Finishing Wild Birds Deck. The remaking of a Trintella 44's deck.

 Six days ago a cold front passed through Antigua on its way south with us going from summer to fall in a matter of a light rain squall. 

Gone is the record breaking heat of summer here. Along with the sun overhead cooking away with very little wind it almost feels like there could be frost on deck.

In reality it's a few degrees cooler with not as much humidity and best of all the wind is back.

My summer job of redoing Wild Birds deck is over. All the hardware is back in its place sitting on top of a new deck surface.

Tim and Gayle arrive next week to re step the mast and put her back in the water for a winters sailing about the Caribbean waters.

Here's what the past months have looked like in this project.

After the deck was faired off I primed all the deck edges with a short nappy roller using Awlgrip 545 white primer. I did three coats going around and around all at once. Took most of a day.

Lots of edges plus the cabin sides, mast support and around the hatches and gutters.

We put in these little water ways to break up the expanse of the non skid. 

 Here I faired in the fuel fill so it would not be such a toe grabber.

Stern area now with nothing on it. With WBs draft it's about 14' off the ground. Most people would not climb up the ladder to say hi. To scared. Don't blame them.

Rolling.... Rolling...

Every morning we get these flying termites if a rain squall passes over. They are all over the deck. What a pain in the....

Here's the deck after I have applied the sand on top of the epoxy resin that I rolled out. All the deck edges had to be carefully masked off as Tim And Gayle wanted a two tone colored deck. When applying the epoxy resin it was about 100 degrees in the shade with the deck so hot I could not go barefoot. I can walk on asphalt barefoot but man was it hot. I did not have time to get pictures of this process.

With the heat and the on going threat of a rain squall I had to get the deck done all at one time. If it rained then it would take days to get things dry again. Every time it did rain when I was masking the masking tape would have to be dried off and in places redone. I don't have to worry about this kind of stuff on Hogfish Maximus because we are not Yachty.

Here's Rachel scooping up the used sand to reuse on our next project next year rebuilding our racing trimaran that I salvaged. I am always thinking ahead for future projects.

When rolling on the epoxy the one thing that I did not think of was that when the epoxy hit that clear grounded fiberglass deck all would be clear. I could not see or tell how thick the resin was. So what happened was I got small imperfections in the sand as ridges and small rises. This is the deck all swept off now. The little white rectangle is a spot I missed and could not see. 

Now I have rolled on one coat of Awlgrip Cream paint. It took 3/4 gallon to do a coat. I rolled on three coats over several days when it was not raining.

One coat looking aft.

Now all three coats on with no hardware on yet. We still had this cover up because it was so calm. Once the deck was painted off it came as when it blows here it shakes that cover and my nerves to hell. Glad it's over. This deck tough feels great when wet or dry.

Drilling out for the Genoa sheet track. All those holes going into a perfectly sealed deck. Oh well.

Amazing how many things you have to take off to do a job like this.

I used butel tape to seal off the steering pedestal. This was a lot cleaner than regular caulking.

The cockpit was so nice this summer without this pedestal.

New hatch liner in the head where a deck prisim used to be.

Yea that's as far as I could get this liner down to get at the Genoa track bolts. My left arm is hurting from twisting to get in there. Rachel was on deck to help so we just yelled back and forth at each other.

I see you way back in there.

Not so bad in the aft head.

Tims installing a second roller furler behind the bow Genoa. I installed this bulkhead to secure it to the bow. I ground away all the old paint and when done I tilted the grinder on its side and ground many little grooves in the hull side. I did this so when the epoxy resin and cloth go over all this they will act like treads to stop the upward movement. Also the turnbuckle has no slack so the whole deck would have to come loose to move this.

Before picture with lots of needless deck hardware.

Today..... Nice and clean

The old bow.

New bow with a totally rebuilt under the winch deck and pad.

Old deck

New deck with head hatch. European boats don't have enough hatches for ventilation in the tropics.

Because they don't need them over there!!!

I took a total of 640 hours to do this job.

Next job is to fix this hole. It's in a Mumm 36 that was dropped by a crane when moving. It's a reasonably clean hole to fix. I will post its rehabilitation after I'am done in a few weeks.

This will take about a week or so. Then I will be racing the whole winter on TAZ  as crew.

TAZ is a Riechel Pugh 37' all carbon sloop. The owner Bernie Evan Wong is a very dedicated local racing sailor. Last week we raced locally and came in 2nd after corrected time in 6 first place finishes.

We are to race the Grenada regatta, the Caribbean 600 then over to St. Martin for the Heineken regatta, then back over for Antigua sailing week plus all the little ones in between. I will also do the Antigua Classic regatta and if we can with Wild Bird the Beqia Easter regatta. I think I will log about 3,000 plus miles here this winter sailing to and fro. My kind of winter. Great sailing, people,weather, seas and of course the Party's!!!!!

As I'am soon to be unemployed for the winter I will have more time to blog and get some more skiff and sailboat designs out there.

Talk soon

Latest on new skiff builds going on.

Here are some updates on one of the past skiffs being built and some new skiffs being designed and built. I get these photos via emails and on Facebook.

 The first skiff is Jon Conners from Vermont.

In the last blog post Jon was building his skiff. He has since launched her and has been doing sea trails in a river near his place. I don't know if this is salt water or not. I don't think so because the trees are so close to the waters edge.

Jon and I first met when he emailed me asking if I would email him a clear set of drawings for my Ian Scott Devlin skiff proposal. Sure. He liked the idea of a slightly rockered bottom and some of my chine details. He wanted to design his own hull to be built in plywood using the stitch and glue method.

During sea trails we have talked back and forth via email about her performance.

Here she sits. I say she looks "right". By that I mean that everything flows well in this hull and shape.

Jon wanted a simple light weight skiff that would pole well with him alone and for small hp. 25 hp is his goal to have on the stern. This boat weighs under 300 lbs as built.

On the first few runs Jon used a very small trim plate on the engines cavitation plate. Here you can see her bow up attitude with the engine level. Jon had added a long wedge to the outside of the lower Chines to help the bow come down. I sent him the measurements of my outboards trim plate.

He removed the wedges which were slowing down the skiff a bit and making it very stable in turns.

Bow up quite a ways.

See all the leaves and flat water. This kind of bow up is really only good for very flat water running.

The engine with the right sized trim plate will lift the stern and the bow will still be out but the angle will not be like this. A more level angle.

Now a few weeks later! New trim plate, cold weather has set in and all the leaves are on their way out.

See the difference in the trim with a bigger trim plate. The skiff now does not have the above mushing along look.

Jon and a friend went up and down here and never got wet. It was a wet windy day. The ride was fine for all.

Bows trimmed right down now. All you have to do to lift the bow is tilt the engine a bit up by using the trim pin or you can build one of Jons simple trim plates.

You get this kind of prop wash when trimmed all the way down.

Look at the bow and you can see the seas - chop that he's going through. Are they called seas in a river? 

All in all Jon reports that he is very happy with his new skiff. I hope Jon comes to visit me when I get back to our place in the Bahamas. It will be fun to talk building and designing your own skiff.

Well done Jon.

This is Alexyz Milians skiff vison.

 Alexyz emailed me asking a few things about design. He has built a beautiful strip plank wood canoe and wants to build himself a no motor zone poling skiff that is very light in the same manner. This skiff is 4'x14' long. It will draw very little.

He had several questions.

The first was why was his bow so down when he placed his hull in the water.

Why did on my bow on lines drawings of skiffs look like the decks of the skiffs were curved?

How to get the bow up look?

Simple answers. It's good for me to get questions like these as I need feedback to see if people are understanding my drawings and thought process.

Here's Alexyzs hull sections.

 

From this angle you get a real good view of his shape. Lots of firm displacment aft going foreward.

This will make the boat stable. The 4' of beam is not too narrow. The wide stern will do its job keeping the boat steady. I would place what ever weight I was going to bring along back there to replace the engine.

Here I explain in my email drawings how to add or subtract displacement-bouancy. What the skiff needed was 2-3" of freeboard added to the bow tapering aft. The design is fine at the waterline as it is.

The curved line you see in bow on hull lines drawings is the sheer. Because all the stations are laying one on top of each other the sheer line gets exaggerated.

This sketch explains how his skiff will sit with different loads.

Now a new sheer with no weight in the stern. Perfect.

The new hull stations ready to take all the measurements off of.

A nice shape. This shape will be easy to strip plank. With a 5 hp two stroke it will plane out doing most likely 12-15 knts with one person on board.

Nice job Alexyz, I look forward to seeing the hull being planked.

I saw this hull on Facebook the other day. I think it's coming from a shop called Glasser Boatworks.

This is a very well proportioned skiff. Really looks nice.

Same skiff I believe inside the shop. I can see they have station molds in the background so it's a one off. Nice to see new skiffs out there. Nice rounded transoms edge. I don't know who you guys are but you're doing a nice job.

Here's an email acquaintance that is building a Carolina type small skiff in epoxy and core.

This will be a nice all round skiff. But not a quiet skiff with that chine setup. But she will be the best looking skiff out there. Classic

That's it for now. 

In a few days I will post all the latest on the Tom Gordon- Islamorada Boatworks skiff that I have played a small part in. They will be doing sea trials this week so will then post all the pictures and give you all the details.

Send me your skiff ideas and builds and I will post here. Over 95,000 viewers this year.

3/4s though read my sailing stuff though.