Building The Vera Cruise

[Roberta]

Looking Great!

Roberta

[DrBryanJ]

Carl, Looking great. Especially like the cabin roof lines.

[nc721]

Looking sharp.

[mrintense]

Thanks Roberta, Bill, Matt, Steve, Bryan, and NC721. I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out. Started prepping the roof for fiberglass yesterday.

Right now I've got three different projects going at the same time and space is tight in the garage. I'd like to get the interior pieces installed as soon as I can, but I suspect its going to be a few months before I get to that given all the things that have to be done first. I've pretty much resigned myself to working with very limited space through the summer and into the fall.

[specialk]

Carl...
So beautiful...love the look ...
Will seek back in and go back in time to catch up on your build...
Miss everyone...y'all stay safe...

[acflynn]

Looking good, Carl! Your attention to detail never fails to impress!

[mrintense]

Thanks Kelly and Andrew. Good to hear from you both.

Today, I added two more holes to the hull. That makes six now of a planned eleven (currently two fwd cabin bilge, two transom drains, and two anchor well drains). These were for the two forward bilge hose fittings. The remaining five will be two more bilge hose fittings in the aft cabin, two more transom holes for draining the splash well and eventually, in the distant future, a hole for a depth transducer.

I've also made good progress on getting the roof of the cabin fiberglassed. The interior components for the forward cabin have all be refinished (I'll show those in another post later) and I am going to start touching up the paint in the forward cabin bilge soon.

[neel thompson]

Looking really nice Carl. For future reference, somewhere along the way I learned that plastic thru hulls should not be used below the water line on wood boats. I forget why exactly, but I think because wood moves, the fittings could crack. Not 100% sure of that.....

[mrintense]

Looking really nice Carl. For future reference, somewhere along the way I learned that plastic thru hulls should not be used below the water line on wood boats. I forget why exactly, but I think because wood moves, the fittings could crack. Not 100% sure of that.....

Thanks Neel,

Yes I had heard that also. These were bought several years ago before I knew about that. I bought them at the time because they were the only ones I could find that were not 90 degree bends. These are 100 degree which makes them a little easier to install, remove. However, I am going to replace them at some point with brass or stainless. Hopefully the hole size will remain the same!

[chugalug]

Read somewhere about the two bilge pumps.Suggested an automatic or automatic switches-one smaller for nuisance water and a much larger one for emergency like hole puncture or shipping a big wave.Think the hint was in Woodenboat mag

[mrintense]

I have still been working on getting the forward cabin ready for component and floor board installation. I've made good progress on this. All the cabinetry has been refinished, the floor boards (underside) painted with bilge paint and the bilge area cleaned up and repainted. Everything is basically ready for the next phase which is installing the underfloor stuff (hoses and bilge wiring). I want to wait however for two weeks to give the bilge paint plenty of time too cure. Last time I only waited a week and had issues with the floor board paint sticking to the underfloor support paint.

In the meantime, that means I can start back on the aft cabin construction. Unfortunately, it must be the week for setbacks. Leo at Sampson Boat Building (on You Tube) had to remake a bunch of deck beams because of bad oak. Stephen at Acorn to Arabella (also on You Tube) is having to strip off some cedar planking and replace it with oak because the cedar isn't strong enough. And I am going to have to redo my aft floor boards (partially) because I wasn't paying enough attention when mocking up the helm.

What happened is that the helm is already space constrained fore and aft making it difficult to fit the helm and seat into the space available. I allowed 36" for this when I was mocking up which was just enough. This allows for the seat to be far enough back from the helm to give me knee room and still allows the helm to be deep enough to contain the equipment planned for inside. 36 inches aft of the front cabin floor ends just past frame 2. My mock up of the helm platform allowed for this and was even cut out to clear the gusset at the frame.

However, the design required the aft floor boards to be cut into two pieces so that the floor board aft of the helm platform could be opened without having to remove the helm. This is where the problem occurred. I measured back 36" from the forward edge of the floor board and noticed that they conveniently ended on frame 2. So I thought, All I have to do is add some end braces to the aft side of frame 2 and cut the floor boards.

What I forgot about is that the platform doesn't go all the way to the forward edge of the floor board, it's set back about 2 1/2". This allows the forward side of the helm cabinet to line up with the aft roof line. What this meant however (since I had already cut the boards and added the bracing) was that the helm platform overlapped the cut in the floor board by 2 1/2" inches.

Of course, this is a bummer. I stared at this for several hours trying to consider alternatives.

Shortening the length of the platform was no go because of the disappearance of adequate knee room from having to mount the helm seat farther forward.

The helm cabinet could potentially loose 2 inches in depth, but I had planned on mounting the electrical panel in there and it would have made things more cramped than they already would have been.

I thought about trimming the aft roof line but I could gain no more than 3/4" there.

Taking a bit off the length of the helm platform and the depth of the cabinet and some other small tweaks would have possibly gained me back the 2 1/2" but it would have still been cramped in the electrical compartment.

So after going through the denial phase for awhile, I decided that redoing the floor boards was the easiest fix. If you look at the first picture where the unpainted wood is clamped in position, on that side of the frame, I need the aft floor board to end about an inch aft of that point. What I am going to do is add a cross beam to the underside of the fore and aft floor joists in the area where I need the new supports. Then add filler blocks up to the level of the floor board. Then I will trim the aft floor board to match up to the new support. I will have to make a new forward floor board , but that shouldn't be too bad except that I will have to re-fiberglass and epoxy it afterwards.

Doing the floor boards allows me to leave all the other planning for the helm in place without compromising on space and seat location.

Sorry for the long winded post, but writing this helps me better see what I have to do.

[Bill Edmundson]

Carl

You may see it tonight. Wake up at 3 am and think, "That's how that works!". Then go back to sleep.

Bill

[denbrlr]

Carl,

Sorry for the setback but you will be happy with it in the end so I am sure it will be worth it (easy for me to say I know ). Still, things are looking great.

Lee

[DrBryanJ]

Carl. I know it is extra work but you’ll figure it out. You are right on week of set backs. After fitting my rear seat and mocking up my front seat. I realized it need to mov back about three inches. So I am cutting out the floor supports that define the storage area under the front seats and moving them aft

[mrintense]

I've corrected the floor board on the starboard side and started making the parts for the helm station. This is one of those very satisfying phases of the build because I am getting to work on something I've been thinking about for a long, long time. There's still a lot to do but I'm off next week and I am hoping to make some good progress on this. The mock up picture is here just as a reminder of where I am going with this.