build status

[ryderp]

The boat looks great!

I just use a pair of jack-stands under the trailer frame to keep it from tipping up when it's not attached to a hitch.

Phil

[noemar]

Like the blue color. What do you plan on using for hatch covers?

[Mist]

Noel,

I've already made the vertical panel out of core-cel foam. It's unfinished and doesn't seam to match the rest of the boat. I'll use the foam panel for a while and change it to wood later. I have a few thoughts about the top panel. I've been contemplating making a canvas covered removable basket arangement to store and launch the spin from. At any rate, for right now I'm doing the minimum required to get the boat in the water. I don't plan to paint the bow sprit, rudder, or keel until the winter. I figure I'll get it sailing and keep making improvements. Hopefully, change the Al stick to carbon someday. I'm certain that you know as well as I do, "A boat is never finished!!"

[admin]

Truer words never said!

I did forego a bunch more work to get the boat in the water, that's for sure. In fact, we are still working things out (after 6 or 7 times sailing). Have to say, once it's in the water and under way, it's fun and worth the whole process, the good the bad and the ugly

Boat looks amazing Tim, and you must be proud! Hope to see you at the Sunfish later this season!

[micah202]

I did forego a bunch more work to get the boat in the water,

....hopefully you didn't forego putting sikaflex down before the fittings! .....like happened with a certain green boat.

[Mist]

I've been working on the tiller. the rudder, cassette, tiller combo is coming together. The tiller stock came out much larger than possibly needed. I have a lot of shaving to do.

[admin]

Lookin' good Tim! What kind of wood did you use for the tiller laminate? I'd like to make one, too....the slapped together helm I have is OK, but not perfect by any stretch. Here's the set-up with some nasty looking bloke steering....

tiller dude.jpg

One suggestion I got from crew is a longer tiller extension...I'd like to redo the entire thing and maybe add a cassette. The rudder jumped off the pintles when we were out and re-seating it in a sloppy sea state due to 6 million simultaneous powerboat wakes was not fun.

Think you'll be ready for the Sunfish Classic?

[Mist]

Hey TF,

For the tiller laminates I used 13 layers of 1/8" thick cedar. If I were to do it again I'd only use 10 layers. Down by the rudder cassette I put bi-axial carbon in between every other layer of cedar to help with the high loads. The glueing up of the tiller was a bit of a dance. My daughter was a great help.

If you purchase the cedar (I recommend Boulter) I'm willing to cut and plain it for you.

I'm very optimistic that I'll be ready for sunfish classic. Ullman started cutting my sails yesterday after delays (Royal Navy & Arabella clipper). I have a bunch of small items to complete. My daughters return home from summer camps 7-30. I'm planning a first time sail with the whole family shortly after that date. I'm certain I'll have kinks to sort out but I'll be at the classic, I'm looking forward to it! -Tim K

[admin]

Rumor has it (courtesy of Ullman Sails Virginia's FB page) that a certain blue boat will hit the water today. Good Luck Mist!

https://www.facebook.com/search/1370242 ... rface=rese

[Mist]

Yes! I just return home from a great sail with family on Mist. I've been trying to post photos on forum of the last few days/weeks progress and my photos are too large. Does anybody with an idea how to reduce the size of photos? The boat performed incredibly. Don't like the dyneema stuff tough. Your first spinnaker lunch was a sight to see!!! Oh, and I sailed over the lazy spin sheet to! What a mess. Very sensitive to weight! As expected, I'm low on the learning curve and look forward to moving up.

[admin]

Congrats Tim! We are pretty low on the learning curve,too. You should see our spinn sets if you want a laugh.

With regard to pictures, if you want to email a bunch to me I can reduce the file size easily. If you are a Mac user, just open them in Preview and go to TOOLS > ADJUST SIZE > then get them down to less than 2 Mb,

Your boat looks great!

[Mist]

OK, I think I'm successful with the photo. I'm really happy with the boat. I can say enough nice things about the sailmakers Jerry Latel, Stephanie Sweeney, and Arabella Denvir. The service, materials, and finished product are the tops. I must mention, Geoff at Velocity Boatworks also offers great sails a great price. The only reason I chose Ullman was that they are local to me. For the few hundred dollars difference I decided to go local.

My biggest challenge ahead of me is to make the boat easier to setup and take down.The keel being in the way of the hinge mast set is an issue, uhg! The dyneema shrouds are not working out the way I thought they would, the lifting harness needs adjustment the keep the crane out of the rig when lifting and lowering. Oh, I need to label the head, tack, and clew on the spin. Also, don't try to sail these boats without a tiller extension. Lots of hurdles to overcome, should be pretty easy!

The winds were right around 10 knots and the boat took a flogging while we set the spin. I don't think we ever reach planing speeds as I there are four of us on board and I wasn't really able to optimize sail trim with all of the excitement of finally getting out on the water.

My next outing is the Wed evening race at Hampton Yacht club.

I do want to figure out the photo issues. Just recently my regular camera died and my work place finally allows camera cell phones. I upgrading from a crummy Blackberry to an iPhone. With the new phone I've only been getting large size photos. Just another issue for my to figure out. Please be patient.

[Warren Nethercote]

Tim,

Look's nice! I see a single-spreader rig. Without going back to your blog, is that a Viper mast? Can you expand upon your dyneema rigging comments?

If you are a PC user you can search on something like 'reduce size of photos' and there are a number of free apps available to download. I picked one (name forgotten) which resides in the background. Right-click on the picture and it gives you a number of options including edit (cropping etc) and down-size. There are choices between stock sizes and custom ones, but the small stock sizes are generally good for the web and give photos in the 100 to 200 kb range. I use the app less now that I take pictures with my phone: when I email myself to get them on the laptop I attach them from the Gallery (android phone) which gives the option of downsizing to 10% of the original. These are generally within the acceptable size range for the forum.

[Mist]

Thanks for the compliment Warren. I went the Dwyer DM-5 mast section. Geoff at Velocity helped me with the selection and gave me a great price. It's a little more rigid then the Viper rig. All production i550s are supposed to come with this section.

At the start of yesterday's outing I had the rig set like I wanted it. The shrouds were music-wire tight and the mast had the proper bend in to match the main. After an hour of sailing in 10 knots wind or less the inside shrouds were loose and I lost main sail shape. I admit most of my aggravation with the dyneema is probably my own fault. Maybe I don't completely understand all the lashing techniques yet.

Also with the dyneema, I was planing on setting both shrouds on each side of the boat and leaving the attached to the hull such that when I lift the mast upright 4 of the 5 shrouds were set. Imagine lift the rig and only needing to pull the forestay to where it needed to be, rig would ready to go. Well, with the keel in the way of hinging the mast on centerline having the side shrouds to final length is not possible. Currently, I need to hinge the mast on either side of the keel, once the rig is upright I pick it up and set it on the step, I can't lift the mast while side shrouds are tightened.

[Chad]

Looks fabulous!

The mast step's hinge axis needs to be skewed ~10 degrees to one side, then the side stays can remain attached as you describe.

[Mist]

Great idea! I'm going to brainstorm on that. Thanks!

I think I can do skew the step without drilling and filling the holes in the cabin top. Really cool!

[noemar]

Looks great. Still trying to complete my boat . Had new stays made this week and hope to install and bend on sails. Need to adjust height of boom to fit Melges 20 mainsail. Also looking for info on constructing a keel lift any ideas would be appreciated.

[noemar]

forgot to add recent photo

[ryderp]

The boat looks great! Congratulations on the launch.

Don't worry about the missteps. We've made a lot of them (launching the spin sideways, a few slam dunk broaches, hit a couple of rocks with the keel, etc., etc.) We're still working on new ways to screw up.

Phil

[admin]

Well, Chad was spot-on in his comment on Sept 12, over a year ago, about my leak.

We recently pulled the keel off the boat by tying some floating line on the top/lifting padeye, removing the keel stop at the top of the foil and letting the thing drop out of the boat in deep water (10 feet deep). Then we hauled in the rope and got the keel into a boston whaler. It was a bit of a production. And the keel didn't exactly drop out of the boat...we had to use a big-ass maul to hammer it out of the bottom.

In any case, here is where the water was coming from and it stopped when I noticed a seam in the keel box that wasn't fully taped, so water would fill the keel box and weep out of the top of the box where there was a void in the semi-taped seam...into the boat's bilge (such as one exists on an i550)

sleeve crack 1.jpg

sleeve crack 2.jpg

This is pretty much what Chad had suggested....now, how to FIX the darn thing. I figure go in with a dremel from below decks, cut out one side of the box, remove sleeve, make new, larger guide sleeves like the ones Loh has and glass them to he bottom and top of the keel box (what's left of it) and then glass back in the side of the box I removed and make sure the keel foil gets sanded down to a much much thinner profile. In other words, 86 the sleeve altogether and just go with wider guides, top and bottom...glass the inside of the box to insure it doesn't get soggy and delaminate.

Does anyone suggest cutting away some of the cockpit floor and working from there, instead? It might be easier...can't decide.

THANKS!

[Warren Nethercote]

Can you remember where Loh's approach is described on the site?

[lohwaikin]

Here you are:

i550-437_Keel-box.JPG

i550-437_Keel-Sleeve-Markouts.JPG

i550-437_Lower_Keel_Sleeve.JPG

i550-437_Rebated_Keel_Sleeves.JPG

i550-437_Glued_Lower_Sleeve.JPG

[lohwaikin]

i550-437_Glued_Upper_Sleeve.JPG

On hindsight, I think it's better to glass-tape the joint between keel-box and hull-panel, before fitting on the lower keel-sleeve.
Just for a peace of mind.
I did not do the above. I merely slapped on plenty of epoxy and fitted on the sleeves, hoping that excess epoxy will seal off any exposed wood.
Now it worries me every time the boat is moored longer than 3 days.

Cheers,
Loh.

[ryderp]

I think that a simple approach would be to just pour a couple cups of epoxy into the space between the keel sleeve and the keel box. I did that and I figure that the epoxy down there is an inch or so thick. When I did that, there was some slight leaking out the bottom, which indicates that there would have been some leaking in had I not poured epoxy in there.

Phil

[Warren Nethercote]

Loh, thank you for the photos. I like that approach!