Come together

The beams weighed about 500 kilos each, but all the lifting was done by 4 manpower, jacks, comalongs rope and peel ply.
-Peel ply?
-Yes, it is surprisingly strong and stretched less than the rope

Although a tight fit it was easy enough to slide the beams into the lee hull.

Th difficult part was slipping the beams into the slots of the windward hull. Doing it the other way round was not an option due to the amount of reinforcing around the lee hull beam slot and UHMWPE mast bearings which were already installed.

We got the further beam slotting in easily enough, but know amount of pulling with cum-alongs and altering the 'horizontality' of the hulls would get the closer beam to go all the way. Eventually we had to cut out the bit of the ww hull above the beam slot, shave things a bit, and slide then slide the beams in all the way.
This gave us the opportunity to really glue the near beam to the hull.  Pic was taken before reinstalling the hull piece over the beam

The move

At last, all the permits for moving two 'Excepcional' loads.

About 3 hours two move in 5 stages to the flatbed at the roadside craning over trees, wires and a field. Did I mention we managed to snag an electric cable and almost deprived a villa of electricity?

The lee hull stuck out 7 metres from the back of the not 'Excepcional' enough lowed truck, along with the two wing masts, and these  proceeded first at speeds up to 60 km/hr with me driving behind nervously. Then an hour to unload at the boatyard, so too late for a second load the same day.

Same procedure the second day but slightly more difficult to get the windward hull/ pod to the roadside, and also to tie securely to the flatbed. I asked the driver to go a bit slower this time partly because the width meant it took up a bit of the other side of the road, but mainly because I would be driving nervously behind.....

2012 Update

Lee Hull painted a bit

WW hull shell semi complete, working on wing masts

Wing masts coated with twee carbon fibre twill just for looks (Ed's idea). We are ready to put the pieces together, so maybe move to somewhere closer to the water in the New Year, as she will become too wide to take to the roads once put together.

The discovery of Luca Antara

Supposedly, the Dutch, ‘first discovered’ Australia in 1606. However, there may have been an earlier Portuguese exploration of the Tiwi Islands (Melville and Bathurst) in northern Australia around 1600. A 1602 map, by Emanuel Godinho de Eredia, then a leading cartographer, probably depicts these islands, then known as 'Luca Antara'.

Erédia, Manuel Godinho de (1563 - 1623)

ERÉDIA, MANUEL GODINHO DE (1563-1623), Malay-Portuguese author, was born in Malacca, on the Malayan Peninsula, on his father's side of Aragonese descent, while his mother was a Macassarese of good family, according to his own account a princess. He was educated at Malacca and at the Jesuit seminary at Goa, and soon after leaving there in 1580 conceived the design of finding the Isles of Gold which figured prominently in Malayan legend. In Erédia's conception they lay approximately in the position of north-west Australia. It is just possible that Australia may have been sighted in 1521 by Cristovão da Mendonça, who led one of several Portuguese expeditions in search of the islands about that time, for it is difficult to explain the remarkable series of 'Dieppe maps' without assuming some Portuguese knowledge of the continent. Erédia, however, based himself essentially on Ptolemy, Polo, and Ludovico di Varthema, and on reports of contemporary Malay voyages, accidental and deliberate, to the south-east of Timor. Armed with this documentation, he secured in 1594 a commission from Philip I of Portugal as Descobridor e Adelantado da Nova India Meridional; this title later misled Henry Major into acclaiming him as the actual first discoverer of Australia, though Erédia clearly shows that it was a rank and he never made the claim himself. By 1602 the viceroy, Aires de Saldanha, had appointed ships and men for the project, but local wars intervened and Erédia was called upon to play his part as a soldier and military engineer. The Portuguese dominion in the East sank into decrepitude, and in his last years Erédia was reduced to endless memorializing to unsympathetic officials.
The main source for Erédia's life and views is his own Declaracam de Malaca e da India Meridional com Cathay existing in his own manuscript at Brussels and published there by L. Janssens in 1882. Erédia was a good surveyor and cartographer and an excellent observer, and his work retains its importance as one of the best early accounts of the Malay peninsula, as well as its significance in the proto-history of Australian discovery. Although nothing came of his project, it seems probable that, buried in much fantasy, there is a core of genuine evidence as to Malay knowledge of Australia, or at least of Australian waters.

It seemed easier to do it this way

Only 5 months since the last post, getting better at this...The rainy winterish season slowed down the work a bit. We had hoped to work inside on the wing masts but the designer was dilatory so we made the drum part of the kick up rudder system.

When the weather got better we turned the upside down ww hull on it's side to do the cabin pod floor. It seemed the easiest way to keep the floor flat and also be able to glass the underside without having to do it from underneath.

Then we completed turning it the right way up nervously and carefully.

And started to shape the cabin sides.

We were busy

Not really an excuse for a year between posts but priorities - construction followed by thirst quenching drinks has not left the mind in any state for blogging. O.K. Maybe they are not really thirst quenching......

I wanted to get pictures of the hull being turned but Ray did not have the patience to wait until I got back from work. Luckily he did not damage it in the absense of my expert supervision.........

After turning the lee hull over we put in permanent bulkheads and glassed them.

The rainy season arrived so time to move inside and make the beams. These proved a lot more time consuming than expected especially laminating over 90 layers of carbon

and glass for the triangular carbon rods in the corners. Cutting the triangle shapes could only be done a millimetre or so at a time.

At this point Ray started to get rashes around his wrists and a swollen eye. We figured the rashes might be due to direct contact with epoxy but he swore he didn't rub his eyes so maybe the fumes from curing? Anyway, he now had to take more precautions and generally avoid epoxy work for a while.

Weather cleared up in March so it was back to outside work with the lid being put on the lee hull mostly by Ed due to Ray's allergy, while Ray worked mainly at planking the windward hull which went much quicker now that they were practised at doing this stuff.

It was now time to move the lee hull because there was not enough space to turn over the windward hull.

Hence the picture of a crane lifting the lee hull into the adjacent field. The crane logged the weight at 1750 kg. Reckon the hull is pretty rigid as there was nary a squeak or creak as she was raised. Rob's estimate for foam was 1300 kg so cedar is pretty close considering we put in so much extra strengthening outside and inside the hull at the 'keel' and used plywood bulkheads. Definitely a 'no brainer'.



I feel like a major step has been made. It is difficult to access the place with a large crane and we had been contemplating a variety of complex alternatives, so it was a relief to see the operation go smoothly. Even though logic told me the strapping was plenty strong enough for a 1.75 ton load, the mind was not quite accepting it when the load was 15 metres in the air......

Flipped

Ray's back, just. Apparently the first part of the trip to Bermuda was particularly tedious and they seriously considered turning back. The rest of the trip via the Azores was made slowly in light winds until they reached Cape St. Vincent where they met the Barlavento wind. Although it is restricted to the west part of the Algarve, which is known as the 'Barlavento Coast', it blows predictably out of the north west most days in the summer at up to 30 knots.

Just googled translated 'Barlavento' ~

noun	luff weather side windward side
adjective	exposed to the wind weather windward

BTW the Eastern part of the Algarve is known as the 'Sotavento' (leeward) coast.

Work on the boat resumed.....

After putting the metre wide carbon wraps around the hull exterior at the mast positions and fairing some more, the hull was flipped. The dark patch near the 'wheels' shows where one of the carbon wraps is.

Restart and Recap

Looking back, I figured the first few blog entries were really more about me than the boat. So, I'm going to start again and see if I can focus more on what the blog is supposed to be about. 


Rob Denney at www.harryproa.com designed this 20 metre sailing proa. The design called for the shell to be made of 20 mm foam sheathed with glass/epoxy or 15 mm cedar sheathed in glass/epoxy. In theory, foam hulls should be substantially lighter at 0.08 sg than western Red Cedar at about 0.32 sg; however, it's not as simple as that. Foam absorbs far more resin (unnecessarily, as it does not improve strength) and resin weighs in at around 1.0 sg, almost the same as water. And the glass7epoxy sheathing itself takes up more than half the total weight anyway. Rob reckoned it was a 'no brainer' for a cruising boat, so I went for cedar. He figured the shell would weigh 1300 kg if made of foam. It will be interesting to see what it is when a crane lifts it.


Wood and fiberglass materials were purchased for the lee hull and arrived in February after Ray confirmed he would be coming back from the States. 

Which he did in March, and decided that he would rather do the lee hull in one piece upside down than 2 sides laid flat and then glued together. There's a pro and con to this idea. Pro, the 'keel' join is pre-glued together and all sheathing crosses over the 'keel' join making it inherently stronger. Con, although the inside can  similarly be done it is a much more restricted space especially at the ends.

Being a speedy person he (with the help of Dave and Ed) had the cedar hull completed in a couple of months. This included making a cement base and strongback, then making 19 stations upside down from the half stations done by Pym, and then gluing 15 mm western red cedar (No2s and better).

2 weeks later they had sheathed the hull on the outside with 350 gsm biaxial 45° glass and epoxy. After sanding and fairing for a couple of weeks, Ray headed back to South Carolina to get his boat and bring it back over the pond before the hurricane season.
Behind is the workshop which is large enough inside to do the beams and make parts, but the hulls and masts have to be done outside in 'clement' weather.......which we tend to have a lot of in the Algarve.