Build It, Sail It, The Ultimate Adventure - The SV Tapatya Story
It Started With A Crate
Those of you familiar with the Miss Molly adventures will remember that Karin and I had rebuilt our first junk rigged sailboat, Miss Molly, and sailed her from Vancouver, Canada down to the wonderful Sea of Cortez. We’d headed back to Karin’s home in Germany for the birth of our first child, Elizabeth, and returned to Mexico and Miss Molly for more cruising delights, this time with a crew of three. To keep a long story short, unfortunately, there were a number of issues affecting our future with the ferrocement-hulled Miss Molly; I had serious concerns about the structural integrity of the hull; like so many people, our finances were seriously limited - I was jobbing, renovating apartments in Germany, which was far from being a big earner, and the marina bills kept coming; and Karin’s family were putting pressure on her to take on a dilapidated house that her uncle was living in and whose ownership was totally unclear. We made the heart-wrenching decision to head out to Mexico one more time, scrap Miss Molly and put anything that might be considered useful into a crate and ship it back to Germany.
With our now two kids (Hazel had arrived!) staying at their grandparents for a fortnight, Karin and I arrived in San Carlos and began to put our plans into action. We’d informed the marina of our intentions and they had been very helpful, suggesting that the bare hull could be taken out and sunk as part of a project to create an artificial reef; something that we felt would be a suitable final resting place for her. We stripped everything out of the boat; I built a plywood crate from various parts of the inner furniture; it was sat on a couple of pallets to make it possible for a forklift to move it when the time came. I also bought a nice sheet of 3/4” ply for the top of the crate to make it all very solid.
With our now two kids (Hazel had arrived!) staying at their grandparents for a fortnight, Karin and I arrived in San Carlos and began to put our plans into action. We’d informed the marina of our intentions and they had been very helpful, suggesting that the bare hull could be taken out and sunk as part of a project to create an artificial reef; something that we felt would be a suitable final resting place for her. We stripped everything out of the boat; I built a plywood crate from various parts of the inner furniture; it was sat on a couple of pallets to make it possible for a forklift to move it when the time came. I also bought a nice sheet of 3/4” ply for the top of the crate to make it all very solid.
Miss Molly hauling out in Mexico
The old Volvo Penta MD1 engine was quite a strain to lift out, but I separated it from the gearbox and, using the halyard, Karin hauled it up, with me underneath lifting for all I was worth. When that was safely in the crate, I took a bowsaw to Miss Molly’s mast and felled it neatly between the surrounding boats to get at the masthead fitting and VHF antenna. Amongst other goodies, the finished packed crate contained the engine and gearbox, our lovely Dickinson Bristol stove, all of the bronze opening ports, the antique bronze beer pumps and handles that were used as water pumps, her switches, battery charger and VHF, the heavy duty, bronze bow roller, stanchions, dinghy and life raft, charts, books, etc, and sadly, a can of West System epoxy.
The trusty Dickinson
I’d spent a considerable amount of time and effort in Germany trying to find a company that would ship a crate as part of a container from Mexico back to Hamburg. That was all finally arranged; the crate would be picked up in San Carlos and driven across Mexico to Veracruz on the east coast and from there, shipped on. Unfortunately, being completely new to the rather dark art of international consolidated container shipping, I hadn’t appreciated the importance of affixing a sign on the crate indicating which way up it should be loaded - I naively thought it was obvious that the pallet should be at the bottom!
Some weeks later, we got the notice that our crate had arrived in Hamburg and that we could pick it up. We drove up to the harbour with two cars and a small trailer, the crate was loaded onto the trailer with a forklift and the poor trailer nearly folded under the weight of the thing. We drove to a spot out of the way, opened the crate and started unloading bits into the two cars to ease the massive overloading on the trailer, and at that point I learnt that crates are packed into consolidated containers any way they’ll fit, especially if the newbie who built the crate omitted the ‘This Way Up’ label. The crate had clearly been stood on its side, the Volvo Penta engine and gearbox had crushed the can of West System epoxy, and this had run out, covering most of the other contents of the crate in a horribly sticky coating of uncured resin. Most of the books were unsalvageable and a lot of the hardware would require copious application of solvent to get the sticky mess off of it! But, we got it home.
Clearly, the shipping of all this old tat to our new and largely derelict home in rural northern Germany had a purpose. I had the crazy dream to build our next cruising sailboat myself and aimed to reuse as much of Miss Molly as possible in the new boat, making her a sort of reincarnation, indeed, of Miss Molly. As no doubt, at the very least, the vast majority of you are aware, Jay Bedford’s sailing dory plans are shown at the back of the wonderful ‘Voyaging On A Small income’, and I’d read the book and perused them there and felt they represented a boat that was both a capable cruising vessel and easy enough for a handyperson such as myself to build. Despite the fact that we were pumping just about every penny we earnt into the renovations of the house that we had somehow ended up buying from Karin’s family, for my 40th birthday, Karin very kindly allowed me to purchase a set of full plans for the 36’ and 37.6’ versions of Mr Benford’s sailing dories.
And that was as far as it went for quite a while.
We had no money. Even the house renovations had to stop from time to time as we waited to earn enough to purchase the next materials. The kids named me ‘Bish Daddy’ because I kept ‘bishing’ walls, chimneys and new doorways out of the old place as the remodelling progressed.
An old mate of mine had persuaded me to return to teaching and we had one year out in Spain as I worked at a chaotically-run private school out there. The school eventually closed, we returned to Germany and I started working as a freelance language teacher, riding my motorbike from establishment to establishment and cramming as many teaching hours as humanly possible into a working week. At one point, I was topping 50 lesson hours a week! The head of English at the local University (Roger) persuaded me I needed to get a Masters degree to get out of the rat- race of freelancing and to get a proper job; I signed on at the OU and three years and a scary amount of money later, I had a Masters in applied linguistics. True to Roger’s prediction, even before I had completely finished the studies, a job ad came up at a Uni (about 90 minutes commute away); it fitted me to a T; I, rather arrogantly, knew I’d get it!
Now, as you are no doubt aware, time was ticking away and progress on the boat building front was non-existent. However, the dream had not died. Some friends were keen canoeists and the local rivers of the Lüneburger Heide are ideal for canoe expeditions. I decided to begin developing my boat building skills with a stitch and glue, plywood, Selway Fisher canoe. We now had 3 kids; Kerry had joined us; and the girls were getting older. I’d bought Elizabeth an old (fifth hand?), East German built Optimist and she’d started sailing in a kids sailing group every Sunday morning on the river Elbe. Hazel was now old enough to join the sailing group and needed a boat. I took patterns by laying sheets of left-over wallpaper on the Optimist we had and we cut plywood to shape to build Hazel’s Optimist. I got a sail on eBay and away she went.
Some weeks later, we got the notice that our crate had arrived in Hamburg and that we could pick it up. We drove up to the harbour with two cars and a small trailer, the crate was loaded onto the trailer with a forklift and the poor trailer nearly folded under the weight of the thing. We drove to a spot out of the way, opened the crate and started unloading bits into the two cars to ease the massive overloading on the trailer, and at that point I learnt that crates are packed into consolidated containers any way they’ll fit, especially if the newbie who built the crate omitted the ‘This Way Up’ label. The crate had clearly been stood on its side, the Volvo Penta engine and gearbox had crushed the can of West System epoxy, and this had run out, covering most of the other contents of the crate in a horribly sticky coating of uncured resin. Most of the books were unsalvageable and a lot of the hardware would require copious application of solvent to get the sticky mess off of it! But, we got it home.
Clearly, the shipping of all this old tat to our new and largely derelict home in rural northern Germany had a purpose. I had the crazy dream to build our next cruising sailboat myself and aimed to reuse as much of Miss Molly as possible in the new boat, making her a sort of reincarnation, indeed, of Miss Molly. As no doubt, at the very least, the vast majority of you are aware, Jay Bedford’s sailing dory plans are shown at the back of the wonderful ‘Voyaging On A Small income’, and I’d read the book and perused them there and felt they represented a boat that was both a capable cruising vessel and easy enough for a handyperson such as myself to build. Despite the fact that we were pumping just about every penny we earnt into the renovations of the house that we had somehow ended up buying from Karin’s family, for my 40th birthday, Karin very kindly allowed me to purchase a set of full plans for the 36’ and 37.6’ versions of Mr Benford’s sailing dories.
And that was as far as it went for quite a while.
We had no money. Even the house renovations had to stop from time to time as we waited to earn enough to purchase the next materials. The kids named me ‘Bish Daddy’ because I kept ‘bishing’ walls, chimneys and new doorways out of the old place as the remodelling progressed.
An old mate of mine had persuaded me to return to teaching and we had one year out in Spain as I worked at a chaotically-run private school out there. The school eventually closed, we returned to Germany and I started working as a freelance language teacher, riding my motorbike from establishment to establishment and cramming as many teaching hours as humanly possible into a working week. At one point, I was topping 50 lesson hours a week! The head of English at the local University (Roger) persuaded me I needed to get a Masters degree to get out of the rat- race of freelancing and to get a proper job; I signed on at the OU and three years and a scary amount of money later, I had a Masters in applied linguistics. True to Roger’s prediction, even before I had completely finished the studies, a job ad came up at a Uni (about 90 minutes commute away); it fitted me to a T; I, rather arrogantly, knew I’d get it!
Now, as you are no doubt aware, time was ticking away and progress on the boat building front was non-existent. However, the dream had not died. Some friends were keen canoeists and the local rivers of the Lüneburger Heide are ideal for canoe expeditions. I decided to begin developing my boat building skills with a stitch and glue, plywood, Selway Fisher canoe. We now had 3 kids; Kerry had joined us; and the girls were getting older. I’d bought Elizabeth an old (fifth hand?), East German built Optimist and she’d started sailing in a kids sailing group every Sunday morning on the river Elbe. Hazel was now old enough to join the sailing group and needed a boat. I took patterns by laying sheets of left-over wallpaper on the Optimist we had and we cut plywood to shape to build Hazel’s Optimist. I got a sail on eBay and away she went.
Hazel's Optimist
Years ago, back in California, I’d told my mate Scott about my ideas to build our next boat. He suggested honing my skills by building a San Francisco Bay Pelican first. I decided he was right and that would be my next build. The Pelican is a 12ft day sailer with lug rig and a small foresail; some are even junk rigged. It proved to be ideal preparation and I learnt a lot about techniques and locally available materials in that build. She’s a great little boat and sails really well!
Building the Pelican - Kerry hard at work!
Time ticked on, the kids grew, and it became clear that by the time I’d finished building the new boat, the kids would be all grown up and off doing their own thing. We didn’t need a 36ft boat. I contacted Mr Benford and he kindly agreed, for a small fee, to allow me to return the 36 and 37.6ft plans to him and to get a set of plans for the 31.8 footer instead. In April 2017, I began clearing a massive pile of rubble (the aforementioned walls, chimneys and doorways!) from behind an old Nissen hut that stands in our garden in order to extend it to be able to build my new boat in (I had already renovated the Nissen hut in question, turning it into a square-sided, wood clad, much more agreeable-to-the-eye construction, however, it still has the original steel arches that form its structure).
The much more agreeable-to-the-eye Nissen hut
One advantage of all of the intervening years was that I’d been able to do an absolute shed-load of research into the building of Benford dories; if it’s on the internet, I’ve read it, along with Pete Hill’s book on building Badger and many other books on home boatbuilding. One build that particularly inspired me was Greg Krivonak’s build of the Benford dory ‘Willow’. What Greg did, that I believe to be unique at that time, was to build his dory using fixed frames and not the temporary frames that are usual in this type of construction. Sadly (to my knowledge) he only got as far as posting the build as far as setting up the frames on his blog (and that blog is no longer online, I believe), but it was enough for me to see the advantages of this approach to the construction and to know that I would do the same.
In late August 2017, once the shed extension was complete, I bought 12 sheets of 1/2” exterior grade pine ply, laid them out on the shed floor and started lofting the lines. The build had finally begun!
In late August 2017, once the shed extension was complete, I bought 12 sheets of 1/2” exterior grade pine ply, laid them out on the shed floor and started lofting the lines. The build had finally begun!
Working from the lofting lines
Build It, Sail It, The Ultimate Adventure - The SV Tapatya Story (part two)
Build it, sail it, the ultimate adventure. Well, I guess that pretty much sums up the motivation behind my decision to build a new cruising sail boat. Before I’d begun my preparations, I’d never built a boat before; I was a capable, jack-of-all-trades, craftsman, but I’d always felt boatbuilding to be a higher level of artistry, dealing, as it does, with curved surfaces, ever changing geometries and a general lack of things right-angular. To build a live-aboard cruising sail boat that would allow us to return to a life afloat and to explore more of our wonderful, watery world seemed to me a truly exciting challenge.
In part one of this story, I’d scrapped our previous junk rigged sail boat and shipped the conceivably useful parts home; worked on my boat building skills by building a mini-flotilla of small boats; chosen the boat I intended to build for our next cruising vessel ( a Benford 31.8 dory with a junk schooner rig); extended a shed in our back garden so my intended vessel would actually fit in it; and finally started the build by purchasing 12 sheets of 12mm ply, laying them out on the shed floor in preparation for lofting the lines.
But before I progress with the build, perhaps I ought to go back a step and say a few words about one other great inspiration. Back in the mid 1990s, cruising the beautiful waters of British Columbia, we’d had the very good fortune to anchor in a bay off Nanaimo and meet Allen and Sharrie Farrell, and to be invited aboard China Cloud. We chatted about living aboard and the simplicity of a well-found vessel, and indeed, lifestyle, and were quite spellbound by the obviously contented and fulfilled life that Allen and Sharrie were leading. Later, I read the two books about their adventures, ‘Salt On The Wind’ and ‘Sailing Back In Time’, and ever since have been in awe of what they achieved with the simplest of tools and materials; for me, an exemplary lesson and a glaring highlighting of everything that is wrong in contemporary life.
In part one of this story, I’d scrapped our previous junk rigged sail boat and shipped the conceivably useful parts home; worked on my boat building skills by building a mini-flotilla of small boats; chosen the boat I intended to build for our next cruising vessel ( a Benford 31.8 dory with a junk schooner rig); extended a shed in our back garden so my intended vessel would actually fit in it; and finally started the build by purchasing 12 sheets of 12mm ply, laying them out on the shed floor in preparation for lofting the lines.
But before I progress with the build, perhaps I ought to go back a step and say a few words about one other great inspiration. Back in the mid 1990s, cruising the beautiful waters of British Columbia, we’d had the very good fortune to anchor in a bay off Nanaimo and meet Allen and Sharrie Farrell, and to be invited aboard China Cloud. We chatted about living aboard and the simplicity of a well-found vessel, and indeed, lifestyle, and were quite spellbound by the obviously contented and fulfilled life that Allen and Sharrie were leading. Later, I read the two books about their adventures, ‘Salt On The Wind’ and ‘Sailing Back In Time’, and ever since have been in awe of what they achieved with the simplest of tools and materials; for me, an exemplary lesson and a glaring highlighting of everything that is wrong in contemporary life.
There’s never not a good excuse to get a photo of China Cloud in an article!
Back in the here and now that was there and then, in the splendour of my metal-roofed, wood clad ex-nissen hut, I lofted the lines. Having marked out a grid of perpendicular station lines and 3 longitudinal lines (base, waterline, upper) in black marker pen, I made the decision to not include the keel in the lofting for the simple reason that I couldn’t have fit the full-sized boat lofting lines plus the keel on the boards that I had available. Instead, given the athwartship flat-bottomed nature of the dory design, I used the lowest point of the chine curve as the base line and, taking the supplied dimensions from the table of offsets (the single most important sheet of the bundle of 38 or so sheets supplied as the plans), and remembering to subtract hull thickness from those dimensions, constructed the full-sized side elevation from that, tastefully drawn in red marker. I superimposed the half plan view on that in green. Once these were drawn, it was easy to construct the cross-sectional station views, using dimensions obtained from the other two elevations. These were drawn in different colours, one centred on each station line.
I now had the required full-sized views of the boat - a side elevation, a half plan view and cross-section views of the hull at every station. The side elevation clearly showed the curve of the stem, and I used the lofting boards as the base to laminate the stem to its correct curvature.
I now had the required full-sized views of the boat - a side elevation, a half plan view and cross-section views of the hull at every station. The side elevation clearly showed the curve of the stem, and I used the lofting boards as the base to laminate the stem to its correct curvature.
Laminating the stem
Now, I need to diverge a bit here. One of the ideas I had in the early stages of planning this boat build was that I didn’t want to use any new tropical hardwoods in the build. Traditionally, boats were built using the woods available in the area in which they were being built and it seems to me that the comparatively recent trend towards using woods that have been sourced from tropical areas and shipped halfway around the world has its issues. However, I was quite prepared to use recycled woods in the build, and had amassed a reasonable collection of pieces over the decades of preparation leading up to this build. Amongst these was a stack of mahogany tongue and groove boards (about 8cm by 1cm by 3m long) that I had had the good fortune to discover put out for garbage collection one morning as I was walking the kids to the bus stop on their way to school. It took me two trips to and fro to collect them all, but collect them all I did!
Returning to the stem construction, I screwed right-angled steel brackets at regular intervals to the lofting boards along the line of the stem, laid a plastic sheet over the whole thing to prevent the stem from sticking to the lofting boards, and laminated 6 lengths (in two batches of 3) of my lovely reclaimed mahogany boards to those using my entire collection of small clamps (a boat builder can never have enough clamps!) and a wonderful glue I’d discovered called Collano Semparoc - a waterproof, polyurethane foaming glue that is absolutely not the same as Gorilla Glue!
Once these had set off, I removed them from the laminating form set up and fixed them to a douglas fir knee, constructed from three pieces of 9cm by 9cm fence post (dimensions from lofting lines). I then proceeded to laminate a further 4 lengths of wider douglas fir to the aft side of the mahogany stem piece. The resulting stem timber with attached knee felt impressively solid. I was pleased :)
As I mentioned in part one of this epic, I had decided to follow the lead of Greg Krivonak from his build of the Benford 34’ dory “Willow” and build Tapatya with fixed frames at each station (a total of 13 frames plus stem and stern post), as opposed to the temporary frame construction method with which most Benford dories are built. The next job was to construct each of those cross-sectional frame pieces, building as many bulkheads, beams and furniture pieces into them as possible. Here, once again, the lofting lines played an important role, as I was able to draw out the various furnishings, fittings, bulkheads and openings required onto the elevations, and consequently plan the station frames accordingly. The frames themselves were built to accurate size by laying them on the lofting lines at each station.
Returning to the stem construction, I screwed right-angled steel brackets at regular intervals to the lofting boards along the line of the stem, laid a plastic sheet over the whole thing to prevent the stem from sticking to the lofting boards, and laminated 6 lengths (in two batches of 3) of my lovely reclaimed mahogany boards to those using my entire collection of small clamps (a boat builder can never have enough clamps!) and a wonderful glue I’d discovered called Collano Semparoc - a waterproof, polyurethane foaming glue that is absolutely not the same as Gorilla Glue!
Once these had set off, I removed them from the laminating form set up and fixed them to a douglas fir knee, constructed from three pieces of 9cm by 9cm fence post (dimensions from lofting lines). I then proceeded to laminate a further 4 lengths of wider douglas fir to the aft side of the mahogany stem piece. The resulting stem timber with attached knee felt impressively solid. I was pleased :)
As I mentioned in part one of this epic, I had decided to follow the lead of Greg Krivonak from his build of the Benford 34’ dory “Willow” and build Tapatya with fixed frames at each station (a total of 13 frames plus stem and stern post), as opposed to the temporary frame construction method with which most Benford dories are built. The next job was to construct each of those cross-sectional frame pieces, building as many bulkheads, beams and furniture pieces into them as possible. Here, once again, the lofting lines played an important role, as I was able to draw out the various furnishings, fittings, bulkheads and openings required onto the elevations, and consequently plan the station frames accordingly. The frames themselves were built to accurate size by laying them on the lofting lines at each station.
Frame number 2 under construction on the lofting boards
Beginning at the forward end, I built the frame pieces one at a time, using douglas fir for the actual frames and 12mm plywood for any bulkhead pieces. All ply pieces were sealed in a layer of 163g/m² glass cloth in epoxy on each side, deck beams were laminated to the curve of the deck crown from 4 layers of douglas fir on a form cut from a piece of cheap pine, and I even went as far as to fit mahogany trim pieces and posts to the bulkhead openings using my stock of reclaimed wood (I had another stroke of luck when it was decided to replace all of the windows in the building where I worked; all of the old mahogany windows were tossed into a skip outside the front of the building and a considerable amount of the discarded window frame wood found its way into the back of my car and into my wood stocks :)
Deck beam lamination
The marvellously exciting day soon came when I had completed all of the 13 frame pieces. Some of them were quite big, which already hinted at the interior volume that Tapatya was to have. Once more, I laid them onto their respective lofting station and marked them all with centre and waterline lines. The final piece of this stage was to construct the stern post and knee, a fairly simple piece as it is straight with the triangular knee attached to its lower end, and another 2 of the lovely 9 x 9cm douglas fir fence posts were shaped to form this structure.
All of the frames are finished :)
The next step was to build the strongback - a solid, level timber structure on which the frames, stem and sternpost could be set up in preparation for planking the hull. I used 16cm by 6cm douglas fir for this, with the thinking that the lumber could be used in the boat once the strongback was no longer needed. This strongback was marked with a centre line and perpendicular lines at each of the stations, indicating the position where the various frame pieces would be set. And indeed, one by one, the frame pieces were set in position, centred on the centre line and with all of their waterlines on a level (I used a 3 metre spirit level for this), with various ugly pieces of scrap wood screwed to them and the strongback to hold them in position. With all of the 13 frame pieces in place, the stem and stern post were fixed in position. The boat was beginning to take shape!
Setting up the frames on the strongback
Build It, Sail It, The Ultimate Adventure - The SV Tapatya Story (Part Three)
In part two of this story detailing my build of a Jay Benford designed 31.8 ft junk-rigged sailing dory, I’d built and set up cross-sectional frame pieces, along with the stem and stern post, on the strongback; the boat was beginning to take shape. Before setting up each frame section, I’d marked and cut the notches where the chine log and sheer clamp (the longitudinal timbers at the lower chine and sheer of the boat) would locate. It was now time to fit these timbers to complete the skeletal framework of the boat.
Both the sheer clamp and chine log were laminated in position from lengths of 10 cm x 2 cm douglas fir. I actually used 3 metre long tongue and groove floor boards that I bought from the local hardware store, running them through the table saw to remove the tongues and grooves. I cut 8:1 scarf joints where they met end to end, laminating them in two layers and staggering the joints at half board. The only issue I had was that the curve of the hull at the aft end was so great that I couldn’t bend the 2 cm thick pieces to it. I solved this problem by laminating that section up with 4 layers of 1 cm thick boards. Once these were epoxy glued and silicon bronze screwed in place, with all of the frames checked for position, square and plumb, the boat was full sized, albeit somewhat holey!
In part two of this story detailing my build of a Jay Benford designed 31.8 ft junk-rigged sailing dory, I’d built and set up cross-sectional frame pieces, along with the stem and stern post, on the strongback; the boat was beginning to take shape. Before setting up each frame section, I’d marked and cut the notches where the chine log and sheer clamp (the longitudinal timbers at the lower chine and sheer of the boat) would locate. It was now time to fit these timbers to complete the skeletal framework of the boat.
Both the sheer clamp and chine log were laminated in position from lengths of 10 cm x 2 cm douglas fir. I actually used 3 metre long tongue and groove floor boards that I bought from the local hardware store, running them through the table saw to remove the tongues and grooves. I cut 8:1 scarf joints where they met end to end, laminating them in two layers and staggering the joints at half board. The only issue I had was that the curve of the hull at the aft end was so great that I couldn’t bend the 2 cm thick pieces to it. I solved this problem by laminating that section up with 4 layers of 1 cm thick boards. Once these were epoxy glued and silicon bronze screwed in place, with all of the frames checked for position, square and plumb, the boat was full sized, albeit somewhat holey!
Fitting the chine log
The next job was to fit the floor timbers that didn’t form part of the station frames. These timbers would carry the keel and form part of the main mast step, so needed some beef about them. Once again, I used 9 x 9 cm douglas fir fence posts, readily available from the local hardware store, although I spent an inordinate amount of time checking through each piece of their stock of these, picking the straightest grained pieces. These were simply cut to length with the angle of the chine log at that location on each end and then epoxy glued and bronze screwed in position. I halving jointed two fore and aft lengths between the relevant floor timbers to form a heavy-duty frame for the main mast step.
Once all of the timbers were in place, it was time to start the rather tedious, but entirely sensible at this stage, job of cleaning up all of the excess glue around the structure. All of those fiddly little corners were easy to get at at this stage and attempting to clean them up after planking would be twice as tricky.
Once all of the timbers were in place, it was time to start the rather tedious, but entirely sensible at this stage, job of cleaning up all of the excess glue around the structure. All of those fiddly little corners were easy to get at at this stage and attempting to clean them up after planking would be twice as tricky.
Cleaning up prior to fairing
The final job before beginning the planking of the hull was to fair all of this skeletal structure up. Using various spirit levels as straight edges, a power planer and two hand planes, I worked my way around the hull. Fairing a dory hull is easy as longitudinally, everything needs to follow the curve of the chine log and sheer clamp, and vertically, everything needs to be in a straight line. As I progressed, I scribbled highly decorative wavy pencil lines on the areas I’d faired to indicate their completion, until the entire framework was scribbled upon.
Then came a big expense. I ordered and had delivered some 80 odd sheets of 10 mm AW100 pine plywood from the local professional wood yard. I’d already conducted some thorough experiments on this plywood. I’d soaked pieces in a bucket of water for weeks on end, boiled some for several hours and even put several pieces in the dishwasher for a week. None of the test pieces showed any signs of delamination. I’d glued some pieces together with the Collano Semparoc foaming waterproof glue I intended to use (more later) for the gluing up of the planking and subjected those pieces to the same rigorous test regime. My testing also showed this plywood to be a high quality product with lovely straight laminates and an almost complete lack of voids. It was certainly a far superior product to the lauan/meranti (I’ve even seen the same stuff being sold as okume, which it most certainly isn’t!) AW100 plywood being sold by the same lumberyard; a truly dreadful product, full of voids and lumpy laminates of indeterminate woods pressed together and skinned over with the decorative outer plies.
Now, building a boat yourself leads you to need to make a number of quite fundamental decisions. One of these was a simple matter of, perhaps, for want of a better word, ethics; I decided to build Tapatya, as far as I could, out of woods that grew locally; well, in northern Europe at least. Any tropical hardwoods used would have to be either recycled or old stock. This was another reason for choosing to use pine exterior grade ply for the planking material. However, softwood plywoods have a less than lovely habit of checking as they age, small cracks open up in the outer plies that would allow moisture to enter further into the wood. This was something I wanted to avoid, so that in turn led to the easy decision to coat both the inner and outer surfaces of the hull plywood with a layer of glass cloth in epoxy. This would prevent the checking (it has!) and further prevent moisture ingression into the wood.
It was time to start planking the hull. The 31.8 ft Benford dory has a hull thickness of 20 mm on the hull sides and 30 mm on the bottom. Clearly, this would involve two layers of my 10 mm plywood boards on the sides of the hull and three layers on the hull bottom. Again a decision was needed as to whether to scarf joint the butt ends of the boards or simply to butt them together. After extensive research, including studying every Benford dory build on the Internet, and indeed, Pete Hill’s book ‘Building Badger’, along with ‘The Gougeon Brothers On Boat Construction’ and George Buehler’s ‘Buehler’s Backyard Boatbuilding’, I decided to simply butt joint the plywood boards, but make sure that all inner plank joints fell on a frame.
Then came a big expense. I ordered and had delivered some 80 odd sheets of 10 mm AW100 pine plywood from the local professional wood yard. I’d already conducted some thorough experiments on this plywood. I’d soaked pieces in a bucket of water for weeks on end, boiled some for several hours and even put several pieces in the dishwasher for a week. None of the test pieces showed any signs of delamination. I’d glued some pieces together with the Collano Semparoc foaming waterproof glue I intended to use (more later) for the gluing up of the planking and subjected those pieces to the same rigorous test regime. My testing also showed this plywood to be a high quality product with lovely straight laminates and an almost complete lack of voids. It was certainly a far superior product to the lauan/meranti (I’ve even seen the same stuff being sold as okume, which it most certainly isn’t!) AW100 plywood being sold by the same lumberyard; a truly dreadful product, full of voids and lumpy laminates of indeterminate woods pressed together and skinned over with the decorative outer plies.
Now, building a boat yourself leads you to need to make a number of quite fundamental decisions. One of these was a simple matter of, perhaps, for want of a better word, ethics; I decided to build Tapatya, as far as I could, out of woods that grew locally; well, in northern Europe at least. Any tropical hardwoods used would have to be either recycled or old stock. This was another reason for choosing to use pine exterior grade ply for the planking material. However, softwood plywoods have a less than lovely habit of checking as they age, small cracks open up in the outer plies that would allow moisture to enter further into the wood. This was something I wanted to avoid, so that in turn led to the easy decision to coat both the inner and outer surfaces of the hull plywood with a layer of glass cloth in epoxy. This would prevent the checking (it has!) and further prevent moisture ingression into the wood.
It was time to start planking the hull. The 31.8 ft Benford dory has a hull thickness of 20 mm on the hull sides and 30 mm on the bottom. Clearly, this would involve two layers of my 10 mm plywood boards on the sides of the hull and three layers on the hull bottom. Again a decision was needed as to whether to scarf joint the butt ends of the boards or simply to butt them together. After extensive research, including studying every Benford dory build on the Internet, and indeed, Pete Hill’s book ‘Building Badger’, along with ‘The Gougeon Brothers On Boat Construction’ and George Buehler’s ‘Buehler’s Backyard Boatbuilding’, I decided to simply butt joint the plywood boards, but make sure that all inner plank joints fell on a frame.
First boards on the hull bottom
To minimise exposed end grain, I began with a layer of boards on the bottom of the hull. A plywood sheet was laid on the hull and marked to shape with a pencil. I then cut the board to shape, with a good extra oversize to overhang the chine log. The inner side of the board was then glassed in epoxy and cloth and once this had set off sufficiently, the board was glued and nailed to the boat framework. I used thickened epoxy (thickened with microfibres) to glue the boards to the frames, floor timbers and chine log and I nailed them in place with silicon bronze ring nails, one every 20 cm. Butting the next board against the first, backed up by the floor timber underneath, I continued in this fashion until the entire bottom of the boat had a layer of 10 mm plywood covering it.
The next job was to cut and plane the edges of this layer of plywood boards back to being flush with the chine log. Over the course of this build, I purchased a very nice little collection of Bosch 12v cordless tools, and they have performed sterling work ever since. The little circular saw and planer were ideal for this trimming job. (I now have these tools on Tapatya and they are brilliant as ship’s power tools; they need no mains power and the batteries can be charged from the on-board 12 volt system).
As I said earlier, I wanted to minimise the exposed end grain on the ply planking, so the next job was to put a layer of planking on the hull sides. This would naturally cover the end grain on the first layer of bottom planking; the next layer of bottom planking would cover the end grain on that, and so on, leaving only the final layer of bottom planking end grain exposed. I proceeded in the same manner as for the hull bottom, glassing and gluing and nailing the ply boards on until the entire hull had one layer of ply planking on it; then doing a final trim and plane up along the chine. She was now looking like a boat hull :)
The next (2nd) layer of ply boards on the bottom of the hull was easy; they were just plain, untreated ply pieces. I marked and cut them to shape as before, ensuring that the board butt joint fell a third of the way along the previous board (the butt joints of the final layer would fall at two thirds of the first layer, ensuring that all board joints were staggered), then glued and nailed them (bronze ring nails still!) In place.
I’d thought long and hard about my choice of glue for between the ply boards and it seemed to me that a waterproof foaming glue would be ideal for this application. As opposed to thickened epoxy, if there were any voids between the layers of plywood, a foaming glue would expand and fill them. I’d discovered Collano Semparoc and seen it recommended by other quality boat builders and decided to use it for this application. The manufacturers make an applicator nozzle that, basically, lays lines of the glue every centimetre or so. Being a cheapskate, I decided to replicate this glue distribution without the applicator nozzle and just squirt lines of glue out of the bottle at that interval. Once a board was thoroughly covered in this pattern of glue lines, I laid the next layer of board on, slid the new board around a bit to spread the glue and nailed it in place. Once cured, I trimmed up the edge at the chine once more.
The next job was to cut and plane the edges of this layer of plywood boards back to being flush with the chine log. Over the course of this build, I purchased a very nice little collection of Bosch 12v cordless tools, and they have performed sterling work ever since. The little circular saw and planer were ideal for this trimming job. (I now have these tools on Tapatya and they are brilliant as ship’s power tools; they need no mains power and the batteries can be charged from the on-board 12 volt system).
As I said earlier, I wanted to minimise the exposed end grain on the ply planking, so the next job was to put a layer of planking on the hull sides. This would naturally cover the end grain on the first layer of bottom planking; the next layer of bottom planking would cover the end grain on that, and so on, leaving only the final layer of bottom planking end grain exposed. I proceeded in the same manner as for the hull bottom, glassing and gluing and nailing the ply boards on until the entire hull had one layer of ply planking on it; then doing a final trim and plane up along the chine. She was now looking like a boat hull :)
The next (2nd) layer of ply boards on the bottom of the hull was easy; they were just plain, untreated ply pieces. I marked and cut them to shape as before, ensuring that the board butt joint fell a third of the way along the previous board (the butt joints of the final layer would fall at two thirds of the first layer, ensuring that all board joints were staggered), then glued and nailed them (bronze ring nails still!) In place.
I’d thought long and hard about my choice of glue for between the ply boards and it seemed to me that a waterproof foaming glue would be ideal for this application. As opposed to thickened epoxy, if there were any voids between the layers of plywood, a foaming glue would expand and fill them. I’d discovered Collano Semparoc and seen it recommended by other quality boat builders and decided to use it for this application. The manufacturers make an applicator nozzle that, basically, lays lines of the glue every centimetre or so. Being a cheapskate, I decided to replicate this glue distribution without the applicator nozzle and just squirt lines of glue out of the bottle at that interval. Once a board was thoroughly covered in this pattern of glue lines, I laid the next layer of board on, slid the new board around a bit to spread the glue and nailed it in place. Once cured, I trimmed up the edge at the chine once more.
Layer two going on the sides
And so we progressed to the outer layer of the hull boards; the second layer on the hull sides came next and the third layer on the hull bottom last, all glued and bronze ring nailed in place. Once cured, I planed and sanded a pleasing radius on the chine, ran a v-shaped router bit along the outer board butt joints and filled these grooves with epoxy and microfibres, finishing off with a fairing coat of epoxy and microballoons. I then predrilled and drove silicon bronze screws through the ply boards into the stem and stern post, one every 20cm, and epoxy glued and ring nailed a mahogany cap piece down the stem, covering the end grain there. The screw head indentations, along with any nail indentations and any small voids in the chine were also epoxy filled and faired.
Mahogany cap on the stem
After a quick sanding, the upside down hull was now ready to be coated with a layer of glass cloth in epoxy. I gave the entire hull a couple of coats of epoxy resin and then, figuring that the corners would be the area most likely to suffer abrasion, I put a layer of heavy glass tape in epoxy all around the chine and up and down the stem and stern. The wonders of gravity made the bottom of the boat easy to glass, so a layer of 163 g/m² cloth was applied to that, ensuring that it overlapped the glass tape on the chine all round. The cloth was applied by wetting out the hull bottom with epoxy, waiting some 15 minutes until it had gone tacky and then rolling out the cloth onto the flat hull bottom. After a quick smooth out with gloved hands, the cloth was thoroughly wetted out with more epoxy resin using a 10 cm felt roller. This produced a perfect finish with absolutely no bubbles in the cured result.
The hull sides were next, and, in order to minimise joints in the cloth, I rolled the cloth out longitudinally along the hull, using the same application technique, and covering the hull sides with one and a half widths of cloth. Ably assisted in this by my son Kerry, once again the finish was perfect (though I say so myself!). The final job was to apply another layer of heavy tape around the chine and to the stem and stern and the hull was completely sealed :)
The hull sides were next, and, in order to minimise joints in the cloth, I rolled the cloth out longitudinally along the hull, using the same application technique, and covering the hull sides with one and a half widths of cloth. Ably assisted in this by my son Kerry, once again the finish was perfect (though I say so myself!). The final job was to apply another layer of heavy tape around the chine and to the stem and stern and the hull was completely sealed :)
Glassing the bottom
Once fully cured, I now faced the daunting task of pulling the boat out of the shed, rolling it over and then pushing her back into the shed for construction to continue….
