Foot brace

I made the foot brace on Monday and finished it up and installed it on Tuesday. Warm weather and polyester resin made it a quick job. It's a bulkhead, really. I first made a joggle stick out of a piece of cardboard, then recorded the shape of the section on another piece of cardboard that I clamped in place in the plane of the bulkhead, then transfered the shape to another piece of cardboard that would be the pattern. Kinda like this:

(If you make the teeth irregularly shaped, you don't need numbers.)

The cut out bulkhead (¼" foam) got a thin skin of glass cloth on each side, plus a piece of carbon fibre tape along the top for strength:

I drilled holes and tied it into place with marline:

Not as nice looking as the rest of the boat, but it's very light and it does the job.

I've used this boat more than the foam & glass kayak so far this summer. I'm lovin it.

New boat!

I was sold at "10 lbs". And I'm glad!

This boat just came up on UsedVictoria last night, and I went to see it this morning. I couldn't resist. I thought, "well, at least I can use it for little trips now and then." It didn't cost an arm and a leg.

This is the photo from the ad:

It's a Sweet Pea Mark 2 Geodesic Airolite by Platt Monford. It's 8' 3" long by 30" wide.

Here's the photo of it from their page:

I would hesitate to take a kid or a dog along, just because of the tippyness factor.

Here it is on top of my car:

Definitely a few sizes smaller than the Golightly!

 

I took it out for a paddle this afternoon and I'm very impressed. First of all, I can lift it! All by my self! With one hand! Amaaaaazing!

Secondly, it's a great little boat, believe it or not! It's like a little cork. I love the way it bounces over the waves. It paddles very easily because it's so light. And it even tracks well. I used the seat I made for the kayak, and a piece of foam at my back against the cross-brace. (The back still hurts after an hour, but I'm resigned to that.)

I'm now planning some additions: a foot brace, and some foam flotation inside the gunnels. Shouldn't add too much weight (he said, hopefully). And I'm thinking that I'll be able to take it car camping. I haven't done that since the kids were small; I've been stuck on boat camping. But that's not happening, and this looks like it's more easily done and just as much fun with less work, which is what old fogeys require.

New foot brace

A sinus infection has mostly kept me from playing on the water for the last few months, however, I did get out a few times.

Here's the new foot brace, which is great:

It's a piece of foam left over from building the boat. It's glassed both sides, and is fastened to the original 1" x 1" brace with Sikaflex and screws. The backpack just fits between it and the bulkhead.

I finally tried out the sail rig with the new amas! It was in Oak Bay, in about 15 knot winds with gusts. She flew! There was slop that came in from waves bouncing off the lee ama, but it was manageable.

I'm really happy with the new amas: they worked just as I wanted them to. But—I've decided not to use the boat to sail in again! It just takes too much time and effort to put it all together at the ramp, and then get it into the water and back out again and taken apart and put back into and onto the car. 

She may go up for sale soon, we'll see. At least there will be some amas for sale.

New akas

I thought I was buying thicker-walled tubing for the akas (cross-bars) for the new amas, but it turned out I bought the same size. It's 1" diameter, the wall is one-sixteenth of an inch thick. I got two 8' lengths. I replaced the old akas with the new tubing anyway, because the old tubes had quite a few extraneous holes in them, as they had been salvaged from a previous installation.

I started out putting the amas at the ends of the 8'-long akas, but it didn't look right: there was too long a piece of tubing for the size of it, in my mind. So I tried the old akas; too short, the amas too close to the waka (main hull). Decided to add two inches each side, making the akas 7' long. To my mind, it looks to be in a better proportion.

Since I didn't get the thicker-walled tubing I thought I was getting, I'm seriously thinking of filling the (marine/aircraft grade 6061 aluminum) tubes with wood, in order to add strength. Dowels are too heavy, so I'll have to cut them from a plank of some light wood, like pine, and plane corners off. It's better if they don't fit exactly—for instance, if there are flat spots the length of the dowel—as that leaves more room for the epoxy glue to hold the core and skin together.

Bumpers in use

The boat got moved into the shop today. This photo shows how the cart is attached to the boat, and the bumpers in use for the first time.

They're so slippery, and it was so windy, I had to tie the boat to the mirror so it wouldn't slide off the car!

Car rail slider-bumper things

I noticed that I'd made a small crease in the roof of the car (yellow arrow below) from manipulating the boat on and off. Also, some red paint from the bottom of the boat. This is because I lift one end of the boat on or off at a time, resting the boat against the car before picking up the other end. So I decided to make and install a bumper/slider thing to attach to the roof, that the boat can rest on and slide on when coming on and off:

The bumpers are on both sides of the car, since I never know which side I may be able to offload on. The material is the same stuff that plastic cutting boards are made of (UHMWPE). It's tough and it's slippery.

The bumpers are attached to the roof of the car using rivet nuts and countersunk flat-head stainless machine screws threaded into the nuts (the heads don't protrude to catch on). I borrowed the riveter mechanism from the garage across the street, drilled holes in the plastic and the roof, attached the rivet nuts in the holes, and then screwed the screws into the nuts through the plastic. I put a doughnut of Sikaflex caulking around each nut beforehand, so that water can't penetrate into the car.

The rivet nuts are used so that one doesn't have to tear the inside of the car apart to put a nut on the inside. The nuts are now hidden (and permanent). One advantage to rivet nuts over rivets is that one can take the item off if needed, by unscrewing the bolts.

Oh, by the way, how do you like my little cockpit cover? It's made from a reinforced plastic tarp left over from Firefly. It has UV resistance and of course is waterproof. It's not made of woven strands like so many tarps are, so the waterproofness lasts.

The tie-down points are doubled or tripled layers of the tarp material, sewn on with my old Pfaff. The loops are made from black nylon webbing such as you'd see on a backpack strap. And that pom-pom! Hahaha! I guess I can take it off (it came with the car), now that the boat is a permanent fixture. I can always find my car! 😎

Amas painted