#23: The Bulk of It
Goodbye, lazy days of summer! Time has unforgivingly ticked away as I’ve neglected writing, and I enjoyed every tick of it. Allow me to catch you up on the bulk of what’s happened.
We kicked off our summer at my parents’ house, where Calvin helped my dad (“Gramps” to the kids) with all the cooking on his new griddle. Great job, guys!
Tristan and Calvin spent two amazing weeks with Grandi and Gramps. The first week culminated with several hot air balloons landing on my parents’ property. Calvin and Tristan ran to help the fifth balloonist as he descended, since his support team wasn’t there yet. He happened to land with the balloon falling right above his burners and was stuck holding his balloon off of them until Calvin tunneled a way under the fabric to take his place. The pilot, Tristan, and Gramps then pulled the balloon to safety on the ground. Whew!
Meanwhile, back at boat-building headquarters, Nick and I snagged his mom to help us roll fiberglass + carbon fiber rope to reinforce the bulkheads in high-load areas. I asked her, “Having fun yet?” and she replied with raised eyebrows, “I’m not sure!”
In the second week at the grandparents’ house, Tristan and Calvin took a drone-flying class. They already had some experience flying drones, but it was their first time to try it with FPV (first-person view) goggles. Since returning home, they’ve discovered how much fun it is to fly through all the bulkhead openings. (Check out the video at the bottom of this blog post to know what it’s like.)
Nick and I were glad to have the boys back so they could help us roll more fiberglass rope.
In late June, Tristan sailed in Austin’s Sunfish race for the Youth North American Championship. It was his first time to ever sail in a lake with its own challenges of wind (or lack thereof), currents, and race rules. He learned a lot and had a total blast with all the super nice competitors. As for Calvin . . . well, he found other fun things to do in between watching Tristan from the support boat:
Back in business after the regatta, we continued rolling rope, reinforcing perimeters of the bulkheads. We’ve definitely made use of all of our clamps!
Next up, we started working on the sole web, which is the support under each hull’s floor. The pieces are first glued in place. Then each joint is coved with microballoon-enhanced epoxy and taped (covered) with two overlapping layers of fiberglass.
We then installed bulkheads #2, situated near the front of each hull.
Nick spent up to two days cutting out and labeling all the pieces of fiberglass, carbon fiber, and peel ply that we’d need for reinforcing the next bulkhead. With all the prep work done, the actual epoxying took less than three hours. Per the drawings, some areas had to have up to six layers of reinforcement! After it cured, we flipped the bulkhead and reinforced the other side.
We used our scaffolding with pulleys to erect all the unwieldy bulkheads.
Finally, we installed the last of the big bulkheads. It bridges across both hulls and helps define the rear cockpit.
Peel ply is temporarily applied over our wetted-out carbon fiber and/or fiberglass, which soaks up the excess epoxy, cutting down on weight and leaving a smooth surface.
While waiting for delivery of tools needed for another big step (the bridge deck installation), we moved on to fiberglassing the bow’s watertight compartments. How do we build a watertight compartment where all the parts are glued and taped, inside and out, when you no longer have access to the inside? Welcome to the “floating fiberglass,” made by fiberglassing against the temporarily plastic-covered bulkhead that hasn’t been glued in yet. Confused? The pic might help:
You can watch the video below to help you understand a bit of the bow-building process. It involved a broomstick and Tristan’s long arms.
And here’s the finished, watertight bowels of the bow, hopefully to stay that way:
