Building the main hull.

After building and finishing the two floats, now it's the turn for the main hull. Please click on the images to open an extensive photo gallery of the various stages in the building process.

Beam Bulkheads: Before setting up the main hull, and while still having the room, I first made the beam bulkheads as these requires a special construction for the folding mechanism. A rather big laminating job with vacuum bagging. The first attempt is a bit disappointing, with epoxy everywhere, not only on the part, but also everywhere else. Because of a too sharp edge on the molded flange I pulled a big hole in the underside of the vacuum bag. Getting a wet vacuum bag airtight again is quite a job. While the resin clock continued it ended in a big mess. I left the workshop in my underpants, and with epoxy in my hair (it's shorter now). Now I know again why I dislike vacuum bagging and like the vacuum infusion so much. However, vacuum bagging is the way to go for this complicated laminating job. Or just hand-lay-up. But once used to the quality by a vacuum treatment, it's hard to be content with anything less. I am very comfortable using it. At the end, after eight vacuum bags, it's becoming more of a routine with less mess and better vacuum bags. Practice, practice ..........

Setup first main hull half: This is one of these memorable stages. Not only the "real boatbuilding" work,  at least the fun part has just begun in this stage, but more memorable is the fact that the hull fits in my small workshop as I had thought to myself. It's a close fitting and a relief at the same time. I've started with the starboard side of the main hull as the geometry of this hull half fits better in my workshop.

I knew before that the height of the workshop is not enough to join the two main hull halves, so the planning is to make the second hull half and the joining to a complete boat in a bigger workshop somewhere else (still to find that place). This will be temporary and the completing of the boat will be again in my garage.

Layup dry laminate and infusion. The bag was perfect, the vacuum was almost perfect, however after the vacuum was on, I discovered I had a batch of wrong tubes. They look the same as I've had before, but these ones were pressed together and useless for the infusion job. Very disappointing. As infusion was planned for the next day (Monday, and with an announcement on the F-boat forum for a live show on the webcam)) a quick ride to fellow builder Bert Hofman brought the solution as he had enough tubes to help me out. It was late Sunday evening (or better said Monday morning very early) when all tubes were replaced by the good ones.

Below the video (14,6Mb) and at the right the moving animation (1 Mb) of the infusion simulation.

Beam bulkheads and folding system setup : Making and positioning the carbon lower folding strut anchors turned out to be a tough job. I've had some worries because they are such an important structural part of the boat. The first two attempts were a bit disappointing but finally I developed the right method to wrap the carbon around the anchors blanks.

The building project until now was mainly a matter of forming foam into hulls, laminating (ok, better said infusing) and gluing bulkheads into position. It gave me the feeling of putting a boat together, but not constructing something. However, mounting the beam bulkheads and lower hull strut anchors with the accompanying reinforcements is much different from that and gave me the feeling of a constructing work. I was already impressed by the design drawings and engineering quality of Ian Farrier and the way these elements are being constructed is more than an confirmation of that.

Daggerboard case: The daggerboard case is made of marine plywood and I discovered the hard way (at least after two failed vacuum bags) that the porosity of the plywood makes it impossible to make an airtight seal with sealant tape onto the wood. Something to remember for all wood builders. The vacuum infusion was done with two bags, one for the infusion and one for the vacuum integrity. A stopgap and not something to copy !

Bulkheads and cockpit area. The finishing of this first main hull half with all the structural bulkheads and the making of the cockpit coaming, emergency escape hatch and the safety compartment. On the left a video of the infusion of the escape hatch coaming. Unmolding the starboard main hull half: This went on quite straight forward. Turning the hull with the four tackles was exciting and she went over with literally just a couple of millimeters to spare Most of the work was cleaning up the mess and to find a new place for all the stuff that I still don't want to throw away. The half hull is remarkable stiff and instead of starting the other hull half I decided to start with some more interior work as access to the hull is great in this stage. However, life would be easier if I knew what  do with the interior ..... decisions, decisions .........

Interior layout: I finally decided about the layout of the interior. The biggest change compared to the standard aft cabin layout is the galley on starboard instead of port. Main reason for this is that I still like "the office" on board, which lead to a rather conventional layout, in particular in combination with a quarter berth. Because of the galley on starboard the settee in front of this is now shorter, but still useable as a (sea) bunk with the feet through an opening in the cabin bulkhead. Above that the diesel oven is situated. Galley top can be extended by folding down the backside of the settee back. The dinette is now two meters wide and can be converted into a large spare double bunk. Also the shower is a little wider. Without rebuilding the interior this can accommodate six (with table down eight and with spare bunks in the floats even ten) Cooking is on a ceramic diesel stove and in addition to this a fully gimbaled single cylinder burner, positioned in a dedicated housing and well ventilated outside.

Of course the interior question is a matter of personal taste. I think this is a good sea going layout and at least for now this design gives me some peace of mind.

Systems: Click on the colored system items in the layout drawing below to open a principle sketch about the subject. I will add more as progress allows.

Moving to another workshop: Quite unexpected and totally on the spur of the moment we bought a new house ..... Sometimes that one in a lifetime moment comes along, in our case a water villa with a jetty large enough for mooring our F-39 trimaran. So, the other "dream" we had, living in a house near the water, has become a reality now and we will move to our new place by the end of this year (2009).  Which means I have to give up the workshop at home and move the boatbuilding project to the workshop of our company. This of course is a temporal solution with the necessity of getting in a hurry. This means from now on I will focus on finishing the F39 on the outside and get her in the water to tie her up along the jetty of our new home. Further work on interior, hardware and rigging will be delayed till she is at home again.

And now there are a lot of critical observers (i.e. colleagues). No doubt they will inspect the work on Monday morning to discuss the working rate of their "boss" ..........

Boatbuilding again. Fitting out the new workshop turned out to be much more time consuming than anticipated. But now everything is in accordance with my wishes and this weekend I had the feeling to continue the boatbuilding again instead of all kind of other things, like organizing and cleaning up too much company materials, dragging along too heavy girders, hoisting and mounting too heavy winches, organizing and connecting too much electrical wires, building and pulling down again an incomplete scaffolding, which despite some missing components was strong enough to hold up the main hull half for a while, which by the way wasn't necessary if I had done the electrical winches first, etc.

Vacuum infusion of second main hull half: The handling of all the glass and vacuum materials is now much more convenient in this spacious workshop. However, in my enthusiasm I forgot to add some reinforcements in the window area and the area of the anchor locker. While writing this, the inside of the hull has been covered with the vacuum materials except the vacuum bag. Next weekend I have to fix that .......

The drop test (vacuum pump off) resulted in a not worth mentioning loss of vacuum. Room temperature was 32º Celcius and so was the resin. Just perfect for a fast infusion. Click on the above picture for the photo galery.

Port side folding system setup and beam bulkheads: When working on the starboard half I made all the carbon lower folding strut anchors, but not the complete anchor assembly for this port side. So, before putting in these carbon anchors, I first had to do some unfinished business on the carbon anchors. Cook them in the oven (this time not the one in the kitchen) and making the total anchor assembly.

A milestone, Starboard meets port: Here some photo's of the joining of the two main hull halves. Overall the hull halves fit very well together without noticeable misalignment. On Menno's Blog (Dutch F22 boat builder) I saw he used the two top battens to align both hull halves. Great idea (thanks Menno) because these battens make the use of clamps possible, which is much easier than bungling small wood pieces and screws.

I made the second (Port) main hull half a little longer in the stern. This was not possible in my previous workshop due to the lack of space. After joining the two halves I decided to make an extension to the Starboard half to make both hull halves the same length. I don't know yet if I will make the hull one feet longer, but doing this now in this stage is quite easy and I can always decide afterwards to cut it off.

More bulkheads and details in the port side half: I made all the other bulkheads in this port side after the joining of both hull halves as aligning is much more easier this way. In the bow area I made the preparations for a second carbon chainplate. This is placed at the front of the anchor well and is intended for a heavy weather jib or storm jib. Since this is not a design feature, I've created my own solution. All the "thinking" about the cockpit coaming and shelves in the cockpit area has been done in the starboard half, so copying this to the port side was now done in just one weekend. For now the inside parts of the mainhull are finished and next is removing the frames and turning the hull upside down.

Freed from the mold frames: A milestone again. A long weekend of preparations with among other things unscrewing 7500! screws. The big event, hoisting the hull and turning it upside down, was done in the next weekend. I like to do this on my own, without onlookers, no hurry, good thinking and easy going. The hull is now ready for further work on the outside.

External laminate from gunwale to keel: Before laying up the external laminate, various "small" other jobs has to be done . Every time it is amazing how a relatively small job takes much more time than expected. For example the beam recess on the outside of the beam bulkhead. For cutting this recess area to size and removing superfluous foam hull parts I needed all the cutting and sanding tools I have, jig saw, reciprocal saw, multicutter tool, dremel tool, powerfile, belt sander, angle grinder, powerplane and the handtools like chisels, grater, hammer, file, multiknife, sandpaper, etc. and this all within 5 square ft . The four beam recesses took me two days with a lot of itch (from the glass dust) as a result. Then some foam fill pieces, which took another whole day. Everything is taking at least three times longer then expected .....

I made a little change in the lay-up schedule of the external laminate in the bottom of the hull. The plans specify an extra glass 0/90 layer in the bottom of the hull, for abrasion purposes and also for the balance between the 0º direction of the fibers inside and outside. As an alternative I've used a 45/45 Aramide (Kevlar) layer as the abrasion qualities of this type of material is superior compared to glass. The topside of the Aramide fabric is covered with a thin CSM layer, so the outside surface is glass and not Aramide. To compensate for 0º direction strength I've also added a line of glass UD in the opposite position of the internal UD layers. All in all a little heavier than specified, but good for peace of mind ....

Bow pole: At first I thought of making the carbon bow pole by myself, also as a kind of exercise for making the carbon mast and boom in future. But for practical reasons I decided to buy a custom made bow pole, to save on time and to have a look in the kitchen of a professional carbon mast maker. Thomas Whilkes of Ceilidh Composite Technologies (www.carbonmasts.com), the maker of the carbon bow pole, was so kind to discuss some ins and outs with me about making a carbon mast and the ideas I have to do this by myself.

The bow pole has been made in a female mould with carbon pre-pegs. The only thing I still have to do is making the attachment points for screacher and spinnaker. The bow pole is retractable and slides through a bow pole tube. To make the bow pole tube I thought I needed the bow pole as a mould, but in hindsight it was not necessary to buy the bow pole in this stage, as the outside diameter is exact the same as a 125mm pvc drain pipe. So, instead of the carbon tube I used a pvc drain pipe as a mould for the bow pole tube. With 7 layers of wallpaper I increased the diameter to 128mm for the easy gliding of the bow pole. The mould is finished with two layers of plastic film and a Teflon coat between the films to be able to release the glassfibre bow pole tube from the mould.

In the mean time I'm playing with the RTM-Worx software, on the one side to make the 3D model (that's fun) and on the other hand filling the model with material qualities like resin viscosity and fabric permeability (that's just a puzzle to translate in a lot of data)

Controlled Vacuum Infusion of mainhull bottom: I can say I now have a lot of experience with making airtight vacuum bags. As a matter of fact, within this project this is big hull vacuum bag number 9 and I thought it would be a piece of cake. After all, it is not just a vulnerable foam hull but a foam hull with an airtight internal laminate. And the joins of the Port and Starboard halves are covered with a glass tape. So no worries about air tightness. I thought ........

Unfortunately this assumption proofed to be very wrong. I did some stupid things, as using too long temporary screws here and here. This area was also not air tight. Further more it seems there were air channels in the UD fibers in the forward beam bulkhead flanges. In short, it became a headache vacuum bag, in fact the worse one I've ever made and it took much too much time to get it right. As the infusion of the hull was planned and I had appointments with some helpers I worked a continues 40 hours to get it right, but unfortunately the bag was not good enough to start the infusion. A disappointment for everyone and I had to cancel the event.

After some more changes in the bag and improvements of the hull integrity two weeks later it had to happen. Despite the fact the vacuum bag was still not perfect the infusion started at 3.00 PM in the afternoon. There were a few precautions taken to be able to solve possible problems during the infusion and this has worked out satisfactorily. Only the end counts and despite the troublesome preparations it was again a success, a big relief and another milestone in the project. After a evening and night watch during the cure of the resin I went home at 5.00 AM the next morning, tired but with a good and happy feeling.

(to be continued)