Kotik, Kotik, Kotik!

[IanMilne]

Thanks, Mike. Now I'm even more surprised. I put two photos on here last night (#593 above), directly from my computer (a laptop), and now they are not there. The two links at the top of the message do not lead anywhere, and one of the photos appears again at the end as a large "thumbnail attachment" . This phenomenon appears on other threads, e.g. your one here http://forum.woodenboat.com/showthre...t=#post5900447 #425. So those people must be abandoning online hosts too. Successfully, apparently.

Thanks, Andrew. Yes, I'll try to stick to "landscape" view. I use the Windows 10 sizing system, which is quite a recent update on their old system, and easy to do. I use a separate camera which plugs into my computer for downloading. I don't have a smartphone.
Please feel free to post a photo or two of your yacht charter trip on this thread. I'm jealous!

Here's another go at that mast photo. It's resized to 800 px wide, my usual. OK, there it is, small.
P5310002.jpg

And here it is, at 3264 px wide, as taken.
P5310002.jpg
Oh! No better.

Now I'll see what happens when I post this.

Ian

[IanMilne]

Oh! again. They both came up big when I posted it, and still both the same size. I wonder if they'll stay there.

[Andrew Donald]

Those pics in #596 appear the same to me Ian, on a phone

[IanMilne]

Hi Andrew. Yes, they are the same picture. The first one I had resized to 800 px wide. The second one I had left as it was taken, at 3264 px wide. I wanted to see what would happen if I didn't resize them. The answer appears to be "nothing". They both went into my draft posting as thumbnails 38mm (1 1/2 ")wide on the screen, but when I posted it they suddenly came up as you see them.

The glue in the mast was still "thumbnail soft" today, so I have left it alone until tomorrow afternoon. I did some sanding inside the cabin house and cut off the ends of the handrail bolts that were sticking down beyond the nylock nuts. We've just had the warmest autumn ever but it has suddenly got cold.

Cheers,
Ian

[Andrew Donald]

Ian, on the course the instructor taught us a brilliant mooring-to-a-pontoon trick that I have to pass on. Maybe you know but somebody else reading this may be able to use it. Anyway.....
Start with a line from a midship cleat with a bowline made up with a foot long piece of stiff hose threaded on so it holds b’line loop open. Have crew drop this over cleat on pontoon while you have the other end of line in your hand around a winch or cleat at the back while you manoeuvre boat to stop next to pontoon. The trick is have just enough line in crews hand that they can drop a short length with loop over cleat. If no midship cleat is available then you can either make a loop with another line from aft to end amidships (gets messy though) or use this from an aft cleat. Motor against the temporary line just slowly and your boat will be held there.
Hopefully this is easily understood. I know what I mean at least!!!!
A

[IanMilne]

Hi Andrew,
I hope your charter has got off to a good start. Thanks for the mooring-to-a-pontoon system. We had midship cleats on Islesburgh and always used the midship spring as the first line ashore, but it usually involved having the line hitched to the cleat and somebody stepping onto the pontoon, pulling the boat to a stop if she wasn't already, and tying 'er up. Your description sounds much better. I googled those words and found this web page which I think illustrates it quite well: https://uk.boats.com/how-to/the-secr...dships-spring/ , which includes this photo (copy and paste):


We will have midship cleats on Kotik too, the sort with a hole in the middle, placed within reach of the cockpit. I think the way to do it would be for "the crew" to feed the inner end of the spring through the hole in the cleat with the bowline loop on the outside, and then bring the inner end back into the cockpit, fastened to something. Then when we get within reach of the pontoon he/she can place the open loop over the cleat or bollard on the pontoon, with a boat-hook if necessary - the boat should be going pretty slowly by then - and pull on the inner end until the boat stops and comes onto its fenders. The spring would slide back through the hole in the cleat and could then be cleated off and the other lines arranged at leisure. This could all be done with the boat single-handed or with two of us. I can't wait to try it! This is assuming that the pontoon has cleats or bollards, of course. Some just have a rail, in which case we would go back to the old way. Thanks for giving me this system.

I set up the cradles and got my mizzen mast and the gunter-yard all ready for gluing this afternoon, but it was only 7 degrees C in the workshop so I left the gluing until tomorrow, and will use the fan heaters.

Cheers,
Ian

[Alex1N]

Hello Ian, great progess with the spars!

Cheers,
Alex.

PS I only see forum-hosted photos if I'm logged in.

[Andrew Donald]

Yes that’s right Alex. The only trade off of an otherwise much simpler system of posting pics.

Ian we are holed up in a little place called Arisaig. Blowing 30 knot gusts outside. We aren’t going anywhere. One of our jib sheet winches has broken too so we can only sail using a cleat on one side. Damn nuisance on a 31’ boat. Pics are almost a waste of time ‘cos they would be too small and look like a thousand other places in the world. My photography skills are lacking to do this place justice though. I will try to get some for you.
A

[IanMilne]

Thanks, Alex. I got the mizzen mast glued today, in two halves like the mainmast so far. The others are dry assembled. Tomorrow will be colder so I might just make all the plugs for the ends, then I will be able to glue up the others with the plugs in them. Sorry if you have difficulty logging in. My computer is logged in all the time.

Thanks, Andrew. A bit of a pain about the sheet winch. It looks a very scenic route from Oban to Arisaig. I used to play my pipes for the Gaelic Society here, so I find all those Gaelic place names very interesting. There are tunes for a lot of those places, (many of them "Leaving......."). You're not far from Mallaig from where the ferry goes to Armadale on the Isle of Skye, which we went on in 2004. The Clan Donald Museum is at Armadale. The Gaelic Society here was wound up about 15 years ago as it had dwindled away after 125 years.

Cheers,
Ian

[Alex1N]

The steam railway journey (courtesy of a recent The Scots Magazine - with an article on Iain's Fair Isle Skiff in it too!) from Fort William to Mallaig (and back) is apparently fantastic (it appears in the Harry Potter films as well).

It's sad that your Gaelic Society closed. We have a mini-Scotland in our street currently!

Looking forward to more pictures .

I get booted after about half an hour of apparent inactivity, although logging in from another source such as the browser on the ipad does it too. fair enough in either case, I dare say: it prevents the clogging up of the WBF server.

Cheers,
Alex.

[Andrew Donald]

Ian, here it’s Monday am at present and I rang charter base (mon/tue is their weekend) emergency number to see if they can meet us in Mallaig. Don’t hold much hope. I’m effectively sailing one-up as Connie is not very confident let alone she feels queasy when it gets lumpy. Tried the autopilot for first time yesterday, what a revelation! Only prob is it’s not one that tacks for you, that would be brilliant. Any way it means I can go below or look at navigation without worrying that Connie will be overpowered in a gust when the weatherhelm kicks in. She not fully up with using a tiller, being backwards and all. I have thought about abandoning this trip for her sake but she insists we carry on. Tomorrow is forecast for much lighter winds.
Pity about the Gaelic Society and I’m extremely disappointed you didn’t pipe Kotik in at the launching. You’ll have to do that when you launch again upon 99% completion and video it for me!!!!!
Bit of a pity about the temps for glueing. I hope you get some days where the situation improves.

P.S. I’ve finally got Connie to take seasick meds and she seems more cheerful 15 minutes later. Hooray

[IanMilne]

Oh, I didn't know I was clogging up the WBF server by staying logged in, Alex. Yes, I've seen pictures of that train on the Glenfinnan viaduct. Very picturesque.
Andrew, good for Connie, being brave. I think most part-time sailors get seasick at some time or other. They just don't want to admit it. Usually just in the first couple of days of a trip. I've been on a trailer-sailer with an auto-pilot, motoring down Lake Te Anau on a calm day. That was good. I hope you can get the winch fixed at Mallaig. Sorry I didn't play my pipes for you when you were here. I've hardly played them at all in the last three years, or even thought about them very much. They are Scottish Smallpipes in the key of A, with bellows, made for me by Hamish Moore in 1991. I am starting to get them going again now. They still go well. A couple of tunes I used to like playing are the strathspey and reel "Caledonian Canal" and "Sound of Sleat", which is about where you are now, between the mainland and Skye. I was a late starter on the big pipes in 1976 and played them until 1989 when I gave them up because of a recurring hernia problem. My smallpipes are much more sociable inside, I must admit.

Anyway, back to the subject. I got the gunter-yard glued up last night, finishing quite late. I kept the resin warm with a fan heater, and warmed up the wood a bit first. I was glad of the slow-setting hardener though as it took ages to put it on all the staves, even by the best mass-production technique. Then I rigged a tent over the bench and left two heaters running on their low setting all night. They have thermostats so they didn't set the place on fire. I checked the spars this morming and they were well set. Here are some more pics. (They are small in the draft but come up when I post it.)

Here, the mizzen mast staves are laid out for gluing. The others are dry-assembled.
P6030004.jpg

This is the mainmast in two halves.
P6030003.jpg

Here are the mizzen mast and the gunter-yard glued up before I closed the tent for the night. It stays open down the sides. It's a roll of plastic found at a garage sale. The mainmast is doing duty as the ridge-pole, and getting some more curing in the process. I had it out in the weak sun all day yesterday. It's not sunny today, but I'm going to glue up the two booms anyway, the same way as these.
P6030005.jpg

I'll get back out there now.

Cheers,
Ian

[Andrew Donald]

Well done Ian, you must be nearly done gluing all spars by now and up to the planing stage. At least that’s not weather dependant.
We’re off to Mallaig to day, might catch ferry across to Armadale.

[Andrew Donald]

Here you Ian, about the best I can manage for now, it’s been typical Scottish weather for the first few days but we stayed in Tobermory one night on a pontoon where we used our newfound mooring by hose method as you pictured above.
589C70A8-90EB-497B-9EE3-1A50F778997C.jpg

[IanMilne]

Thanks Andrew. I got the two booms glued today OK. Then we went out for the evening. The booms are under the blue tent with the heaters running all night. It worked well for the others. The spars are all glued in two halves so that I can make sure the insides are sealed and can fit the plugs properly.
If you're travelling on Skye I'm sure Iain would like a short visit. He's at Bernisdale, north-west of Portree. You would have to ring him to find out where to go.
Ian

[IanMilne]

And thanks for the photos. Portree has buildings along the waterfront painted like that too.
Ian.

[Andrew Donald]

Here you are Ian, Neist Point most westerly of Skye, blowing 25-35 and about 2 mt waves. Like always we were going into it. Motoring. Thank god for reliable diesels. Tomorrow is forecast to be with us! Ha, we’ll see.
0BD7F81B-7AA4-41A6-9E6D-616A6D8AFE41.jpg

[IanMilne]

Thanks, Andrew. No landing there! Did you get your winch fixed in Mallaig?
Ian

[Alex1N]

That's the summer Skye sky that I remember from three years ago. Not the heaving seas though - we were very much inland, on the other side.

[Ewan G Kennedy]

Hello, I just logged on after a while to see how you're doing. Great progress with your spars.

Sorry that Andrew's having (had?) such bad weather, it's been very unseasonal. I meant to launch last week but found too much final stuff to do. Went to Toberonochy in my wee open boat (Walt Simmons wherry) and nearly got hypothermia.

Gaelic is doing fine on Skye, thanks to Sabhal Mor Ostaig.

Had visit from Iain. I think Mariota got a pass.

All the best from Argyll

EwanIMG_5091.jpgIMG_5094.jpg

[IanMilne]

(This is a reply I thought I had sent yesterday morning, but I forgot to press the send button.)

"Thanks for checking in, Ewan. Mariota, "Queen of the Western Isles", looks good, so far. What do you still have to do? I see you don't believe in varnish. Good to have Iain there too. That's a good idea, having slots in the top of the tabernacle.

My spars are coming on quite well. I was a bit hung up for a couple of days on the question of whether or not to ventilate them, but after reading the relevant bits of the Gougeon book again I eventually decided that it wasn't necessary as long as the insides were well sealed. I finished making all the plugs last night. I'm about to go out and buy some more epoxy (it's 8.30 a.m. here) and have a big glue-up today.
Ian"

That was yesterday. I got the mizzen mast, the yard and the two booms glued yesterday, with the plugs in and all, and the main mast today. The plugs are all fish-tailed, as described in various articles, to avoid a sudden transition from hollow to solid. I put aluminium cooking foil in the main mast, which might or might not serve as a radar reflector. This idea is from an article by Perry Crickmere in ClassicBoat magazine (UK), August 2005. If I meet a boat with radar I might ask them if it works. There is plenty of information online, and an article in the current WB, 268. The only reason I used the birdsmouth method was for lightness, as I mentioned before. I think the square box section, rounded off with spar gauge and drawknife, is more interesting to do, and probably a lot quicker. That's how I did EM Islesburgh's.

This shows planing the plugs to octagonal, and my "spreadsheet". (The numbers are the diameters at each end, in millimetres.)
P6120011.jpg

Gluing set-up, yard and booms:
P6130017.jpg

Foil in mainmast:
P6140022.jpg

The result - two masts, two booms and one gunter-yard.

(Now I'm being told only five images are allowed. There are only three here, but it won't take another one. Don't know why. That will do, anyway.)

It's been a bit of a glueing marathon, but so far, so good.

Ian

Oh, now it's got the other two as "attached thumbnails". I don't know how they work.

[Alex1N]

They’ve all come up extremely well, Ian. I was rather surprised at the length of the plugs, and hadn’t heard of the ‘fishtail’ method before. I can see the logic behind it, though.

The glue-up would have been laborious, but I dare say that your air temperatures would have suppressing curing quite a bit, which would have helped.

Nice photos from Ewan .

Cheers,
Alex.

[Andrew Donald]

Very good Ian, I can feel your arms already with all the planing you’re going to be up for.
Weve finished our charter now , off to Glasgow and then London for a couple of days sightseeing and Portsmouth for the Naval dockyards and something I’m particularly looking forward to and that’s a look inside a WW2 submarine.

[IanMilne]

Thanks, Alex. The plugs are long enough to support the booms and the halliard sheaves. Fishtailing them is a standard method. The air temperature was 9 -11 degrees C, and the hardener was the slow-setting clear finish sort (WEST 207). which gave me good working time. It took me five hours to do the mainmast so the earlier glue was on the wood for quite a while before I could stick the bits together.
Thanks Andrew. The planing shouldn't be too bad. It will be good to see them coming up decently.
Plenty to look at in Glasgow, London and Portsmouth. Happy travels!
Ian

[Ewan G Kennedy]

Good Morning Ian

I should have said Iain O was very impressed with your progress and enthusiasm for his designs.

The slot in the tabernacle idea came to me when I was trying to work out how on earth to get a pin through without a lot of swearing. The fitting is rather weak, being made of plywood but with oak blocks at the base, rather than a steel fabrication. Iain felt that was actually better, because if the rig goes overboard I won't lose half the cabin roof. By the way I've doubled up on the stays, as it adds reassurance for minimal extra weight.

The spars are almost ready to go. I got some high quality Sitka from Canada via Stones boatyard in Devon, very light but probably not durable. The mast was made in two halves, then a ten foot section scooped out using first a router, then some Victorian hand planes that belonged to my friend Mr Holmes' great grandfather. Boom and yard rectangular hollow section, very light. Standing rigging is dyneema with loops over big thumbs glued and screwed on. Sails by Steven Hall, successor to Gayle Heard, complete works of art, hand stitched from cream clipper cotton with tan stitching. We've lowered the yard a wee bit, reducing the head to 11 feet 3 inches to get a bit more control, dispensed with battens, vertical panels, loose footed main.

I'm hoping to get the boat pushed into the sea in the next week to ten days.

All the best

Ewan

[IanMilne]

Hello Ewan,
Sorry for the slow reply, and thanks for Iain's comment.
Yes, I saw that you had doubled up on the side-stays. The Eun na Mara design has two pairs too, which seems better to me , but I am just putting one pair on Kotik, as designed. I remember reading about your mast in your "Scottish Boating" blog. I enquired about Sitka spruce in 2008 for EM Islesburgh, but the price was ridiculous. If I hadn't found some imported Oregon (D. fir) I would have used NZ-grown macrocarpa. Your sails sound very smart. Mine are cream too.

Here's my bundle of sticks, as of tonight:


I have built up the bases of the masts to square again to fit the tabernacle and the mizzen socket. (The round thing was the backer for a round light-switch in an old house, about to become the "truck" for the mainmast.) They've been slow going. The hollow box method, as originally intended, would probably have been quicker and more fun, and would certainly have used less glue. A method was suggested whereby the mast was assembled with the top end thicker than the final diameter and then trimmed down from the outside, thereby thinning the staves progressively towards the top and reducing the weight up there, which is fine in theory but now that I have tried it on one of mine I am in total agreement with the comment in the sidebar of Pat Mahon's article on birdsmouth spars for Ziska in the recent WB 268, May-June 2019: "The stave thickness remains constant for their length, since it is impractical to taper the thickness because of the amount of work involved and the fact that the spar will be built up solid in the ends anyway."

Ian

[Andrew Donald]

Masterful Ian ( sorry) I bet you’re glad that’s out of the way. Now for the fun bit, fitting then out. How did you cut the shoulders at end? I can’t wait to see a sailing shot of Kotik. I’m back working on mine now.

[Max F]

Looking good Ian.
What was your biggest hassle with the spars?
I haven´t build those and could imagine that taming a bundle of slippery thin staves in limited time is special.
Building them in two halfes is a very good idea.
I´m really curious it the aluminium foil will reflect radar. If it works I happily copy that. I´ll be probabely build my birds mouth mast next winter.

[IanMilne]

Thanks Andrew and Max.

Glad to hear you're back on your Grey Seal build now, Andrew, feeling refreshed, I hope. Yes, I am glad the masts and spars are made now. 'Scuse me if I sound grumpy but I think the videos and magazine articles make it look far too easy. However, I did make birdsmouth spars for ST Trondra without much difficulty.

The plans show mast-bands at the top of the mainmast but not on the mizzen. To make the shoulder on the mainmast, I shaped the top of the mast at the point indicated on the plan to the outer diameter of my mast-band, not to the dimension shown on the plan. In this case the band diameter was 72mm and the mast diameter shown was 70mm, so it was near enough to the same. I marked the position with a pencil line around the mast at 72mm, put a piece of masking tape along the edge of my tenon saw to mark a 3mm cut and cut around the mast to that depth. This gave me the inner diameter of the band. Then I took my mallet and chisel and chopped out a shallow groove around the mast, square on the lower side and sloping at 45 degrees on the upper side. Then with a coarse wood-rasp I rasped out a parallel-sided ring above the groove to the width of the band, until the band fitted. Then I tapered the part of the mast above that with my drawknife, spokeshave, block-plane, or whatever.

I'm looking forward to taking Kotik sailing too, and getting a photo. Those photos can be hard to get.

My biggest hassle, Max, was with the mainmast. This was the "one of mine" on which I tried the method of making the top end oversized and then tapering it from the outside. I should have tried it on a smaller spar first. Doing it that way, you lose the reference diameter that the fully tapered staves give you, so it's hard to tell how far to plane it down. You would have to make templates of the cross-sections. It took me two extra days' work to get the mast more or less right, which is hard to understand, but true. It has ended up almost parallel up to where the yard meets it, and tapered from there. (We had to go away for two days as well so that slowed me down a bit more.) The other spars had fully tapered staves and were much easier.

To assemble the glued staves, after several dry-runs, I had numbered them from 1 to 8, and masked the meeting edges that would be coming apart again. I put number 5 (for example) into the cradles first, (three cradles are enough to keep the spar straight), lying flat with the groove away from me, then 4 and 6 on each side of 5, then 3 and 7 on each side of those, so that I had a trough of five pieces with vertical sides. Then I assembled the other three with the outside facing up, to make a "lid", and put a plastic cable-tie around each end to keep them together, not too tightly, then picked them up by the middle with my hands well apart, and put them straight down onto the edges of the trough, where they matched up. Then I cut the cable-ties at each end and took them out. Then I clamped up the whole thing with hose-clamps, cable-ties, or combinations of both. I found it easier to fit the end-plugs with this 5 and 3-stave arrangement rather than 4 and 4.

There is a thread here about foil in a mast: http://forum.woodenboat.com/showthre...-in-mast-redux . If I meet someone with radar I 'll ask if they can see me.

Winter will be a good time to build the spars. You need good working time with the glue.


Here are some more photos of the ends of the masts:


P6280008.jpg

P6280010.jpg

I used the drill-press to drill oversized holes for the sheave and pivot bolts, filled the holes with hard filler and redrilled them for the bolts.

I finished planing and sanding the spars today, with my Stanley No. 5, my small block-plane, random orbital sander and hand sandpaper, after several days of that. It was better to do it in the daytime with the light coming in sideways through the window, which showed up the ridges. Then I spread the sails out to try the spars against them.

Ian

[IanMilne]

Here are some photos of the sails, trying the spars for size:



P6280013.jpg

P6280014.jpgP6280015.jpg

(I thought Flickr had settled down, but apparently not. It will only put one photo on. )


Ian

[stromborg]

Now that is a high-peaked gaffer!

Lovely work as always Ian.

[IanMilne]

Thanks, Steve. Yes, that's what a gunter is really, a high peaked gaff. They say it's almost as efficient as a Bermuda rig, but it has the advantage of a short mast for trailering.

The sailcloth is Bainbridge cream. I got the battens too, as shown on the plans. I was in two minds about that for a while, but decided I might as well have the sails as efficient as possible.

Re. #624 above, about shoulders for the mast-bands, when I tapered the staves for the mizzen mast, I forgot to allow for the band, so when I pushed the band down onto the mast it ended up more or less in the right place but with no shoulder. So I glued extra pieces onto the diagonal staves of the mast and shaped them with the mast to form four short shoulders. You can see them in the first photo. The band will be glued on, so there will be no gaps under it.

Cheers,
Ian

[Andrew Donald]

Good recovery Ian. Lucky it’s just the mizzen. I like your suggestion of epoxying the bands on because like mine yours might not be perfectly round. I’ve been wondering about that for a while. Sometimes the answer is right in front of ones face. By the way if you’re looking for your pencil it’s up the top of mizzen!!

[stromborg]

Somehow I missed that you were building Kotik as a gunter. Looking forward to seeing how you rig it up.

[IanMilne]

Oh, is that where my pencil went! I haven't got the bolts or the other sheave yet.
I meant to say, my masts and spars are not perfectly round either. That doesn't bother me at all.

There are two ways of rigging a gunter that I know of, as distinct from a gaff rig. I think you have the Wee Seal yawl plan, Steve. One way is like that. The other is one that Paul Grun showed me at PTWBF 2017 on his Eel Pick Pocket. I'll probably do it that way for starters. I'm looking forward to it too. Watch this space.

Ian