
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The next day I looked at the bulkhead form and saw it was exactly ½” too wide. I trimmed ¼” off each side where it contacted the hull sides. Now it should fit, but the sides and bottoms wouldn’t bend enough for the keel centerline to form the correct angle. I tried a pry bar, wedges, nothing would bend the hull into shape. The final thing that worked was setting up a Spanish windlass and clamps at the very rear of the bottom panels and forced them into a vee. This vee also veed the bottoms under the bulkhead form. I was able to wire the form to the hull sides.
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Next I worked on the stern transom. I had left the hull sides and bottoms untrimmed because I remembered there being a discrepancy when I built this same design back in 2018. I could see the markings on the starboard hull bottom and starboard hull side. The marks were ½” different in the length of the panels. I duplicated the marks onto the port side panels. First the starboard hull side was wired to the transom at the top and the transom was forced down and wired to the top of the port hull side. The rest of the fastening will have to came later.
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The bow transom was impossible to force into position. The angle of the bottoms at the bow transom was close to 90 degrees. I could not put a Spanish windlass there and install the bow transom at the same time. It took a long time and many wires, longer than what was used on the hull bottom chine seam, but the edges were forced into position. Wires broke, were replaced, a little here, a little there, eventually it all came together. The bottom panels had a twist at the bow where the vee angle increased and that was difficult to force into the ¼” plywood. The earlier build in 2018 used 5mm Revolution ply which was more pliable and easy to work with, but unfortunately not water resistant, resulting and a beautiful dinghy that lasted only 2 years.
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The stern needed more attention, the transom was attached at the top corners, but the lower edges were not. Once again the stiffness of the plywood required more wires, longer, and after a while the stern was attached all around.
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The next step would be applying epoxy fillets to the inside corners of the hull along both chines, the centerline keel, and the vertical corners at both transoms. This would have to wait, rain is forecast for the weekend, so the project will sit under wraps till Monday.
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TEMU, the Chinese merchants that I have been using for a while now, are sending me an optical thermometer and a nice brass hose nozzle. I have been shopping for plastic barbecue marinade syringes which I use to accurately measure epoxy before mixing. They are calibrated in half ounce increments. For use with epoxy the tips have to be enlarged, drilled out a bit, sorry, no pun intended. Walmart used to carry them $.88 each, no longer. Not available. I searched. TEMU has them so I ordered. Like 4 for 3 bucks. They also have the small paint rollers which come with a small roller frame for about 3 bucks. I needed to buy more, ten dollar minimum, so I ordered a set of 12 multitool blades, expensive at twelve and a half bucks. Check the prices at Harbor Freight. The twelve blade assortment will come in handy. That’s like a buck a blade. Check the prices at Harbor Freight.
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The multitool is extremely useful. When I have to replace a section of plywood I have already chopped into it to see where it has gone bad. I continue chopping until all the bad plywood is gone. I tape measure the area and come up with a simple shape that will fix it, then cut that shape out of new plywood of the correct thickness. It can be a rectangle or any other simple shape. I place the shape on top of the repair area and run the multitool around the edge. Then I gouge out what’s inside the cut and glue the new piece of plywood in place. Done. Simple, not much measuring.
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The young couple with the Wharram Pahi 26 were put in the boatyard right across from the Pandemic Porch. I walked over and conversed with them. I conversed, they went about their business, but I found out they purchased the small catamaran in Marinique and sailed it here, not directly, a big adventure on a small boat. They may not even have a motor on board.
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I use a Chinese half liter tin cup for my coffee, it lets it cool down faster, and for my evening wine, kill two birds with one stone. One morning I noticed, before making coffee, that the no-see-um’s were going crazy at the tin cup. They were obviously after the leftover wine in the cup. I realized then that I had been drinking coffee with a substantial tincture of no-see-um every day.
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In Crisfield we put our cell phones over our glasses of wine to prevent the swarming insects from polluting. Now I am doing the same. The gnats come into a closed boat drawn by some faint wine aroma. But my wine aroma is probably not faint. My wine process results in no leftover wine, but plenty of leftover wine aroma. This draws the gnats. They are drawn to my boat and to the boatyard. What about the town?
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Maybe if I stopped drinking wine and pressure washed most of my boat, the gnats would lose interest and stop pestering me, the boatyard, and the town. But I know I won’t get any credit for that. Let them suffer, I will keep drinking wine.
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The weekend forecast was rain, rain, rain. Everything was put away out of it. I went back and read again my work on the D4 in 2018. There is a time lapse video link there of me putting the gunwales on, laminating them. I was in touch with Eloisa again and sent her the link. Her phone service, wherever she is now, is intermittent. Probably in the mountains, keys, or nearby Fort Clinch.
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The rain is light but steady. Too wet to work outside. The boatyard is quiet. Now and then there is a sound of a power tool somewhere. Eloisa gave me a compliment on a sample of writing I sent her. It was a fluke.
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Work resumed on the D4 dinghy. I made the usual 50/50 colloidal silica/glass microspheres mix with epoxy resin and when it was at the consistency of peanut butter began applying it to the inside seams of the dinghy. At first I tried putting the mixture into a zip lok bag, cut off a corner, and use it like a cake decorator. This resulted in too much of the mixture remaining in the bag. I then used a large tongue depressor to put the mix into the seams. The end of the depressor had a radius of about ¾”, so the fillet in the seam would have a smooth curve for later when it gets fiberglassed. The fiberglass has a minimum radius it can conform to.
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The inner seams of the bow and stern transoms were not filleted as well as short segments of the long seams amidships where the bulkhead form was keeping the hull sides at the correct angle. I didn’t want to glue the form to the hull.
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The next day I did the remainder of the inside seams. The dinghy was strong enough to turn it over. I also changed sawhorses to lower the dinghy to work on its exterior. I made the mixture again and worked it into the exterior seams. I then used a flexible piece of plastic to smooth the seams, worked like a charm.
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Rain was forecast so everything was put away out of the wet. The next job would be glassing the exterior of the dinghy with 1708 biaxial cloth. The image is of the D4 dinghy just before flipping it to work on the outside seams.