Te Puke in Poland

Last week a surprising sight was to be seen in Poland. A traditional proa of the TePuke type, set his Crabclaws in waters of the Polish Jamno Lake, in Europe. Boat owner and builder Jerzy Jarocki hosted Krzys Mnich and Janusz Ostrowski, for couple of trials.

The boat was constructed over an existing cayac hull, with ply and epoxi. Interestingly, traditional lashings were used in a significant amount of connections. Even the cabin, formed according to traditional models, high on top of the platform.

The coloursheme of dark wood and the dark red sail look amazing.

Janusz has posted about the experience on the proafile discussion-group and has added the nice images by his wife. Janusz kindly allowed the posting on this blog.

Construction at rest

My vacation is comming to an end. Construction activity will now fall back into the weekend-only modus. These two weeks of dedication have been great, and I feel that I have made good headway in the right direction.

What a pitty that I didn't have my camera with me yesterday. I managed to drill the hole through the hull for the rudder shaft. A delicate operation, during which I had the valuable help from Mr. Palmas, Ivan and Valmir.

I also have the reinforcements, backing-plates and deckstringers cut and layed in. Decking of the stern is just a small step away. But before gluing all these pieces I need to have the tube for the rudder shaft glued in, secured and ready.

With the deck-camber cutt into the frames and sheerline faired the boat looks much more tidy and boatlike. It looks more like a boat under construction rather than a hull being built.

Roraima Expedition

For a long time I have been meaning to post the story and images of my Roraima Expedition. Ever since the posting of my South East Pacific Tour, I had in mind to make a similar report about the trip that my brother Andreas, my friend Christian Gaul, Kiko and I undertook to do the treck up to the Monte Roraima. This time with a happy ending.

The Roraima is a so called "Tepui", or "Table Mountain", situated in the geographic junction of Guiana, Venezuela, and Brazil. It rises with vertical walls into 9.000ft., and has a horizontal top. Due to millions of years of erosion, the top is actually very rugged, with rocky and swampy terrain. Access is difficult. It takes a three day track through the Gran Savanna Nation Park, in Venezuela.

A special interests was charged by the fact that its shear isolation has favoured the evelopment of endemic species of fauna and flora.

The Roraima and the neighbouring chain of tepuis has attracted the attention of many travellers, since Alexander von Humbolt. Its high walls of yellow sandstone glare seductively in the afternoon sun. The glow has sparked the legends of the magic kingdom of "El Dorado", and inspired novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, like "The Lost World".

It was an amazing trip with all sorts of impressions, learnings, emotions and encounters. Just like a good travel trip should be.

I have lacked a good motive to post this report for a while now. Since the motive is still missing, I'll just start without one now.

I just love to revisit these pictures... ;-)

View forward

These last days have been great for the project. I've managed to accomplish several tasks, and the next step, to build the deck and cabin are just ahead.

As my vacation and the days of working on Arpex are coming to an end, I start checking what I've accomplished these last 10 days. The tasks I've ticked include:
- Bought inox for the rudder-shaft and tube,
- Bought cedar plywood for akas and deck,
- Built the rudder support structure,
- Built the internal frame,
- Built athwarthship reinforcement (stern),
- Epoxied the bow and stern sections,
- Epoxied the floorboards, ,
- Cutt deck camber into all frames (stern and bow),
- Fileted the stern section,
- Got my timber cut to battens for aka and deck structure (Comissioned to "João Carpintiero"),
- Laminated internal glass for reinforcement at plywood seams (bow and stern),
- Planed the bow "gunwhale", in preparation to receive the deck,
- Sanded cabin section in preparation for 2nd cover of epoxi.

During this time, also many thoughts have also been spent with how to build the mast, the mast-support, the cabin and the akas. Things seem to work out, and I do not see difficulties ahead. I'm thrilled about the prospects of the next challenges in construction.

I consider my self very luck to be building this boat, and could not imagine anything else I would like to be doing.

I'm on vacation, so I am working to a no stress plan. And I owe it to my employer to get back to work happy and rested. Therefore, I wake up at around 8 and start around 10am.

I take a simple, but tasty lunch at the Club's restaurant. The company of Mr. Palmas and Ivan is becoming more and more frequent. And that is very well, because we learn a lot from each other. ... Probabely I learn more from them, than the other way round. Nevermind. Mr. Palmas has built 18 boats. He knows this and that... Both actually have been very helpfull and supportive. Ivan has lent me a power planer today, which will shorten the fairing of the deck-hull-joint, and other tasks, tremendously.

Typically I work until the lights go out. That is when I loose daylight, at 5:30pm. I drive home, tired and happy, through a moderate traffic.

Adriana, my lovely partner, is working on a film shooting, which goes until late. Her shooting has been postponed, which ruined our travel plans, for the second week of my vacation. Therefore, after showering and eating, I continue working on documentation and development - which both includes this blog.

Arpex Cabin

The cabin for Arpex is more and more subject of my thoughts. As I develop the internal support and reinforcement structures for akas, mast and shrouds, I try to find the ideal form, in order to use the reinforcements as cabin support also. The objective is to improve strenght and weight.

Wood

In the last couple of weeks I've been screening the market for the plywood which will go into the construction of crossbeams, decks and cabin. It is very difficult to find suitable, good quality cedar plywood, here in Rio de Janeiro.

Price is not allways an easy reference for quality. Surprisingly the best batch I've found was also the one with the best price. The difference was about 20%!

The 10mm sheet was priced at R$ 115, and the 6mm sheet at R$ 78. The cedar plywood is actually mixed with other woods. It seems not possible to find pure cedar ply. The one's I've bought, are composed by 5 internal sheets and 2 cover sheets. That seems to be as good as it gets.

Seascapes

Today marks the first Anniversary of the befriended blog 70.8%. Writer Thomas Armstrong celebrates with a beautifull show of his favorite seascapes.

It inspired me to post these seascapes from Brazilian paintor Benedito Calixto. They show elegant brazilian dugouts, from the southern coast.The link to a nice series of paintings was supplied by Bob Holzmann, from the Indigenous Boats blog.

These type of canoes are used to these days. In the region around Paraty, in the southern coast of Rio de Janeiro, these canoes are maybe the main means of water-transport. One of my favorite pastimes in my days of youth, was to play around with small canoe models. I painted them, equiped them with sails... Their elegant lines have shaped my maritime heritage.

Popa

My approach has been to finish the stern section, "popa" in Portuguese, to then tackle the mast-step and other reinforcements (fore-stay, connection to the ama, and whatever other is needed). Short breaks or waiting times are covered by thinking through the mast step structure.

Today I've cut the deck camber into the frames, and have produced a wooden piece for athwarthship reinforcement. The second compartment was also epoxied with a second coat of resin. It looks nice and white now. I will still filet the frames and rudder structure.

Proa days on "Freedom Child"

Freedom Child was a 37ft. Tacking Outrigger, which was sailed in the 70-ies, by his designer Russel Hawn, and also by Chris Doyle, author of the article "PROA DAYS on Freedom Child". The article makes interesting reading. It describes a short period when Chris Doyle sailed the boat on the Trinidad - Tobago regatta. A passage of about 100 miles, in the Caribean. Admittedly, it was a critical element in my decision to build Arpex.

Chris Doyle gives a lively account of how it was to sail this unconventional boat. Read a short passage below:

"From the start she was operated on the basis of complete anarchy. We never selected a skipper, but each did his own thing as he felt inclined. Although this is very much against the best nautical traditions, it worked well enough for us, and I only once remembered the helm being left for any period of time when no one wanted to take it. We put a 2' wide net alongside the rear cross-arm, so that it would be possible for someone to crawl out and sit on the outrigger, a suggestion that was met with derisive laughter from those who had actually experienced her wild ways. But in practice we found it wasn't so hard and riding the outrigger soon became our favourite job. Out there, and away from the hustle and bustle and the helmsman's mutterings, and the continuous straining of the sheetman, whose sole job was to ease and tighten the main according to how high the outrigger lifted, one could sit in quiet contentment, holding on for dear life, alternately flying and submarining as if riding a giant porpoise."

Find the complete article here.

Tubevision

I've picked this up on H2uhO...

Steel

Mr. Palmas, the club's Nautical Director, helped me today with getting the rudder shaft and tube construction started. He took me to a scrap dealer who had an immense selection of used stainless steel parts. A fun place, and I found myself quite entertained by just picking up parts and imagining uses for it.

Despite the distraction we found an 1 inch stainless steel bar and a suitable tube. I was considering to use 1''1/4 inch, but found that quite an overkill. So I used 1 inch, just as specified. We also purchased some plates to weld onto the shaft, to anchor it into the wooden rudder blade. In total almost 8kg of stainless for R$ 130 (=USD 65).

Mr. Palmas will help to assemble the whole thing.

The trip to the steel dealer took a while, and so I had little time for actual building. But I managed to mark the deck camber. To do the radiused markings, I used a technique described in the Gudgeon Brothers book; two, slightly angled battens, with a pencil attached at the lower edge. The angle between the battens will determine the camber, as the pencil slides along from side to side along the frame.

I had actually payed a CAD-Designer to add the camber, which was not included in the original plans. But as things go, the designed camber does not fit to the actual result of the construction. Just by half an inch, but still. It is just no good any more. So I found that this was the easiest method. This is, once again, one of those problems which appear during boatbuilding, which are described in my previous post, Measures.

Measures

Quite many details of the construction of Arpex are not given by the plans I've comissioned. Therefore, need to figure them out "in the flesh", as I go. The mast position is one of the critical measures that I need to decide upon now. I know where the mast needs to be positioned. But there is no exact measure, no big X marking the spot.

Sometimes I become anxious with the decisions I need to take and ponder the consequences of the different options. My approach to overcoming the anxiety is to keep the big picture in mind.

It is conforting to see that I'm not the only one going through these moments. It happens even with boatprojects based on detailed plans and construction instructions. I loved to read this text, Confessions of a Novice Boat Builder posted in the Duckworks Magazine, written by Paul Boyer.

SincePaul hits the nail on its head about the point I was going to write about, and since he writes much better than I, I took the liberty to post a small extract from the text:

"In contrast, I am quickly learning that boat building defies predictability. It is more of an art than a science, guided by eye and intuition as much as it is guided by tape measures and plans."

... and also...

"I’m watching my building process evolve. After just four months of work, I find myself spending more time looking at the boat, and less time staring a the plans. I try to think ahead and anticipate the implications of each cut. I dry fit parts and give myself some wiggle room when cutting, knowing that I can trim a deck that is too long or knock an inch off the keel once everything fits. And I am trying not to worry about tiny gaps and other small discrepancies. As someone told me recently, “that’s what epoxy is for.”"

If you plan on building a boat I recomment the reading of the article.

Looking at you

Estrutura do Leme III

Now al I need to do with the rudder structure is to glue the top piece, filet all joints and then fit the stainless steel tube. Which I hope to buy tomorrow - together with Mr. Palmas. Then the rudder itslef needs to be velded, glued and shaped.

Roomy

The other day I could not resist to lay in the floorboards and mock up a navigation table, in the inner-steering-position-to-be. As soon as the structure which will hold the decks and cabin is in place, the "gunwhales" which run through the cabin will be cut out. More or less as imagined, I think of the available space as a cosy, and fairly airy space. The image tempts me to draw a few ilustrations to see what is going to be built next, and how it is going to look like.

Now, instead of having one major taks at hand (like: "Fair the hull"), I have several smaller ones. But this is no reason for them being less important; I need to figure out the structure for the mast support. I need to build the aka attachment structure. I need to build the rudder (buy stainless steel tomorrow?). I need to think about the steering mechanisms. I need to finish the interior. ... and the list goes on.

Having focus spread towards several tasks, means that, "well", that focus is spread. Which is not good. So, as difficult as it is, I try to tackle one item at a time. But since epoxi work needs to be timed, and also implies waiting times for gluing, multitasking is finally inevitable.

Today I spent time thinking about the mast step. First, the mast position had to be determined according to the plans.

Bow section sealed

I've not been busy in the stern only, with the rudder structure. I have also laminated glass tape, from the inside, on the ply joints, in the bow section, and epoxi-sealed the whole thing.

As you can see in the pictue above, the central box beam which will receive the loads from the akas and shrouds is also in place. It looks plenty strong.

Estrutura do Leme II

I've been working firmly these days. It is satisfying to see the works advancing. I'm dog tired by the time I reach back home. Too tired to blog.

Slowly but steadily, the bare hull now being filled with its structures. Main transversal box beam, floors, rudder structure... next comes the mast step.

The plywood for the akas will also be bought and cut these days.

Progress

The structure for the rudder shaft is comming together. I will coat this compartment in epoxi befor gluing the upper plywood table. I also still need to cut and fit the upper solid-wood reinforcement.