With a little help from my friends - Flipping the hull

Well today was the day. Nothing left to do but flip the hull over. The team assembled and we got right to it after some accusations of me stalling!

I apologize for having to use screen captures from the video. I was a little too busy to be taking pictures.

Finishing the first part of the lift, up on a 45 deg angle and resting against the work bench & stack of bulkheads. It got hung up a bit. We are pulling the bottom of the lifting frame sideways as we lift.

Over on its side. It did exactly what I thought it would do, slide down uncontrolled. We had moved the tag lines to the other side thinking they were needed there to help control the roll from the top. She slid down with a boom but nothing or nobody got hurt.

The second pull with the ratchet strap went a lot slower. We had to reposition it higher on the gin pole to get the lift we needed. It worked really well, much more control over the hull as we inched the bottom of the frames towards the gin pole and payed out on the main hoist.

And after some repositioning slowly lowered to the ground.

Finally, upright! It's taken 3 years to get to this point (we have short building seasons up here). The only casualties were one 2X3 and a pair of underwear.

Special thanks to the 'crew':

Greg Kroone, Tim Gilligan, Robert Taylor, Jim Campbell, Mike Laporte & Doug Laporte.

Now the real works begins.........

Standby.....

Journal of the Molly B

While researching option on how to flip my boat hull I stumbled across the Journal of the Molly B. The Molly B is a modified Glen-L Argosy which the builder, Tom Schmidt, built starting way back in 2002. I immediately purchased and downloaded the first three of his journals to see what info I could glean from it's pages. With Tom's permission here are some of the photos and details of how he flipped his 40' hull.

First thing you'll likely notice are the rolling frames and Gin Pole. These allow the hull to be flipped basically within it's own shadow. The hull Tom built has much of it's framing already installed so there's no need to overdo the rolling frames. He's pulling from a single point with a chain hoist in much the same manner I'll lift my hull.

Up she goes. As the main hoist lifts the hull the bottom rolling frames will want to move towards the gin pole. In my instance where I don't have a whole lot of extra room we'll pull the bottom as we lift.

In the above pic you can see the internal structure in the hull. The rolling frames and lifting points are tied to these (temporarily). They provide the structural integrity to the hull as it's lifted. At the point the hull is in that pic there's the greatest force being applied to the hull trying to collapse it.

This is the point of no return. The boat will go to the floor. The maximum stress on the gin pole is also at this point when the hoist is at max extension. The tendency will be for the rolling frames to want to scoot out from underneath the boat towards the gin pole dropping the hull to the ground. I've planned for this and will have a couple of bodies with tag lines standing by to arrest the slide if it happens.

So in a nutshell that's how it works. Looks easy. In theory it is. In practice, well we'll see how it goes.

Standby.....

Postponed

We've got some bad weather headed this way for tomorrow morning so I'm going to postpone the flip. I would need people outside the shed to handle tag lines etc. and I can't really ask them to do it standing in the rain. Will try again for next weekend. Sorry.

It's ready to go over!

That's it. Boat is rigged ready to be flipped. All I need now is to put together a crew for Saturday. I drove the ground stakes into my neighbors backyard this morning and rigged up the straps that'll hold the Gin Pole back. Worked like a charm!

The anchor on the right hit rock about 2' down. I would have liked to get it a bit further down but it just wouldn't go.

Above is where the strap exits the shed.

The Gin Pole with the full weight of the boat on it. It never flexed a bit. I couldn't resist the urge and lifted the boat.

I let it hang there on the winch for about 5 mins. The winch held it up quite nicely. No moans or groans or sqeaks or cracks. :-)

So other than some housekeeping duties and recruitment for Saturday this will likely be the last post till the boat is flipped over. I do intend to get it on video.

Standby.....

Carnage in the Boat Shed

Oh don't worry. I didn't hurt the boat.  :-)   Just wanted to get your attention.

Before I got started this morning I put together a 5 min video of the current state of the boat. It's been awhile since I've had a chance to do any videos so here's one for ya. At least it's not a sanding video!  :-)

This mornings task was to finish disassembly of the strongback frame and lower the boat to the ground. There was cuttin', and jackin' and hammerin' and swearin' and some bleedin' going on . You can see the carnage all around the boat!  :-)

More carnage!

I was just tossin' stuff out from under the boat like a mad man!

As you can see here the rolling frame is sitting on the OSB that I'll use to keep the frames from digging into the dirt floor. I've got about 1000 screws that I took out of the forms that I'll screw through the OSB into the ground like cleats. That should keep the OSB from sliding around.

I apologize for the terrible picture, the bow just kissing the ground!

Better shot of the bow from the inside.

Again the frame sitting on the OSB.

It took me about 4 hours to finish removing the strongback frame and lower the boat. I really wasn't working that hard at it. Had to stop and ponder a few times. :-)  The hull feels very secure in the turning frames. As I was jacking & lowering it there were no creaks or moans or groans at all.

I've got a very short list of some last minute details to deal with then it'll be ready to flip. Tomorrow I'll likely start to sink the ground anchors in my neighbors back yard (I bought another one yesterday just to be safe).

Standby...