Didi 950 Australia Project Update

Yesterday I wrote about the Didi 950 of Mike Vermeersch in Ohio, today is the turn for the parallel Didi 950 project of Fred Grimminck in Australia.

Fred is building his lifting keel version from scratch, using plans and offsets. He has been progressing very quickly and should be launching within a few months. His boat is destined for fast cruising rather than racing, so he is fitting her out for comfort rather than attempting to get close to class weight.

The lifting keel foil and bulb use similar details to the fixed keel except that it has no flare and root plate at the top and extends through a steel casing into the hull, where it bolts down onto the top flange of the casing. This is right where the engine is in the fixed keel version, so Fred's motor moves to under the companion ladder and is fitted with a saildrive instead of a shaft with stern tube.

Fred has made some changes from the design, so these photos show some differences from my drawings. Among the changes are encasing the lifting keel casing and mechanism all the way up to the deck and swapping the layout from aft heads and forward sleeping cabin to forward heads and additional aft sleeping cabin.


Casing for lifting keel being installed. Galley locker will surround it.
 

Water ballast tanks and double quarter berth on port side.

Galley.

Port water ballast tanks and double quarter berth, looking through into lazarette.

Navigation station.

Looking from nav station, through saloon into forecabin, in this case with forward heads.

Companion ladder to cockpit. The motor is behind the ladder.

Cockpit and cabin.

Deck and cabin nearing completion.

Casting half of the lead ballast bulb.

The next update on Fred's Didi 950 will likely be when he launches her.

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Didi 950 Keel Build by Howdy Bailey

Howdy Bailey Yacht Services in Norfolk, Virginia, is building the keel for the Didi 950 project in Ohio. This one has a fixed keel that is supported by a steel box on the inside of the hull and which is bolted to the grid structure. The box also forms the engine beds, to concentrate these major weights in a tight area for low pitching characteristics in lumpy water.

Howdy and his staff are doing a masterful job of building this keel, which is assembled over a rigid skeleton of schedule pipes between end plates. The side plates are wrapped over the skeleton and plug welded.

One of Howdy's staff welding the keel structure.

Completed keel skeleton with pre-formed side plates awaiting fitting.

Same stage, looking at the top plate.

The tubular internal skeleton, instead of transverse plate spacers, has multiple benefits. The pipes make the skeleton very rigid to resist twisting when fitting the side plates, they have soft surfaces to minimise hard spots that can distort the side plates, they present broad surfaces for plug welding the side plates and they serve as efficient heat sinks to draw heat away from the plug welds, minimising heat distortion.

The keel bolts bear on the keel box inside the hull, sandwiching the hull skin between the the two. Howdy Bailey Yacht Services fabricated the box as well, then shipped it to the builder. He has test-fitted the Beta 15hp motor on the beds ahead of installing the box into the boat. The following photos show the box with engine standing on the integral engine beds.

Didi 950 keel support box front view.

Beta 15 being test-fitted on the engine beds.

Aft view. The holes are for shaft, exhaust and ventilation.

Finding a suitably qualified engineering company to make the keel is often a worry for people considering building an offshore boat. Howdy and his staff have the experience and are available for this work.

To see more of our designs, visit our website at http://dixdesign.com/.