Cabin

One thing I wanted to achieve on Arpex, was a friendly cabin space. For now I seem to have gotten that one right. Just need to take care of good ventilation. For now I have the big main hatch, the big rear hatch, and two smallisch ones planned for the front. On the cabin top, and another facing downwards on the starboard "pod"

Often I ponder the possibility of keeping one of the large forward windows as on "openeable" window. But I recon that the only one eligeble for that, would be the starboard forward window. Because all others would possibly submerged in case of a lateral knockdown. Until the leepod does its job, the port sides of the cabin would need to be watertight. In any case, the hatch would need to be well thought out, since I count on lots of spray on the front windows.

Flange in place

 

Working on the flange has been rewarding. The installation puts me very much closer to finishing the interior. And once this is accomplished, I'll be ready to close the fore deck. Which in turn will put me into a position to finish the decks. And then paint!!! Wow! I can't wait for that to be done.

 

It is funny that yesterday, Mr. Palma asked me whether I'll use policarbonate or tempered glass. For some reason I have never considered glass. I guess weight, fragility and simple lack of knowledge have kept me away from this option. Also, the thought of a glass window busting at sea was not too encouraging. But now, today, I was asked again whether I would be using tempered glass. I have also read an article about tempered glass equiped with a PET film ("Hurricane Window", on NatGeo). That stuff is incredibly strong against impact. 

Of course policarbonate is very strong. You can hit it with a sledgehammer and it wont brake. But it is very sensible against fine scratch. One is advised not to whipe it with a rug. In time, the window will become all marked and opaque. It seems that tempered glass is easyer to the eye. My take is also that glass would be more expensive... But I might also be very wrong on that, I have, in fact, never quoted tempered glass. It seems to me, that I have reason enough to do so now.

 

 Now all I need is a dry day, to allow me to do some final filleting, and then some painiting, on the inside of the cabin. I'm very happy to have this beatiful interior. The paintsheme will include varinished, aparent wood, bright white, and some sand coloured details, which I think will put some accents on the structure.

I'm allways very happy once I add another detail to the boat. The growing complexity seems it look more "mature".

Que país é esse?

Red Hot Chili Peppers in Rio

The most expected show on the Rock in Rio - The Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Rock in Rio 2011

Trying to build the rudder

The morning saw me up early, eager to work on the boat, until my legs and arms were stone tired. However, this prospect was frustrated by a dead battery. My car refused to start, since its electric power-pack had packed. This held me up for a while. But luckily, I managed to get a replacement in one and a half hours time.

But the climate was not helping either. It rained in the morning, clouds were flying low and heavy. Precipitation was eminent. Gluing with epoxi was not an option.

To ge the best out of the day, I worked on the rudder. The challenge now is to fit the stainless steel shaft with the wooden blade. Jonas'es router helped a lot to execute this task. I am sure there are better ways to build a rudder, than the one I am following. But none of those I have found just seemed to fit me. And my way might not be the best one, but it will work.

During the job, I had the friendly help form a friend from the Club. Having a third hand was very helpful.

Arpoador

Des Jours Meilleurs sailing

Images of proas, tacking outrigger and the like allways attract my attention. Specially when the images show different angles and aspects of the boat. This one, produced by Proa Petrel, offers just that. A tour through one of the most successful proas sailing. Des Jours Meilleurs has crossed Oceans and sailed many miles.

Rudder

Work on the rudder has already started. All steel parts are done. Now I'm working on the wooden parts. I still need to figure out how I will produce the rudder profile. A NACA type of foil would be good. My drawings do specify the overall shape, but not the foil section. Producing such a foilsection correctly poses a series of challenges...

Harryproa - Blind Date sailing

This is an interesting video, featuring a Harryproa called "Blind Date". The images show the boat in various situations, from the inside, from the outside and also while shunting.

The boat shows a good turn of speed. The GPS shows speeds above 12 knots. At this pace, the bows throw up quite a lot of spray, which, however, is blown downwind. Occasionally the front rudder is washed by a wave, which causes some spray also.

I also like the deck, which offers comfortable working and living space, besides sheltered sitting positions.

Gluing the Flange

Today brought steps forward in the assembly of the rudder. I managed to discuss the mechanism with Oliveira, who will produce the drum which will take the spectra cables. Oliveira also welded transversal bits, onto the rudder stock. These will hold the wooden rudder.

I also started to glue the inner flanges, which will hold the policarbonate windows. This took a lot of clamping work.

Brazilian Boats & Canoes

Just today I "re-found" the lovely blog about Brazilian Boats & Canoes. It documents a very rich selection of boats and canoes from all Brazilian Regions. Congratulations to Jan W. Aten, the owner of the blog for the documentation work.

Each entry comes with fascinating pictures, which Jan has collected from the internet or shot himself. One example is the amazing Canoa Taparica, built for river sailing, with its totally surreal rig. It carries a ridiculous amout of sail on a very slender canoe body. How do those guys handle the boat?

As a bonus the blog also offers pages about admirable sailing boats like Joshua Slocum's Spray and the Liberdade.

The lovely proa Pacific Bee (ex Cimba) under sail

Pacific Bee is a lovely proa, designed by Russell Brown. It first sailed under the name Cimba. These are the first video images taken from outside of the boat, that I have seen of one of Russell Brown's boats. Cimba looks very elegant with its smart fat-headed rig. 

An article about this boat that first sparked my curiosity about these different types of boats. The proas, shunting proas and tacking outriggers. You might observe some similarities to the boat that I have come up with.

Many thanks to Phillipe Guillard, who took these images during a French proa meeting, on the Atlantic coast. He sails the great proa "des jours meilleurs".

Phillipe has posted more videos on the proa_file.

ProaCat

It is funny how things sometimes pass un-noticed.

I had seen the ProaCat blog before. But somehow, today, I felt really intrigued by the construction pictures of the ProaCat. This interesting tacking outrigger, has a hullshape wich is very similar to the one of Arpex. They very much reminded me of the initial stages of my own boat's construction.

The pictures were all taken from ProaCat's construction blog. The boat is being constructed by Lukasz Jeleniewski, in Poland. It's chined hullform is quite similar to Arpex'es. Proacat has a fuller mid section, and a finer stern.

When ready, ProaCat will display a very uncommon Crab Claw sail, which is cleverly adapted to a tacking configuration.

It is interesting to see that in Poland a really active polinesian sailing tradition is being carried on, and experimented with. Janusz O., which developed the shunting proa called, Pjoa, also sailed many miles on the Baltic, with an elegant crabclaw.

Cariocas for restauration

My last visit on the campus of the Federal University, to check out the activity on the Naval Engineering/Construction Center, has also revealed two Cariocas, which seem to be prepared for a restauration project.
The planks are riveted on the very light frames. And both hulls seem to have some damage around the rivets.

I have no idea what the plans are for these boats, nor who owns them. Both are sanded and seem prepared for a restuaration.

Drua

Drua Presentation

View more presentations from Bartelius

Invisible work

During the last two days, I have been busy with some "invisible work". Like sanding the interior in preparation of painting. Or sanding and coating the inner flange panels again. I had two coats on it, already. And it looked good enough. But for some reason I decided that a third coat would do no harm.

An other area of activity were the structural elements for the beam attachment. I now have them 95% done. I have used lots of fileting epoxi and glasfiber.

Well, all this invisible work needs to be done also. Frankly, I do prefer those jobs that visibly tell me that I'm much closer to launching the boat. But what can I do? All the other tasks need to be done also. There is no way around it. Ok - Maybe I could have done without the third sanding and epoxi coating on the inner pannels. But why not go a little extra mile?

Aotearoa proa

A new proa will touch Brazilian waters soon. The construction, which has some experimental character in the choice of metrials, has been described on the blog Aotearoa. A nice build, and I'm curious to see it sailing.

Find the link also on my blog n' roll list.