i550class.org

Sorry guys, but I have to honestly say that these are the worst plans/prints I have ever tried to work off of, and I am constantly amazed that anyone could actually build a boat using them. The amount of personal "interpretation" required astounds me. These are SOME of the problems I have with them:

1) The measurements are in decimal inches, which are easy to work with on a computer, but impractical if you are using anything larger than a micrometer. And the measurements do NOT convert easily into either fractional inches or decimals.

2) The lofting lines on the bottom and sides are not the same, and NONE of them are usable for laying out the bulkheads.

3) Several key construction areas are simply ignored, i.e. the keelbox?

And before you say I don't know what I'm talking about, I build off of plans and blueprints for a living, and this is the second boat I've built. The first one was SO easy compared to this!

My conclusion is that we are all attempting to build similar boats after seeing a couple of pictures. Now I'm going to go outside, cut a bunch of cable ties, and mark for the bulkheads. One step forward, one step back!

Rocky I understand totaly, as likely everyone who has built this boat. I work in a world of micrometers and decimals. Hang in there!!! There are steel rulers your can get that are in decimal inches in stead of fractions. See if you can get your hands on one. Local hardware stores should have them and work them with your regular tape measure. Just stay to the big numbers on the tape and add the decimal ruler to them. 3/4" .750, 1/2" .500, 1/4" .250, 1/8" .125 you probably already have that. It might help to make a cheat sheet that you can have handy.

On lofting the bulkheads you have to find a line to take all the measurements off of. Normaly a center line for vertical and a horizontal which on the plans is the bottom of the bulkhead. I drew the lines out and marked each point then conected them with either a strait line or a curved one from a batton transfer.

I used a long batton to fair out the lines as I was lofting from the plans, it helped a lot. if it didn't look right I would double check my measurements at the trouble point. Normally it was a missed measurement, as I alwase burned a inch on the tape when lofting to get a more precise measurement. In the end I took the advice of several books I've read. If in doubt go with the fair line the batton makes, it is likely correct.

You are correct on the lack of information on the keel box and several other things like the cabin top and any hatch placement you choose to put in. My advice is to ask questions and go through old blog pictures to see what others have done. Andrews picture of his keel box helped me understand lots on how to do it, and I followed that except putting sides on before setting the sleeve. If I had to do it over I would add an extra 1/2" to the length of the box to make it easier to get the sleeve placement correct in all directions.

Hope this helps you out in some fashion. Did you get a new camera yet? Waiting on Pictures!

Yep, you are absolutely correct, Rocky. Early on, someone I knew said, "Oh, you aren't really building a boat, you're just putting together a kit." While there is no doubt the kit has been a lot easier, to say this thing snaps together like a set of Lego's is utter nonsense.

My strategy has been much like what jray sez: refer to blogs and whenever possible, etc. Maybe try to jump off the Olson and look at other boats in the marina/boat park/etc. You get some good ideas that way and see some other solutions. Carrying a small cheap digital camera is a huge help. I took shots of Melges, Antrims, tons of dinghys, Vipers, SB3's, you name it. Some Vangaurd boats, too. Some of them gave me ideas on how much beef the part is going to need. I have a feeling parts of my boat are over-built. But it will be no big surprise if the thing completely disintegrates in the first race in 20-25 kn.

Drop me a line if you need pix of anything. Not that my project is by any means state-of-the-art or anything to emulate!

Rocky,

I feel your pain. I used a kit for my boat but I had to re-loft a few frames to get the cockpit layout to work the way I wanted. My Dad who is an engineer made a "engineering scale" the day he showed up to help me. His was simply drawn on a 1" wide piece of plywood scrap cut at a long angle. It may still be sitting in my garage somewhere. Personally, I found converting to fractions and rounding to the nearest 32nd to be a workable way to get things done.

The real miracle was that TTB got built in the first place.

If I can provide any info on what I did, just let me know.

Kevin.

Yeah Rocky, İ hear you too. Actually, that was one of the initial discussion we had when we formed this class: helping out other builders and complete all the missing info with easy to understand and follow "how to" .
My biggest complaint has always been that the plans are currently way too open for interpretation, especially for a novice builder such as myself. But, as did all the others, İ pulled it off. And so will you. For sure, now that İ know how to build the damn thing İ can look backwards and see the quantity of things İ could have built better...
But you know what ? Getting over those damn plans and figuring out everything that is missing (there is much more missing than just the keel box or the companionway...!) was really part of the challenge and the intense satisfaction İ had everytime İ was able to complete a task, no matter how difficult it initially seemed to be. Of course İ could NOT have done it without all the guys who helped me out with so many questions. So kudos to all of them.
And good luck to you. Be patient, dont measure your time, and you will finish off with a really great looking sportboat !

oh..apparently we are no longer permitted to call it a Sportboat (if you missed it, see the SA Sportboat thread about Building a i550 vs a Tri...I admit, not one of my finer hours....but so it goes)

Wait a minute. Those who believe in anarchy are trying to tell others to follow a "rule" and/or comply with a "definition" of what is or is not a sportboat? That seems quite contrary to the concept of anarchy. Give me a break.

K.

Thanks to all of you who sympathize with me. I really was just "ranting and bitching", and Jerome is right about all the help we recieve from those who have gone before, without which I doubt there would be half as many builds going on as there are. Huge thanks to all of you who offered to help, Im good at asking for it, and I check your blogs all the time to see how you got through the problems. It really is a pleasure to be a part of this group!

Hah, man, believe it, there have been times when I looked at something on my boat and said, "jeez, hope this works...it would've been nice to have seen more in the plans about this."

Which kind-of feeds back into the big break-up (us from them). It's no wonder there are so many incarnations of the boat, the planset virtually begs you to do something different. I've become a little more sympathetic to the looser rules, but I still, in theory, would like a class as similarly constructed as possible.

The thing about the SA thread is that one guy, TS, who has always had a bit of bug up his butt about the i550...it was either he or GybeSet who came up with the "packing crate" nickname. Fine, that doesn't bother me. Big deal. But when a young comes on asking simple questions and gets the kind of crap TS was dishing out, that's just wrong. The Aussie sportboat assoc has a rating schedule and the i550 falls below the minimum. Big deal. Anyone who thought these critters were going to give a T7 a handful on the race course was deluded to begin with. I don't think that was the idea behind the boat. I thought it was to build fleets of i550's & similar small fast boats that you could have fun racing against...SB3's and Open 5.7s and such. Maybe the Vipers. That works for me! Too bad the trolls of Oz can't see the point. Shame was that Andrew and Josh chimed in to basically support his premise, all based on some arbitrary rating minimum. Big thanks to GybeSet for chiming in with a different POV.

Just want to let everyone know that Tim of Watershed offered to send me the converted measurements, Thank you very much Tim, I'm actually past that point now, but your offer was very nice. What started me on this rant was when I went to set the bulkheads and realized that the lofting lines didn't include the bulkhead lines and so now I have to run a tape down the center of the hull and mark them. Not easy to do when you already have the sides tied on! Thanks again everyone for your help and support!

AND I thought I'd be passing Farr 40's, and competing with the open 60's!

Rocky,
Anytime you are on the road with Slowpoke and you see a Farr 40 or an Open anything PASS 'EM.
Tim

slowpoke wrote:AND I thought I'd be passing Farr 40's, and competing with the open 60's!

All you'll need to pass a Farr 40 - on the water - is about 15-20knots of breeze on broad reach spinnaker run, relatively flat water, and you can tell them how much your boat cost as you go past them. Honestly, it's a very cool feeling !

It figures you would know! GO THE SHAZZA!!!!!!

Why not just use metric when building the boat? I went out and purchased two metric tape measures and two metal rulers that are metric. Its so much easier especially when your doing the math. and adding and subtracting .

Back in the beginning of time the lofting of the i550 was done on my shop wall first in Yank Measures then converted and remeasured in Metric. The latest version of the plan set has both to the mm and 1/16".

Personally I think that Evolution should have provided us with twelve fingers if we were supposed to use Yank Measure.
T

On the measurements, including both in new plans is good. I've not seen the new plans though. Do they include details like the need for a sheer clamp and thwarts?

On passing any big boat. Maybe I'll do it on the water some day. But I know I can take them on the freeway any day. My brother owns a J105. When he hauls it out and puts it on a trailer he needs a special permit just to move the thing onto a public road. I can go on any road and use just about any ramp to launch my boat.

Oh, and remember that the i550 cost less then a single mainsail for a farr 40.

k.

Interesting thread on the SA Sportboat Forum (link: http://forums.sailinganarchy.com/index. ... pic=132743)

Makes me think that our trying to funnel this thing into something resembling OD is even more of an exercise in futility than I'd ever imagined. A lot of what we inherit in terms of sportboat design and desire comes from our Antipodean friends. I never really bothered to think about, ponder or quantitatively explore the extent of SB One Design racing in OZ, but apparently it [edit] exists in very small doses.

Huh.

Seems like a large part of the game on the other side of the planet is LINE HONORS. I love Line Honors...but only when racing One Design...the rest of the time I could pretty much give a flying red rat's ass.

So I dunno....the deck is definitely stacked.

I think the line honors bit comes from the fact that the guy wants to build 8m boats, so near the top of their "sport boat" spectrum.

But I think it might also be telling why the SH folks had so little to say about OD rules back when that was a hot topic- that's just not on their radar since they race a measured rating rule. You need to constantly update and change the boat to do that, so OD puts a big straitjacket on the rest of the racing. Just a perception, no idea how close to the mark that might be...

Can I bitch about the map here? The Google Map? I just got a chuckle, went to see if there were anyone new in my area and clicked on my pin...it did not look right. As I zoomed in, I saw my pin is in one of the skankiest areas in all of Baltimore. That's OK, I mean, I may end up living there by the time all this is over. But if anyone wants to come see the boat and they do a drive-by first, they may want to bring a large caliber handgun if they go to where the pin as it is presently situated. Can whomever is doing the map just put my pin up in Towson somewhere? Anywhere is better than Curtis Bay, despite its picturesque name.

thank you.

Heehee- I just checked my pin and it's right on the carwash I used yesterday!

I noticed since starting to use an iPhone for pictures that (besides pic quality going way down, sorry!) the pics all now have location info stored with them, which comes through in the Picasa picture album I use.

holy crap...you mean lat/lons?

I'll vouch that tf's place is a safe place to party and that he's very hospitable. No flak jackets required.

This would be under the other stuff part. The snow is mostly gone now and the lower lakes are less solid then three weeks ago. Almost time to take the cover off the Twist and work on the little things that pissed me off last season. Thinking about things that will work better for single up. Just a few tweaks and some major ones, kite stuff. Happy spring is here at last.

Yeah spring!!! So far we are still below freezing here in Chicago this spring. Need to do some fitting of my rudder to my cassette, some painting and lots of rigging tweaks to finalize. April will fly by I'm sure.

Cheers to all. Kevin.