Launching Didi 40cr2 Stargazer

I wrote last year about the Didi 38/40 projects being built by XS Marines in India. The posts are at Didi 26 and 40 Projects in India and Update on Wide Stern Versions of Didi 40 and Didi 40cr .

They built the new wide-stern version of the Didi 40cr, now named the Didi 40cr2, from plywood for a customer. (Sorry, we don't yet have a web page for the new version, that will come soon.) During the build, they took moulds off the hull so that they can build this series of designs in sandwich GRP. They will be able to build the Didi 38, Didi 40 and Didi 40cr from those moulds.

Last week they launched the first boat, named "Stargazer". She is the second Didi 40cr2 to be launched, after "Passion X" in Sydney, Australia.

"Stargazer" being built from wood and plywood.

"Stargazer" covered with the GRP mould.

Didi 40cr2 "Stargazer" about to get wet.

She was launched on Friday, sailed on Saturday and raced (not seriously though) on Sunday. She had no spinnaker, which was to be added to her wardrobe this week.

"Stargazer" under sail.

After their first sail, builder Sheri Bamboat reported on her sailing qualities. "We sailed Stargazer from the Moorings near my yard to Mumbai on 23 March .  It really was a great moment. I need to thank and congratulate you on one of the most well balanced boats that I have sailed."

We wish Sheri Bamboat and XS Marines every success with building these boats for the Asian market. We also wish the owner of "Stargazer" happy sailing and successful cruising and racing on her.

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Argie 15 & DS15 at Wooden Boat Show

This past weekend was time for our annual road trip to Mystic Seaport in Connecticut, 500+ miles each way. We had our usual Paper Jet, slightly spruced up with a new coat of deck paint and non-skid. Normally we would take one boat on one trailer, an easy tow. This time we also needed to get the new Argie 15 to the show for Kevin Agee to exhibit in the I Built it Myself division of the show. So they had to both go on one trailer. The two boats made a neat package, more aerodynamic than the Argie 15 by itself.

Argie 15 and Paper Jet, the way we travelled to Mystic.

12 Hours aft of us on the road was Hunter Gall with his Didi Sport 15 (DS15) All three boats and our booth in the main tent were set up and ready for visitors Friday morning.

From left, Hunter Gall's DS15, Kevin Agee's Argie 15 and my Paper Jet.

This 26th edition of the Wooden Boat Show proved to be an exceptional one for us. The weather was good and the show was well attended, with a tremendous amount of interest in the two brand new boats. The high quality builds were rewarded with first place for Hunter and runner-up for Kevin in the "Owner-Built Sail" division of the competition. I extend my congratulations to both of them, their hard work and attention to detail really paid off.

Hunter's DS15 is a very interesting boat and really drew the crowds to talk about all of his details and innovations. It might be best described as stated by the head of the judging panel, who said that Hunter is like "the mad scientist of boating". I provided a clean and simple design, which Hunter used as a blank canvas onto which he applied almost every go-fast innovation that he could imagine. Of course it is his boat and the final result must make him happy and fire his passion for it.

Hunter's DS15, with red, white and blue colours achieved by staining the wood before applying the epoxy coatings.

The wet deck with open transom seemed to worry some visitors, mostly women. Surrounded by mostly traditional boats, they can't imagine boats sailing faster than the waves around them.

Hunter had intrigued the judges with his explanations of the theory of tacking daggerboards, his removable heart-shaped daggerboard foil and other add-ons, as well as the unique ways that he had executed some of the more mundane dinghy features. The judges encouraged visitors to chat with Hunter about all this and he had a ball with it. The boat has many 3D-printed items on it, including a carbon spinnaker chute that he had modeled in a 3D CAD program for printing.

Kevin's Argie 15 provided a big contrast, standing right next to the DS15. It is a big 3:1 dinghy that is outfitted for easy and efficient sailing with a minimum of fuss, able to get onto the water quickly and also to carry a family of adults and children in safety and comfort. Kevin built this boat to a standard that caused many to ask why a fiberglass boat was being seen on a show for wooden boats. The bright-finished woodwork of the boat is all two-tone in poplar and cedar, which set off the nicely painted hull and deck surfaces.

The pretty sheer and clean lines of the hull attracted many admirers to the Argie 15.

Spacious interior with minimal complication, as well as space for a bunch of people.

The Argie 15 may have originally been conceived as a 3:1 dinghy for basic family fun but it morphed later by adding seating all-round. This added 40-50lb to the weight but improved comfort big-time, also boosting safety by adding buoyancy if capsized or flooded. These are all features that attracted the lovers of simple boats.

The Paper Jet, Argie 15 and DS15 provided a nice contrast to each other, three very different boats from the same designer. Between the three boats and our display booth, Dehlia and I were kept very busy for most of the three-day show. I would like to thank both Kevin Agee and Hunter Gall for their efforts in building and showing their boats, also for their obvious pride in their own workmanship.

To see more of these and our other designs, go to our main website or our mobile website.

Argie 15 Nearing Completion

It has been a long time since my last post about our Argie 15 project. Work has been going on but big life events have taken away from the time needed to write blog posts. The main event was a change in the status of builder Kevin  Agee, now our son-in-law after marrying our daughter Michelle last month.

Newly-married, our daughter Michelle and new son-in-law Kevin Agee.

OK, time to get life back to normal. The Argie 15 is nearing completion and looks very different from when you last saw it. It took its first road trip, on my Paper Jet trailer. The destination was my own garage, for painting.

Ready for preparation for paint.

After turning the boat upside-down, final inspection, masking the rub-rails and other bright-finished surfaces, blowing off the dust with a leaf blower then cleaning with acetone, it was ready for spraying to start.

First coat was a high-build epoxy primer, to give an easily-sanded layer to form the foundation for a good finish.

Next came a white primer. This was needed to cover the grey epoxy, which can cause blotchy problems with finish coats.

When I sprayed my Lotus, I changed the colour from the original red to yellow. I sprayed the yellow over a grey primer and found that yellow paint has problems covering grey. What initially looked like good cover is a bit green and blotchy in low-light situations. The green tone is the grey primer showing through and the blotchiness is caused by variations in the yellow film thickness. I must spray another coat over the car to get a uniform yellow colour. Lesson learned, we added a coat of white primer to the paint schedule of the Argie 15 to ensure good cover.

A coat of high-build epoxy primer also went onto the vertical surfaces of the cockpit because these will be gloss white. The horizontal areas will be beige non-skid, so a perfectly smooth surface was not needed.

The transom was to be white, so that was sprayed first, then masked off with paper before spraying the rest of the hull.

Completed hull painting, with yellow hull and white transom

The varnished rub-rails laminated from cedar and poplar set off the hull nicely. The holes through the hull sides are to drain the leeward side seats if any spray comes aboard when sailing in lumpy and breezy conditions.

 The new boat made its first public appearance by doing bar service at the wedding. It worked as a giant cooler, holding beers and soft drinks on ice for the wedding guests.

The other work that has been going on is building the spars. I am doing that work, having decided to make wooden spars using the birdsmouth method. In keeping with the varnished woodwork on the hull, I have made the mast and boom from alternating strips of cedar and poplar. I won't go into the details of building the spars in this post but will do that in later posts on my Boatbuilding Tips Blog. The Argie 15 plans show the mast in two sections, so that the rig can be stowed inside the hull. I could have made the mast in one length by scarphing the strakes into long lengths but elected to stay with the two-part mast. This allowed me to work with lengths that fit more comfortably inside a single garage.

Gluing a mast section using the bidsmouth method.

Mast sections and boom shaped and being epoxy-coated. The one closest to the camera is the boom, the other two being the two sections of the mast. The long mast higher up in the garage is my Paper Jet mast, built by a similar method.

Launch day is approaching. The sails have been made and hardware will soon start going onto the deck and rig.

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Shaping the Argie 15 Foils

I said in my previous Argie 15 blog post that Kevin Agee laminated the blanks for the foils from strips of cedar and poplar. Aside from making very attractive foils, it also has the benefit that they can be made from relatively inexpensive wood that can be bought at your local hardware store. Cedar that is available from Lowes or Home Depot is generally of inferior standard that may not be suitable for foils. Laminating strips of timber of differing characteristics can use the one to strengthen the other, at the same time serving a decorative function.

Daggerboard blank, cut to outline shape and sanded smooth, ready for shaping.

I won't go deeply into the shaping process for the foils, I will do that in a separate post on my Boatbuilders Tips blog. That should be posted in the next few weeks. For this post I will show only the basics.

The daggerboard is shaped to an airfoil section below the hull and rectangular where it is inside the daggerboard slot. Similarly, the rudder blade is foil-shaped in the water and rectangular where it is inside the rudder stock. I did this shaping with a hand plane, a belt sander, a Japanese Shinto rasp and hand-sanding with a sanding block.

The shaped daggerboard, foil section over most of its length, rectangular in the hull.
Note all the sanding dust on the floor, which must all be vacuumed up before any glassing starts.

The shaped rudder blade. Holes are for pivot bolt and up- and down-haul lines.

The next stage was to sheathe them in fiberglass fabric, in epoxy resin. The rudder is small enough to clamp in a vice, leading edge upward, then to drape the epoxy-saturated glass fabric over both sides of the blade at the same time. This I did by wetting out the glass with epoxy on a flat sheet of plastic, then moving it to the rudder, which was firmly clamped in the vice fitted with soft jaws. The top of the rudder is in the vice, so can't be glassed at the same time and must be glassed as a separate operation later.

Glass fabric draped over rudder to glass both sides at the same time, meeting at the trailing edge.

The daggerboard is a lot larger then the rudder, so maneuvering a piece of glass fabric large enough to cover both sides and weighed down with epoxy would be very awkward, so I chose to glass that one side at a time. I laid the board on a sheet of plastic to protect my workbench from droplets of epoxy. Doing one side at a time allowed me to lay the dry glass over the whole of one side of the board, wetting it out with epoxy in place. I supported the glass that was projecting past the trailing edge with a spacer under the plastic sheet, to stop the glass from drooping, which would mess up the clean trailing edge that is needed.

First side of the daggerboard glassed.

Some of the edges of the rudder and daggerboard don't have glass covering them after this, so they are covered with glass tape to complete the covering. There is also a lot of sanding going on between these steps, to feather edges of glass fabrics and tapes and to generally make smooth surfaces.

Glass-taping the leading edge and bottom  of the daggerboard. This batch of epoxy went off faster than I expected due to warmer air temperature, so the glass is a bit rough in places, needing more sanding.

I added another two coats of epoxy over all the surfaces, with more sanding between coats and after the final one. As a last step on the rudder blade I blanked off one side of all holes with painters tape then filled those holes with epoxy. I let it stand for about 15 minutes for the epoxy to soak into the timber, then removed the tape to allow the excess to drain out. This step is to prevent (or at least minimise) the absorption of water into the wood.

Daggerboard and rudder after 3 coats of epoxy, before final sanding.

The daggerboard still needs a handle, so I cut this from a poplar plank, in two matching pieces. I glued these to the faces of the board along the top edge.

Shaped timber handle pieces glued to both sides of the daggerboard. The board has been sanded to ready it for finishing with varnish.

I have now sanded and epoxy-coated the handle and the foils are nearly ready for varnish as the final finish.

To see more of this and our other designs, go to our main website or our mobile website.

Kidz At Sea Racing in the Caribbean

The students of the Kidz at Sea boatbuilding and Sailtraining program have been racing again in the Sint Maarten Heineken Regatta. They race on the Didi 26 "Purple Heart", which they built in their boatbuilding program. They are also building a sistership to join in the racing next year. They build these boats using our plywood CNC kits, shipped to them from Maryland.

Garth Steyn, who runs the programs, sent me these photos of the students racing their boat.

Getting some high-speed downwind action.

Nice new sponsored asymmetrical.

New sponsored jib as well.

To see more of this and our other designs, go to our main website or our mobile website.

More on Argie 15 Seat Framing

I have some more photos of the framing for the Argie 15 seats, now completed. The side seats to the forward cockpit are framed in the same way as described for the aft cockpit in my previous post. Framing for the bow seat consists of transverse stiffeners that span between the stringers on the hull sides and a longitudinal stiffener. The transverse stiffeners are slotted into the stringers and halved joints are used for the intersections between transverse and longitudinal stiffeners.

Argie 15 seat framing 

Completed seat framing. 

The boat is now ready for the seat fronts to be installed. Before that is done the hull must be checked for twist. At this stage there is still enough flexibility in the hull that it can become twisted along its length. Once the seat fronts are glued in, the hull will become very stiff and it will no longer be possible to pull it straight.

More info on this and our other designs can be found on our main website or our mobile website.

Didi 950 Project in Australia

Fred Grimminck has been building a Didi 950 in Australia for a few years. His project is nearing completion and the boat will be launched soon. Fred sent me these photos of his boat on a trailer, ready for transport to the launch site. He has built his boat as a fast cruiser, so it has been fitted out more heavily than one built for racing. This design was drawn to the Class 950 box rule and is built from plywood using our radius chine plywood method, with a topside chine to increase power-reaching performance. Fred has built her with the lifting keep option.

Didi 950 "Without Equal" looking forward to feeling salt water for the first time.

"Without Equal" and her new spars, ready to be stepped.

To see more of this and our other designs, go to our main website or our mobile website.

Argie 15 Framing

It has been pretty cold here the past few days, with winter starting to bite. Today the high temperature was just on freezing. As it grows colder over the next few weeks, a snug workshop is a good place to be spending productive time.

Kevin Agee is spending most evenings in his workshop, working on the Argie 15. Current tasks are fitting the framing for the seats and the transom doubler.

If you are fortunate enough to source timber longer than the hull, you can do the side stringers each in a single length. For the rest of us, it is necessary to join two pieces together to get the full length. This is done by scarphing (or scarfing or scarph-jointing) them. Each joint is done by cutting or planing the ends to be joined at an angle to form sloping mating surfaces. For an application like this and using modern adhesives, the slope angle need not be more than 1:6, so for timber 20mm thick the joint would be 120mm long.

One half of the scarph joint. This was cut on a saw but it could also be done with a jack plane.

The two pieces to be joined, dry-fitted to check accuracy.

The joint has been glued and here is shown being glued into the hull with temporary screws to hold the stringer until the glue has cured.

Stringers are glued in along both sides to form landings for the seats against the hull sides. Edge frames are also glued to the bulkheads to support the transverse seat edges.

Stringers fitted full length of both sides to form landings for the seats.

Edge framing being glued in for transverse seats.

Working neatly all the time will ensure a good finished product. This joint is an example, no scrappy edges, nicely filleted internal angle, all contact surfaces glued for a solid joint. 

View into the structure at the stern. The extra plywood layer on the centre of the transom is a doubler to strengthen it for the rudder pintle fittings. The notches in the tops of the transverse frames are for half-jointing the seat stiffeners. Those will be added in a future post.

You can see in all of these photos just how neat Kevin's work is. This is important if you are to have a really nice boat at the end of the project. If you don't think that you can't work to this standard, consider that Kevin is an amateur boatbuilder, not a professional. He is working with normal hobbyist woodworking tools. He has only built one previous boat, his own Inlet Runner 16.

To see more of our designs, go to our main website, our mobile website or our Flickr albums.

Update on DS15A Project

The DS15A (Didi Sport 15 Adaptive) is the same hull as the DS15, modified to accommodate the needs of handicapped sailors. The prototype is being built in Santa Cruz, California. This plywood prototype will be used as the plug to make moulds to produce composite boats to order.

The hull has progressed to the stage that it is stable enough to be removed from the building stocks. It has been turned over so that work can be done on the deck along with completion of the hull.

Hull lifted off building stocks. The upper side panels haven't been fitted yet.

The hull is suspended on ropes while the support cradle is slid in under it.

Settled in her cradle and ready for work to continue.

3D rendering of the DS15A, a modern sportboat for sailors with special needs.

Hardware layout for the DS15A , with most controls operable from either seat.

To see our full range of designs, go to our main website or our mobile website.

Didi Mini Mk3 Launch in Netherlands

Ronald Groenewoud is in Enschede, Netherlands. He has been building his Didi Mini Mk3 for the past three years and launched her today. (Mobile web page for this design). This is a radius chine plywood boat, built from our plans.

From his photos it seems that he has done a great job of building her. I don't have info on the boat or the builder to write a story, so will rely on Ronald's photos to tell that story for me.

Hull completed. It is built over permanent plywood bulkheads.

Deck stringers added, ready to receive the 6mm plywood deck skins.

Completed hull and deck, finished to a beautiful standard.

Pouring encapsulated foam flotation required by the Mini 650 Class Rules.

Fabricated aluminium keel.

Pouring the lead ballast bulb in halves, to be joined over the keel.

Ready to leave the workshop. Tight fit, with some plaster removed from both
sides of the opening to let it squeeze through.

Custom road trailer, ready and waiting.

Loaded and ready to go.

Launched with a travel-lift.

Afloat.

Waiting for her rig. Maybe tomorrow?

Ronald built his boat single-handed, as he is likely to sail it most of the time. Congratulations Ronald, looks like you have built a good boat. Ronald has a Dutch-language blog but the photos look the same in any language. :-)

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