Trending

We've been without internet for almost a week now at home.  I could claim that's why there hasn't been much news here lately, but I'd be lying.  Despite the lack of distractions, I haven't made much progress on the hull recently, and now we've got Weather rolling in that should keep me from doing anything with epoxy for the foreseeable future.

So it's a good time to talk briefly about something that amuses me greatly: the trendiness of outrigger canoes.  I noticed not long after starting this build that there were images of outriggers cropping up here & there in popular culture.  I didn't think much of it at first, but then I saw the Patagonia catalog for summer 2011, which prominently featured this gorgeous photo (and a few others) by Trevor Clark of outriggers in the open ocean off Hawaii at sunset.  Most of the shots were of paddling outriggers, but there was one in the catalog of a sailing outrigger as well.

I've seen a few other cultural references to outrigger sailing.  The great and recently deceased navigator Mau Piailug drew some attention as he worked to re-establish traditional navigation skills in the Pacific.  And Hawaiian-style outrigger racing and outrigger surfing began to crop up in the mainland USA.  As a windsurfing friend explained with regard to the stand-up paddleboarding craze, Hawaii has always had a periodic influence on fashion in the USA.

Fast forward....  Today I was faced with proof that outriggers have Arrived, and that I'm participating in a Trend.  The proof?  A US quarter dollar coin with a sailing outrigger on the reverse.  It turns out that  a series of 6 non-state entities were honored with coins in 2009, presumably to mollify them after a decade of state quarters rubbing their collective nose in their political non-entity status.  Among them were the Northern Mariana Islands (the one I'd found), and Guam, both of which featured crabclaw sails in their artwork.  The NMI coin shows a tacking outrigger, while the Guam example uses a proa.  Both cultures mentioned pride in their ancestral seafaring and navigation skills as reasons for including the vessels on the coins.

So I guess I'm a hipster now, building an outrigger canoe like all those other trendy, Patagonia-catalog-reading, US quarter-spending boatbuilders out there.  Who knew we were so commonplace?

If you'll excuse me, now, I need to stop borrowing internet connectivity from the office, and gear up for the bike ride home through the falling snow.  Maybe I'll do a little work on my sail before I go to bed.  It would be nice to have some progress to tell you about next time I'm able to get online.

Focus!

I mentioned in yesterday's post that I'd been avoiding hull work because of my troubles with epoxy filleting.  That's certainly true, but it's not the whole story.  I've also been a bit distracted.

My dad is a lover of antique British automobiles.  It's an illness I have avoided, for the most part, out of necessity: they are expensive toys, and I've consciously chosen a frugal path in life.

But there are times when the symptoms crop up.  I've been frustrated with our modern SAAB wagon recently, because it is unreliable.  It's also expensive to repair, because it's complicated and the engine bay is terribly cramped.  Historically, I've done a lot of our family's car repair, but this machine is just too unfriendly to the driveway mechanic.  It makes one long for a simpler conveyance.

Like, say, a 1974 Land Rover?  Yes, that would do nicely.  One cropped up on Craigslist recently, and the seller was kind enough to show me around the truck even though I made it clear I probably wouldn't be able to buy it.  It's stone-simple, easy to work on, and will probably be purposefully trundling along long after my prima donna SAAB has been crushed and melted down for scrap.

So for a while there, I was reading about Land Rovers online when I should have been filleting my hull.  Until I recognized the pattern, and pulled myself out of it.  I don't want this project to languish because I got distracted; I want it finished and ready for the water when the coming winter draws to a close.

My dad has a saying about this, which he reminds himself of whenever he's momentarily distracted from a goal: "Focus!"  It's a concise way of saying that yes, there are many things that would be nice to have, or fun to do, but you've chosen this thing, and you need to stick with it until it's done before you start something else.  Otherwise, you risk achieving neither because you've spread yourself too thin.

The boat I'm building is only 16 feet long and has a tiny, simple hull.  But it's still a project composed of many little tasks, some of which are tedious.  You don't successfully finish a project like this unless you're able to stay on track and power through the unglamorous patches, like... like... um....

...like an old Land Rover slogging doggedly along a muddy track towards a distant destination.  Yeah, that's the perfect metaphor.

Epoxy Fillets 2, Rich 1

I've been avoiding the epoxy work on the boat lately, to be honest.  It's much less glamorous than lofting, cutting or stitching.  Worse still, it's messy and difficult to do well, and the prep involves sanding, which I don't like much.  But my collection of plywood parts won't be a boat until I fillet every seam on the thing.

So I finally got a little time and a little gumption together, and filleted another bead along the center seam.  It went much better today - so much so that I'm willing to claim victory over the dreaded epoxy fillet in this encounter.  I think part of the reason was that I'm working in a more open section of the boat, where it was much easier to apply and work the epoxy.  But it also helped a lot that I mixed a stiff batch of epoxy today, so there was no dripping and relatively little flowing or pooling to mess up my efforts.  I'm starting to get a good feel for what the consistency should be, finally.

The epoxy cures noticeably slower in these cool fall temperatures - today's working temp was around 60 degrees F.  I'll pull the masking tape edging up tomorrow morning or so, and if I get favorable weather I'll continue the center seam to the stern post.

Looking ahead, there's still the tight detail work around the stern post to do, and then I'll need to fillet the side panel seams.  So with today's work, I'm something like a fifth or a sixth of the way through the filleting process.  And after that's done, there's fiberglass tape for the inside and outside of every fillet, and then fairing the hull smooth....  Much to be done, in short, but it feels good to make some progress and get a better result than my last few attempts.

Sailmaking: Sewing Machine Works!

My last couple attempts at stitching the center seam on my sail failed because the sewing machine couldn't handle the 4 layers of fabric, plus 4 layers of masking tape, that I was asking it to sew through.  (I hear that Sailrite machines can handle much heavier stuff than our typical household machine, but I'm not sure even one of those would have been able to do what I was asking.)

The two halves of my crabclaw sail,
together again - for the first time.

Looking at the flat-felled seam instructions from that DIY camping gear site I linked to last time, I decided to try the seam in stages as they suggested.  It was harder on me, because the fabric wasn't all locked in place like it was with my masking tape arrangement.  But it was much easier for the machine, and, with help and coaching from my oldest son, who did a sewing unit in 4-H a couple years ago, we got it done.

As for quality, let's just say it will probably be good enough.  While not all of the wrinkles shown at right are sewn into the sail, a few of them are.  I had problems guiding the fabric straight through the machine, which caused some wandering.  I had problems with the two pieces of fabric feeding at different rates, which created wrinkles.  And I probably didn't have everything pinned perfectly to begin with, either.  Here are some examples:

Bunching caused by one side feeding faster than the other,
then being "caught up" too quickly.

Wandering....  The weight of the fabric made feeding
tough, and it sometimes got crooked on me.

If the sail were plywood, these inaccuracies would represent my weakest effort yet.  But it's not plywood, it's cloth, and I've never done anything like this before.  So I'm going to declare victory and move on. 

Moving on....  I think I should reinforce some areas where the wandering was particularly bad.  Then the sail still needs the polypro webbing sewn across the mouth of the claw (probably by machine once more).  And I'd like to add some reinforcement strips to the tack.  Then I need to sew in the polypro bolt rope, which I'll do by hand.  And finally, I need to attach my snazzy red Wharram logo and sail numbers, which I think I'll try to do by hand again.

So there's a bit of work yet before we have a complete sail.  But tonight's progress moves the project forward past a tough stumbling block, which is great news.

The Infernal Device

I spent some time last night trying to join the two halves of my sail with my wife's 1980's-era Kenmore sewing machine.  First, I had to pin the sail together in the proper alignment.  I'm planning to use a flat-felled seam, and I want the stitching to pass through all four layers of fabric, so there's a lot of work necessary to get the sailcloth in the proper arrangement before you start sewing.

I tried pinning, but it would have taken dozens of pins to hold the entire seam in place, and then how do you sew it?  Then it occurred to me to use masking tape to hold the edges together correctly.  I can sew right through the masking tape, and the tape should just tear off as the sail is used.  After a bit of work, that job was done, and I had a rather stiff pre-assembled seam consisting of 4 layers of sailcloth and 4 layers of masking tape.  To the machine!

But the sewing machine kept binding, which would require undoing the stitches, cutting the thread, clearing the jam, rearranging everything, and trying again.  Over, and over again.  Once, I even broke a needle; another time, I accidentally disassembled the bobbin assembly while trying to clear it.  That took 15 minutes to sort out....  Somewhere along the way, the thread got routed wrong and the machine was no longer producing stitches. 

My wife was very patient as I clumsily abused her machine.  I eventually figured out that the jamming was due to my not holding the free ends of the thread taut as I started out.  Armed with that knowledge, I successfully produced several inches of pretty, zig-zag stitches before the thread frayed in the needle and I had to stop.  Sigh.....

I knew this process wouldn't be easy, but I was unprepared for the complexity and finicky nature of the sewing machine.  I'll try to pick up a heavier needle and try again tonight.

---

Meanwhile, here's a neat write-up of outrigger canoes and small catamarans from a British sea kayaking web site.  For the record, I was seriously considering building a sea kayak before I decided on the Melanesia.  I like the mobility and versatility of the kayak, but I wanted something that could carry a flexible number of people, and sail effectively.  The link above touches on all of these points.

Epoxy Fillets 2, Rich 0

My second attempt at filleting the bow went a little better.  I made a stiffer mix this time (less like Dairy Queen soft-serve and more like regular ice cream).  It was more workable, and I hit on a pretty handy way to apply it in tight spaces: put epoxy mix in a zip-log bag, snip off a corner, and use it like a pastry chef's icing bag to squeeze the epoxy into spaces you can't reach with regular tools.

However, it didn't all go my way.  After filleting the forward third of the bilge to the proper radius, I cleaned up and went to work.  When I got home in the evening, I found that the epoxy had flowed downhill and pooled in the bow.  I now have the world's thickest fillet at the bow.  In the photo at right, you can see how the areas in the foreground were, at one time, covered with whitish epoxy -- but it has all flowed down to the end of the hull, where it's pooled much deeper than necessary. 

One other minor victory: note the clean edges on my fillets at right.  This is due to my friend Steve's masking tape technique, which really does produce a cleaner result than the alternative.  But overall, I have to say that epoxy filleting is my least favorite part of the whole process so far.

Finally, I picked up a cheap nylon windbreaker at the thrift store the other day, and from it cut out the Wharram insignia and sail numbers that will eventually go on my sail, once the sail is sewn together.  The sail number is the number of my plan set; the logo and number together uniquely identify my boat.

I think it looks pretty sharp.  My wife is not fond of the Wharram logo, as she feels that it looks like a pair of breasts.  She's right, it does -- once somebody points it out to you -- and I'm pretty sure the resemblance not accidental, as it was supposedly taken from some prehistoric goddess emblem.  But while I wouldn't sew mudflap girls or a Playboy bunny logo onto my sail, I don't think the resemblance is enough to justify keeping the designer's logo off the sail.  I'm proud that my boat is a Wharram, and I want people to know.  So the logo stays, and if anyone asks, I'll tell them what I just wrote.