Sails Today Sailing Tomorrow

Sails arrived today. I recieved incredible service from Ullman Sails. 

The above photo shows the sails, boom, engine (2 paddles), and rudder. Thriller still has wet paint on it. I'm taking the family sailing tomorrow for the maiden voyage. 

Much Progress Since December

The mast would not fit in the garage, so I cut a hole in the door and worked on half of the rig at a time.

Above is a view from the outside. I'm certain the neighbors enjoyed this sight.

Mast finally installed and measuring the sails.

Deck is painted.

Trial fit on trailer. The bunks aligned with minimal shimming required. The boat sits much higher of the ground than I expected. Maybe I've become accustom to looking down at the deck. On the trailer the deck is chin high!

Entire deck is painted with traveler installed.

Bulb and Spreaders

Bulb is pinned and faired.

Drilled aft end of bulb and inserted fiberglass rod to make the point sharper and more durable.

Few coats of West with graphite powder. Bulb will be finished with a little wet sanding.

The layout for my spreaders 30 degree sweep 10 degree dihedral. 

Lead Submarine! Fabrication of Mist's One-piece Keel Bulb

The Pattern and two sided mold box.

Coating the pattern in graphite to keep the moist sand from sticking to the pattern.

Adding sand with mixture of bentonite, 100 lbs sifted sand, 12 lbs bentonite, and 1 gal water. Mix with gloved hands for a long time.

Pack the sand in tight, both sides of pattern.

Rob is fabricating the foiled shape core. Shifted sand with sodium silicate then place in bag, add carbon dioxide gas for half-hour. The core turns into solid chunk sand in shape of foil.

Splitting the two sides of mold to remove the pattern.

Inserting the foil shaped core.

Aligning the mold with pour spout of the kettle.

Melting two gallons of lead.

Splitting the mold boxes to reveal the lead bulb.

Big THANKS! to Rob for all the advice and fabrication of kettle and trolly.

Minor trimming and the keel blade slides right in the bulb's socket.

The whole event was great fun with a great group of friends. Combine weight of the keel bulb and blade is 161 lbs, a little light. I'm to adjust the height of the blade in the socket and add more lead.

Hull Painting Progress

I'm making progress with painting the hull sides. These photos show the color selection. I'm not completely happy with the finish texture so I'll be wet-sanding the entire boat and applying another coat. Hopefully just one more coat (possibly two, if I sand through).

I used Interlux Profection, Lauderdale Blue. I'm was extremely happy with the way this paint acted on the first coat using Russell Brown's roller only method. I had absolutely lap-mark free finish, though I did have a fair amount of dust in it. I don't know why the second coat applied six hours, the minimum re-coat time, had extreme orange peeled in it.

Bottoms Painted / Last Coat of Primer

I'm hoping the end is near for all of the sanding I've been doing. The bottom is painted with six coats of VC Performance Epoxy by Interlux. I bought a gallon kit but a quart kit would have been plenty. This stuff goes on very thin. I recommend roller only for the the first three coats and then roll and tip the final three. This knocks down and fills the orange peel that accumulated during application of the first three coats. Now, I wet sand (without going through the paint) to 800-1000 grit. The result is very smooth. I'm hoping to have top coat on sides of boat finished by New Years.

Deck is Primed, Installing Rudder and Hardware