Not Dead, But Somewhat Dismayed

One Year Post-Launch

Apologies to my loyal reader for the cliffhanger.  I am alive; the boat didn't sink, or break up, or otherwise fail completely.  I christened her Ihi, which I'm told means "power" or "respect" depending on whether you're speaking Maori or Hawai'ian.  I think the fact that this sort of craft is responsible for etymological similarities that span over 3500 nautical miles of nearly empty ocean is pretty deserving of respect.  I also wanted the name to indicate a respect for the power of the ocean, which is an integral part of Polynesian culture and traditional seamanship.

So yeah, we poured a bit of champagne over the bow and said a few words and launched without incident.

But I have had a lot of trouble with her.  That trouble, and my confusion as to its cause (and of course life getting in the way) is the reason I've been silent so long.

The Problem: Steering

Paddling, Ihi is a bit slower than a non-outrigger canoe.  She'd get there, but she's way slower than, say, a competently handled sea kayak.

Under sail in a stiff breeze, Ihi goes like a bat out of hell.  It's thrilling.

Unfortunately, in either case she seems to go pretty well wherever she pleases, with little regard for helm input.  In Colorado's smallish inland lakes, this results in a lot of brief, terrifying, frustrating darts from launch to the shore.  I never quite ran into anything, or ran aground even, but wow, I had some close calls.

Initial Theory: Hull Twist?

One reason I have been so quiet about my experiences is that I was initially convinced that the pull was always to port, and indicated that I'd built  a badly twisted hull.  There is some hull twist visible in her - I was hasty installing the aft thwart one day, with a bunch of epoxy curing before I could line things up right.  You can see it in this older photo from her build:

It is my intellectual style to ponder a problem quietly for a long time, until I have a plan.  Well, I spent much of the past year wondering if I would have to grind out all of her fillets and rebuild her completely.

This week, I launched Ihi for the first time this summer (shameful, I know), and I rigged her with the ama to starboard rather than to port for the first time ever.  And guess what?  She didn't pull to port anymore (paddling - I haven't gotten her sail up yet this year, due to a spar failure).

Well, that's not entirely true. She veers badly off the wind, whether it's coming from port or starboard.  I think she's misbehaving because she would prefer to be steered with the steering paddle while being paddled along - or because she needs ballast in the forefoot to keep her tracking straight.  I need to find some other Melanesia owners to talk to about this behavior.

It's entirely possible that the twist is a real thing, but my latest thinking on the issue is that it's likely nowhere near as big an effect as the tug of the ama in the water.  Which brings me to my second theory:

Second Theory: Poor Ama Performance?

I built two amas for Ihi.  My first was an undersized aspen trunk, and it's probably only about 60% the volume (and thus buoyancy) it's supposed to be.  It digs in pretty badly, and that can't be good for tracking.  Ihi definitely takes a little muscle to overcome the drag of the submarining ama.

My second ama, which is made from arid mountain pine, is at least twice as dense as the aspen.  It's plenty big, but not the right stuff to make an ama out of.  It barely floats by itself, so it's not able to lend the canoe much help.  And it's so massive that you can feel any acceleration vector averaging against the inertia of the ama, as if it were a giant sea anchor.  The small aspen ama is usable, at least; the heavy pine version is a definite mistake.

I'd like to find another, larger aspen trunk and try to fashion a larger ama that has that magically low density of aspen.  Failing that, I've considered a glass & foam ama, but that's going to be very expensive and time consuming.  I'm more likely to build one out of foam and construction lumber than to go the superlight glass/foam route.  Until I get a new and improved ama of some sort, I won't be able to speak authoritatively on whether the ama is/was a contributing factor.

Third Theory: Untrained Helmsman

One thing I know for certain: Ihi steers unlike anything I've ever sailed before.  She's frightfully sensitive to weight distribution, and her handling characteristics change dramatically with the wind speed.  In the trade winds of the South Pacific, that's probably not a big deal, but here in the capricious, swirling winds of Colorado's Front Range, it's mystifying.  I'm reminded of Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's line about juggling in variable gravity.

The only answer here is experience.  I need to keep sailing her so that I can begin to understand how to sail her.  As time goes on, I'm sure there will be fewer and fewer near-calamities.  Who knows?  Maybe I'll eventually get good enough to take her out in some real water, like coastal cruising or that Watertribe North Carolina race I had my eye on.  Ten years ought to do it.... Watertribe 2023, here I come!

Fourth Theory: Poor Sail Trim Capability

I'm certain about this one, too.  As outlined in this post on sail handling the Melanesia, it's critical to be able to adjust the mast's tilt fore and aft, and port and starboard.  The fore-and-aft tilt affects whether she steers neutrally as load changes, and the lateral adjustment is necessary to correct for weather helm.

Well, I initially intended to achieve these adjustments using homemade deadeyes and toggles:

The problem is, there's just too much friction in the deadeyes.  There was no way to adjust the mast position with the sail under load - it wasn't even possible to adjust with the sail luffing, unless I had a helper guide the mast into position by hand.  In the end, every adjustment required returning to the beach, which isn't easy when you don't have helm control to begin with.  I kept having to drop the sail and paddle back to my launch site to try again.  You just can't squeeze very many iterations of that process into an afternoon sail.

To that end, I've purchased a handful of small Harken blocks to replace the deadeyes.  These should allow much more real-time adjustment capability, which will, in turn, give me the equivalent of several month's experience in just a few outings.

Other Things

Let's see, what else have I learned?  Not as much as I would have if I'd been sailing more, but there are a few lessons I can think of:

1. The Melanesia has really low freeboard.  She a wet boat when even my overloaded El Toro dinghy would be dry.  Though this would probably improve a little with a more buoyant ama, it's hard to imagine her working in the open ocean. I'd really want to build some bulkheads beneath the fore and aft decks for guaranteed flotation if I were going to try her in those conditions.
2. The pinned and lashed connections between the jaws and the spars doesn't seem to work for me.  Maybe I don't have the joinery skills, or maybe I'm using poor materials, or poor lashing execution.  Whatever the case, I'll take an epoxy & glass tape joint any day.  I hear of a new local source for bamboo - maybe I'll end up with a second bamboo spar soon, who knows?
3. Assembling Ihi takes a lot of time.  Even if I leave the tukis in the ama and lashed to each other where they cross, I still have 9 major lashings to complete every time I transport the boat.  In my experience, it takes me (by myself) about an hour and a quarter to get everything set up.  She's not a great boat to use in situations where you have to cart her to and fro - though she's very portable once she's disassembled. 

That's all I can think of for now.  I'm not sure how often I'll be posting in the future, but I'll try to report back as I resolve the issues I'm facing.  Questions or suggestions from fellow Melanesia sailors welcome!

Chine Fillets and Shaping the Ama

Saturday hovered slightly below epoxy-curing temperatures all day, frustratingly.  I'd sworn I would make some progress this weekend. 

You can see how the ama is a little crooked.
I figure the traditional boats made do with what
they had available, and they sailed fine.
Right?  If it doesn't work out, I think I'll probably
just make a foam & fiberglass one for version II.

Well, if you can't work with epoxy, you can at least work on the other parts of the boat, right?  I pulled the ama (outrigger log) out of storage and went after the ends, which I'd done only a little rough shaping on before.  After a bit of work with saw and rasp, I was pretty happy with the shape.

Stern end of the ama is a little fatter than the
bow, because most of the boat's weight will be
carried aft (I think).

 

 

I pulled out my 1950's-vintage Craftsman belt sander and did a bit of general sanding along the length of the  ama so that it will be ready to paint.  I'd call that effort about half-done; I stopped because the old sander was starting to sound like it needed another overhaul.

Today warmed quickly to around 75 degrees, and I had a fairly open schedule, so I lowered the hull and prepped the chine fillets.  This involved sanding the epoxy-coated plywood I'd be laying the fillets on, hammering the copper stitches down so they wouldn't protrude from the fillets, and masking the entire length of the chines so that I can have a nice clean edge when I'm done. 

I also masked the benches, thinking I might as well fillet them into place while I'm at it.  And I prepared the lashing pads for installation - I forgot to put them on the panels before stitching the hull together.

Chine fillets done.  Note how smooth they are,
compared to the bilge fillet.  Also visible are
the lashing pads (clamped in place) and the
bench fillets.

Finally, I began mixing and applying fillet epoxy.  I've hit on a pretty dependable recipe - 4 pumps each of hardener and resin, then 3 little cat food cans full of microballoons and 3/4 of a can of silica thickener.  The resulting paste is workable, but doesn't sag or flow much at all, a vast improvement over my earlier efforts.

It took 4 batches - 16 pumps in all - to fillet both chines.  Then I changed over to microfiber & epoxy to glue the lashing pads to the hull.  Unfortunately, I grossly overestimated the amount of epoxy needed to do that job, so I was facing the prospect of about two pumps worth of waste.  I hadn't done the benches yet, so I scrambled to mix in the thickener and glass bubbles that would allow that. 

The somewhat gloopy bench fillets.  Since the mix
was so wet, I won't be able to remove the tape
until tonight at the earliest.

Of course, my trusty recipe was off because I was starting with an unknown amount of resin (after applying some to the pads).  So I ended up with a somewhat drippy mix that produced a nice, curved fillet but dripped down the sides a bit.  Cleaned it up with a paper towel as best I could, but I expect there will be some remedial sanding required to fix the drips when it's all cured.

All in all, a very productive weekend.  Looking ahead, there's a bit more filling and sanding to do on the fillets, then I'll be fairing the outside of each, and then (finally) it will be time to fiberglass them.  But I'm almost out of glass balloons, and getting low on epoxy, too.  So I will probably need to place an order for some supplies first. 

Ama (?)

We spent the weekend in the mountains, in the presence of good friends and a lot of tempting timber.  Finally, when I found a downed aspen trunk that looked straight enough and about the right size for the ama (outrigger), I couldn't take it any longer.  I asked our hosts if they would mind me taking the tree, and they gave their permission enthusiastically when they heard what I wanted it for.  Turns out they'd given permission for a relative to fell the trees for a project, but he got a job out of town before he could use them, and they'd been languishing since.

So I now have a 13' aspen log on my dining room table. 

I've stripped the bark off of it, and it's firm wood with no rot damage.  I've also taken from the plans some rough "by eye" guides for the shape of the finished ama's cross-section at certain points:

However, there's one small problem, and it has cropped up every single time I've dealt with found timber: It never turns out as perfect as you thought it would.  It's always a little crooked, or a little too short, or something. 

In this case, the aspen trunk is a bit crooked, but acceptably so.  The real issue is that none of what I brought home quite reaches the 4.75" diameter recommended in the plans.  The fat end is a little too skinny:

A 4.75" circle leaves gaps all around at the
fattest part of my ama candidate.  Is this okay?

and it just gets skinnier from there, down to around 3.00" diameter at the skinny end.  So there's a real chance that this ama won't provide enough flotation when it's on the leeward side, or enough weight when it's on the windward side.

On the other hand, it's aspen, so it's light and strong.  And it's by far the closest thing I've found so far, unless you count the two-piece aspen trunk offered to me by a friend.  And having stared at a fair number of tree trunks now, I have to say I'm not sure I can find anything else this straight.

As for whether it's too light.... outrigger guru Gary Dierking has instructions for a foam and fiberglass ama on his website, so flotation must matter more than weight.  Flotation is a product of size and density; this ama is a bit small, but it's also at the low end of the recommended density range, so it might work out after all.

So my plan is to set it aside, maybe work a little on shaping it when I have free time, but not to invest too much in this piece until I decide it's my best option.  When I'm done with the hull, I'll shape an ama out of the best piece of wood I have at that point.  If initial sea trials are disappointing, I might even try Gary's foam & glass option.