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. 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.

(to be continued)