Thread: Hello, new GIS build by Simon in ST Pete FL

Originally Posted by SimonLew

Yep, there is power in the downhaul, feels good The boom will be a hollow ply box with much greater stiffness than now. I want to play around with setting up an internal cascade outhaul that I can easily adjust from the helm. As you noticed the telltales were flying nicely. So not sure what I would change, in the conditions we had, to improve the leech.

There is not much at all to change Simon. Your pics testify to that, for those light conditions anyway. The only observation was your downhaul tension was restricted by the bendy boom and so the leech wasn't as straight as it might have been when close hauled. Perfect for off the wind and down wind though. When you get your stiff boom operational, you'll see what I mean. More downhaul, straighter leech. Then as the wind gets up and you need to dump, the boom goes out instead of up, which is faster and without using up too much mainsheet and shoulder power . By the way, this is also one of the reasons you want a stiff yard, or at least one that reaches its max bend quickly and then stops. I'm very interested to see if Ian's carbon yard will behave that way.

With your current yard lash-up, more downhaul in a stiff breeze will transmit all the way along the luff to the peak, which is not really desirable. What has already been determined is to stop the luff tension dead at the throat, and set the sail tension along the yard separately. The way to do this is to bolt a saddle to the yard and shackle the thoat to to that instead of using the lashing. Setting the sail depth along the yard independently means you have more control over it, and also goes a long way to reducing overbend wrinkles in the sail.

I'm not sure that an internal cascaded outhaul system has any advantages to an external one. In fact, I can only think of disadvantages. One being that the boom won't be water tight. Just run the cascade over the top I think using those micro blocks, which work well and are really cheap @ $3-4 each.

I do note that you had two up on the rail for a bit in very light conditions, so the sail seems to have oodles of power!

You are clearly over the moon and of course you should be. Just magnificent!

Crypto-launch

Thanks MAM, I like that It was either work on the boat or play on the forum / blog.

Then as the wind gets up and you need to dump, the boom goes out instead of up, which is faster and without using up too much mainsheet and shoulder power

Makes sense, I was amazed at how little the bannana boom skyed as it is. In this pic we are just leaving the beach in about 10 knots and moving right along but the boom is not lifting much at all. Pretty neat.

What has already been determined is to stop the luff tension dead at the throat, and set the sail tension along the yard separately. The way to do this is to bolt a saddle to the yard and shackle the thoat to to that instead of using the lashing.

That's the plan, just ran out of time before Cedar Key

I'm not sure that an internal cascaded outhaul system has any advantages to an external one. In fact, I can only think of disadvantages. One being that the boom won't be water tight. Just run the cascade over the top I think using those micro blocks, which work well and are really cheap @ $3-4 each.

Thanks for bringing this up. I want to minimize the amount of hardware hanging down from the boom. It hurts more on the noggin and just generally gets in the way so I automatically thought internal. Did not consider on top of the boom, that would be clean and easy.

Do you think that a sealed boom makes much differance in a capsize? The boom is going to have to be much stiffer than the one I have (the one I have now bends 20mm with a 10kg load in the middle) so I was thinking of making it look less chunky by tapering it and cutting some cool looking holes in the sides. Kind of match the look of the gunwales and tiller a bit.

I do note that you had two up on the rail for a bit in very light conditions, so the sail seems to have oodles of power!

Little whitecaps were just starting to show so wind was 10-12 with frequent gusts to maybe 15. Sail feels like a truck

Originally Posted by MiddleAgesMan

Crypto-launch...

Will it be known in the future as "pulling a Simon"?

Originally Posted by SimonLew

Makes sense, I was amazed at how little the bannana boom skyed as it is. In this pic we are just leaving the beach in about 10 knots and moving right along but the boom is not lifting much at all. Pretty neat.

You still need some downhaul of course when running and off the wind, so the boom shouldn't be lifting too much. Looks like you had the right amount on.

15 kts gusts, well you would have experienced the get up and go of the Goat and been planing in a breeze like that! Looks like you had it all in the one day

A boom full of water is not what you would want after righting. Holes in the boom would allow drainage, but with the tensions that I put on mine, I think I'd be worried about doing that. Drainage holes would need to be near the front, and that's where there is a lot of stress. Best to seal it up and put the cascading outhaul on top. It will stay there out of the way.

I put together a video of the launch and a bit of sailing. Apologies for the bad framing and shakiness but our waterproof camera setup needs a lot of refinement.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I0RVsw9FXI"]YouTube - Goat Island Skiff Maiden Launch[/ame]

Simon,

I've enjoyed watching your build. Very nice job!

And plenty of time left in the sailing season! Well done Simon! I've added the vid to my favourites!

Nice song and put together nicely too.

Oh, that is both the boat and the video clip!

MIK

Originally Posted by arbordg

I've enjoyed watching your build. Very nice job!

Thanks David, it's been fun, and the real fun is just starting!

Hi MIK, The GIS RULES!
I'm just getting started on the GIS videos . Got a GoPro HD ruggedized waterproof camera that I'm planning on mounting all over the boat. Stay tuned!

Between work, travel and rainy weather I have just recently been able to get some varnish on the interior of the boat. I'm using Interlux Perfectin Plus 2 part poly so needed 3 rain free days in a row to get the minimum 3 coats on without having to sand between coats.

The stuff is real nice but, at current temps in Florida, you don't get much time before it dries. Keeping a wet edge is impossible on the interior as there are just too many surfaces so inevitably I have some brush marks here and there. Overall I'm pleased with the results.

Davlafont just asked me a question which has prompted me to think a bit harder on something that has been rattling around in my head. And that is: since I am not sanding the varnish between coats (that would take an eternity on the interior of the Goat) the final finish is nice but not totally level, like you see on some of those gold plater wooden boats. BTW how do they do that on acres of varnish?

Anyway, this has me wondering if I wasted some time presanding all of the epoxied parts before assembly. The sanded epoxy finish looked great and when wet and shiny it looked fantastic. But now the varnish although very nice is not nearly as smooth and blemish free as the epoxy was. I'm not dissapointed in how it looks just wondering if the finish would look much different if I had assembled the boat then epoxied everythig in 3 wet on wet coats, given it all a decent sanding and coated with the vanish. That might have saved tons and tons of time. Hmmm ...... has anyone seen boats built both ways by competent builders? Which method tends to give nicer results?

I can't comment on which method gives nicer results. But I can categorically refute the idea that coating and sanding after assembly would save you time. In fact, the one thing I would do differently if I were to build another boat would be to pre-coat and sand all flat interior surfaces before putting everything together.

I admit that I made my job harder by being somewhat sloppy when cleaning up thickened epoxy ooze. I really had to dig around in the nooks and crannies to get the last of it out before coating everything with the clear stuff. Maybe it would have been a bit easier if I'd been more careful up front.

But sanding the interior after it is put together means getting into lots of small spaces where the random orbital just doesn't fit. It's a little better after the epoxy is on and the bottom is stiff enough to kneel in. But prepping for the epoxy required lots of leaning way over from outside the boat to reach spots in the middle. (Note: a couple of "shorty" sawhorses, about 2 feet tall, are invaluable here.)

The whole time I was doing it, I was thinking, "Wow. This would be SO much faster if there were no bulkheads to bump into." I would daydream about running the power sander down a long, clear expanse of plywood lying flat on my cutting table.

I'm stupid enough that I sanded out my whole boat 8 times: once before coating with epoxy and again before each of 7 coats of varnish. The first two times, sanding epoxy, probably took 10 hours each, including vacuuming and wiping up the dust. The remaining times, just lightly sanding varnish, was more like 4 hours each. I estimate that a good third, and maybe more, of the time I have into my build was spent on sanding, painting, and varnishing.

And I still have terrible drips and brush marks along the sides, just under the inwales.

So be happy with the way you did it. You made the right choices.

Hmmm. The more I think about it, the more I think I'm understating the amount of time I spent on the pre-epoxy sanding. I forgot about the hours spent getting in around the inwale spacers and under the middle seat. That all had to be done by hand. 20 hours is probably a better estimate.

Good input Paul. My take away is: don't do it Paul's way! (Although the results would argue otherwise, despite Paul's confessionals to the contrary)

My question to Simon (on his Planing Around blog) was whether pre-coating prior to adding the frame/sidearems was better than assembling the flat parts and coating the assemblies before going 3D. In truth, I wasn't tracking on the need to sand the cured epoxy coating. But I might have access to a detail sander (triangle head thingy) that could snug up to the corners of the frames.

Originally Posted by davlafont

My take away is: don't do it Paul's way!

Smart man.

The greatest tribute to MIK's talent is that a clueless numnutz with almost no woodworking experience could make endless mistakes on his first boat and still end up with something functional and beautiful. I ended up just where I wanted to be, but I took a lot of wrong turns on the road there.