KVARK – the homebuilt microcruiser | Kvark is a homemade plywood boat to cross the Atlantic in 2018-2019

Rigging, pt. 4

Posted on January 31, 2015 by Uku

Hello!

I have now three times re-tied the blue plastic sheet covering our boat. That is a dry-land warning that all that can come loose – will come loose. Other than that – the sails seem to finally be in the making. Also, as the title of the post says, santa came late and brought some stuff:

The blocks are by an Italian company called “Osculati” for 10 mm rope, turnbuckles are 8 mm (with interesting and much needed swivel ends for fitting to our chainplates), 125 mm cleats and a large cleat/bollard for the anchor and mooring.

There will be more! A crucial part of the hardware is dependent on sail design, which is still “floating”, as the electrical engineer would say. It will be grounded.

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Winter storage

Posted on December 27, 2014 by Uku

Happy holidays!

It has been long since the last post. Unfortunately, not much has changed. Except for adding rudder hinges and painting the interior of the boat, installing the mast step and a few more little things. In general, the masterplan is to buy all the rigging hardware and finish trimming the sails in the coming months. Aiming at a 2015. summer launch.

Meanwhile, Rod Cahill from Australia sent me a small gallery of his Fafnir and allowed to post the pictures here. Thanks Rod! It is somewhat elongated, having three cabin windows on the sides. Enjoy the pictures:

: This is our Fafnir, now officially waiting springtime under a snowcover.

: As you can see – a sharp bow. I’ve yet to see a finished Fafnir with a flat bow 🙂

: A very interesting and useful motor mount.

: Looking quite similar to some of our shots.

: Whoever built this version of Fafnir has done it the way it should be, inside out. Unlike us of course, we tried to build all at once.

The next post will be about unboxing hardware.

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Rigging, pt. 3

Posted on August 21, 2014 by Uku

Hello!

Autumn is approaching and so is the deadline of our occupation of the building space we have been stationed in for 3 years. So there is now an outside pressure to getting the boat to water soon. I finished constructing the boom gooseneck. To my surprise, I could pull 4,8 mm stainless rivets by hand with my Stanley rivet gun, albeit palms received pain. Roughly 2/5 of the boat has been painted with an oil based enamel, white, called Pentaprim. Stinks well and a respirator is needed. I used a larger 10 cmm wide brush to apply the paint. Leaves a good cover. I wont go for a second layer. Right, the sails are in the making and after painting the inside, rest of the rigging can be fastened. Also, the companionway is finished. Pictures:

: The inside of the boat before painting. I spent a few days introducing Dremel to the dark and hidden corners of the boat, removing sharp or loose fiberglass. I intended to add more fillets to fine tune the looks of the inside, but then I recollected that the qualityof the surface texture is of infinite limits and decided to go for painting. This is a sharp reminder that fine tuning s-h-o-u-l-d be done when epoxy is still malleable.

: Putting the paint on was rewarding.

: Looking fore.

: I applied a generous coat of paint with a large, soft brush. I thus wont go for a second cover.

: The paint – an oil based enamel (alkyde) called Pentaprim. For interior and exterior use.

: I once ordered some extra U shackles and now made deck fastenings out of them. The metal plate is a coming fastening. I cut the ends of the shackles and put those trough the plate so I could weld the ends from below. It is a ton stronger that way.

: Working on the gooseneck. The swiwel is held together by a M 12 AISI 316 bolt.

: Making the mast side clamp proved fun. Here I pre-drilled rivet holes. Five rivets in each face.

: Then I needed to cut off some sail guide.

: The tool of dreams came to aid. A carbide tipped saw blade fixed to the angle grinder. It took off the sail guide as if it was hot butter.

: I held the mast clamp down with a .. clamp.

: And… it worked! AISI 316 rivets pulled well, finished off with a loud bang.

: I must have eaten too much porridge in the morning. The second pair of forceps I snapped. Tried to bite trough the rivets’ pulling pin.

: Then the tricky part – cutting the right curves into the gooseneck fittings.

: But it all worked out well. I made about 4-5 cardboard templates.

: And a copy-paste to give the idea of what is about to happen.

: Welding! This is why I riveted the base plate into place before welding. Namely – heat distortion. Stainless steels bend like the hunchback of Notre-Dame. The aluminum of the mast spreads the heat load. Furethermore, my arc welder would have otherwise burned trough the thin 2 mm base metal. The other two parts are 4 mm thick.

: And voila!

: I need to make on U piece longer, the boom can otherwise rotate only about 45 degrees relative to the mast. But fortunately that will not take more than a few hours.

: Mast and boom.

: The companionway is all good now.

: Finished off with le Tonikois nr. 1 marine varnish. I will write about the application in a separate page. All I say is – not as simple as it seemed at first.