Most designers of boats (or anything else for that matter) don't like you dickering with their designs. Well if no one ever dickered with an original design we wouldn't have all those nice custom hot rods & bikes & things to play with. Some designers take it more personally than others. I'm hoping the designer of our boat (Jacques Mertens) doesn't take offense to my doodling with his design for a really great boat. The fact is we want to be able to use our boat for longer cruises, 2-3 Months ++ and be able to do things like the "Great Loop", "Down East Loop" etc. One day I'd even like to have the boat shipped to Europe and do the canals. I know Lori wants to get back to the Phillipines some day and maybe we could hook up with Del & Lena over there!
Anyhow back on track.
This is "as designed". Length overall: 28' 2"
(you can click the image for a larger version)
Modified Version. Length overall: 31' 5"
(you can click the image for a larger version)
This is the latest sketch of the modifications we want to make to the boat. Stretching it 39-1/8" by adding another Frame "F". This will allow us to move the galley up into the main salon. Once we do this we'll have enough room in the fwd cabin for a double berth instead of a v-berth. It'll also allow for the inclusion of a pantry and hanging lockers. We've also added sliding doors, Port & Stbd as well as a full hard top to cover the cockpit. The fwd section of the main cabin has been moved ahead 1' which will allow more dash space and the inclusion of a chart table (in the inventory listing).
In order to build our Bow Shed to plans we need to source some 1 X 3" strapping 20' long. Well none of the typical suppliers around here can get it any longer than 16'. I'm checking for some custom saw mills but it doesn't look likely. So in the mean time I'm conducting a little experiment......
What I've done is try to splice a 4' section of 1 X 3 onto a 16'er. I've bevelled the ends to be matched up and epoxied them together. The first try I tried to do all steps in one shot and it didn't work too well.
I wrapped the pieces in fiberglass and some of the blue shrink wrap plastic we got to cover the shed. This should have provided a good strong splice but was murder to handle when it flopped around trying to turn it over to do the backside. The shrink wrap worked as planned and squeezed out the excess epoxy.
When I took the plastic off after 24 hrs the epoxy hadn't kicked. Maybe I didn't stir it enough or it's too old. It work somewhat. The splice held but wasn't all that strong. It wouldn't break but it would bend with the poor epoxy job. Anyhow back to the drawing board. This time I just glued the pieces together and will put the fiberglass on in a second separate operation with new epoxy
That's it for now. Back to work tomorrow to make some money to buy more supplies. Standby.....
