Hello!
What a wonderful summer it is outside. We just celebrated the summer solstice and nature is in a youthful bloom. It’d be perfect for a day two on the sea, sailing!
To get to the sea, we need to start ticking thigs off our to-do list. School is done, so there is potential for vacant weekends or weekdays.
We started off by transporting the boat back to where it was created: the garage. It was a bit sad seeing Kvark back home, since it was such an effort getting it out of home. Nevertheless, infrastructure is much better at the garage, electricity, large hardware stores, tools and whatnot.
So, we have decided:
1) To antifoul. That is simply to paint everything below the waterline with a paint uncomfortable to marine-life. This requies subtasks:
1.1) Wash and scrub the waterline of dirt
1.2) Sand
1.3) Paint with epoxy primer
1.4) Paint with antifoul
2) We have decided to add railings to the fore deck since it is uncomfortable to maneuver on deck otherwise. Especially for guests. We have the steel. The subtasks are:
2.1) Fix welder (one of two windings is toast)
2.2) Build frames
2.3) Fix frames
3) Add ventilation to cabin hatch. Ventilation is really poor at the moment, nonexistent to be precise. So we are going to add a simple grill to the cabin hatch. This way we avoid cutting a hole into the hull. No significant subtasking here.
4) Attend to the sails. The main problem here is that we still have not have Kvark on water with proper, custom made sails. Thus we have yet to discover optimal performance metrics. We are trying to our best to get this solved.
5) Touch up the varnish here and there. Subtasks:
5.1) Sand
5.2) Varnish
And.. here is some eye candy:
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- Kvark and the crane equipped lorry. We managed the loading just before hail and thunder.
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- And we arrived at the garage just after the hail and thunder finished. What luck! And the boat was still on the lorry.
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- We had to climb one steep hill. You can see that the straps have held Kvark back, they are tilted diagonally to the right. Good straps.
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- There is Kvark, back home again!
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- On close inspection, I discovered a interesting wear line on one of the rudder pins. The three pins are not in perfect alignment. Here we see that the pin-receiving hole would want to go more towars the boat. I think the easiest fix is to enalrge the receiving hole. Also, the receiving hole had no wear on it at all. This means that the pin is of a different hardness. This can perhaps be attributed to welding temper: the pin is TIG welded to the sheet metal seen on the picture, right at the junction of the sheet and pin. This place is softer due to weld heat and would thus yield to the same but untreated steel. Or should the weld be harder than the base metal? I don’t know. Just my thoughts.
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- The fore deck hatch is showing signs of deterioration. This is probably due to the same effect that cracked our polycarbonate windows: the polymerization reaction causes expansion of the silicone. Thus, the hatch should not have been tightened as hard as it was.
So, next post will hopefully be soon and document our progress towards the ultimate goal: the sea.
