Finishing Details in Sportfisherman Cockpit

Kevin Agee has has been working on bringing the surface finishes in the cockpit up to a high standard and is nearly ready for the prime coats that will receive the final finish coat. Lots of fairing and sanding involved, worth the effort in achieving a quality boat. The flush deck hatches have been completed, aside from routing as needed for the flush hinges and catches, then painting and fitting the compressible seals that will make them watertight.

Meanwhile I was busy at the aft end of the cockpit, cutting the scuppers to drain water from the cockpit. These openings fit very neatly between the top of the deck in the cockpit and the underside of the wings each side of the outboard motor bracket, at the outer corners of the transom. With that work completed, I have started on the base structure that will support the insulated fish box that will span most of the width of the cockpit against the transom.

Completed covers for the flush hatches in the cockpit sole. Those aren't handles in the middle of each cover, they are stiffeners to reduce flexing underfoot.

Final layer of high build epoxy on the hull, waiting to be sanded.

The orange colour is a guide coat of food colouring in solvent, applied by cloth. Sanding off this very thin coat high-lights any dents or holes that need filling because they remain orange in an otherwise white surface. The flush cockpit hatch covers are in position but not installed, to reduce our chances of falling into the openings.

Inside view of the start of the cockpit scuppers, cut with a 76mm (3") diameter holesaw.

Same stage, viewed from outside. The trim-tab actuator will fit between the scupper and the side of the outboard motor bracket.

Completed scupper, from inside.

Same stage, from outside. The scuppers fit in neatly below the wings of the outboard motor bracket and will be almost invisible from outside.

Roughing-in the base under the insulated fish box. The fish box will span the unpainted width of the transom, flanked by lockers with hinged doors for access to the valves below. The outer ends are open for water flow to the scuppers, which will be hidden in the toe-kick recess below the fish box.

By next weekend Kevin will have completed the sanding. I will finish roughing-in the fish box, then we will move on to the foredeck and sidedeck construction.

This boat won't go onto our website until this prototype is near to completion. Until then, see our other designs on our desktop website or our mobile website.

New Photos of Dix Designs

Photos of boats that I have designed often come into my hands through various routes. Sometimes it is the owner proudly showing the boat that he had created with his own hands, sometimes it is a friend who took the photo from an interesting perspective or for some special reason. When I can I show some of those photos. Here are a few recent ones.

This first one is the steel Dix 43 Pilot "Sea Bird" that was owner-built by Andre Siebert in South Africa. She is on her maiden cruise on the West Coast of South Africa.

Dix 43 Pilot "Sea Bird" in Port Owen marina.

Ryerson and Annie Clark had Big Pond Boat Shop in Nova Scotia build a Cape Henry 21 for them and did the finishing work themselves. They launched earlier this year and have been doing short cruises as they learn to sail their new boat, named "Elvee".

Cape Henry 21 "Elvee" enjoying a beautiful Nova Scotia sunset.

David Edmiston owner-built his Didi 40cr2 "Passion X" in Sydney, Australia. It differs from the standard Didi 40cr by having a wider stern, deeper keel and more powerful rig. This photo of Passion X" was submitted to the Greenwich Flying Squadron photo competition.

Didi 40cr2 "Passion X" in Sydney, Australia.

Joop Mars built his Didi 26 "Black-Out" in Netherlands. In the photo below he is racing her single-handed and loves her sailing characteristics.

Didi 26 "Black-Out" sailing in Netherlands.

Michael Baccellieri of Portland, Oregon, bought an owner-built Cape Henry 21 that had some builder-created problems. Michael fixed the issues, did what he could to get her closer to the original design, refinished her under the new name of "Slough Coot" and went sailing. He and a friend cruised Puget Sound for 2 weeks, then exhibited her on the Wooden Boat Festival in Port Townsend WA

Cape Henry 21 "Slough Coot" relaxing on Puget Sound.

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

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.

Argie 15 Dinghy Next Stage

In my last post about his Argie 15 project, Kevin Agee closed in all of the seats. What remained was to tidy up the drains through the centre seat. This he did with an angle grinder to trim them flush with the bulkhead and the fillets against the hull skin.

Trimming the port drain, the starboard one still projecting
 from the seat.

The drains are neatly trimmed and Kevin called me in to help
 him turn the hull over. I got the lighter end.

Kevin at the heavier end. The slight V in the aft sections is
achieved by scribing half-way through the plywood from
the outer face.

Turned over and ready for glassing the outside of the chines.

The chines were glued with epoxy adhesive between the ties before they were
 removed. Now the gaps will be filled before the glass tape is applied.

Also going ahead are the rudder and daggerboard. This started by laminating blanks from strips of cedar and poplar glued with epoxy adhesive, to give a striped effect. Clear-finishing with varnish over fibreglass/epoxy brightens the colours, to give a very attractive finish.

The daggerboard blank, sanded smooth and ready for shaping.

Kevin laminated the blanks and cut the outline shapes, then gave them to me to shape the foils and cover with fibreglass/epoxy. I will cover that work in separate posts.

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

Winter Project Time Again

That time is coming around again, for the northern hemisphere. Winter has a charm all of its own, with festive occasions, family gatherings, giving and receiving gifts, having fun in the snow and snuggling by a roaring log fire with eggnog. Then there are those times of being trapped inside, when nerves begin to be frayed by cabin fever after all of the Scrabble and other board games have worn out their appeal and you have run out of episodes of that TV series that you have binge-watched for 36 hours straight.

That is when it helps for Dad to have a project to work on in his man-cave that does double-duty as a workshop. A small boat is a great project for those times, creating something of value for the family to enjoy when warmer weather returns, while also giving opportunities for quality time working together and developing new skills that will be of value in the future.

We have a few boat designs that are ideally-sized to be built in a small space, some simple and quick to build and others more demanding of skills, time and financial resources. Here is brief info on all of them.

This 8ft Dixi Dinghy was built by Leslie Koen. It has a sailing rig option as well

This 9ft Oppikat was built by Frank Nagel for his children

This Argie 10 was built by schoolboy brothers while Dad was away on a business trip.

Challenger 13 built by Jonas Klimantavicius

Paper Jet built by Andre Siebert

Didi Sport 15 built by Jim Foot.

Argie 15 built by Tarquin Morkel

Lynnhaven 16 built by Mikhail Andrukov

Inlet Runner 16 built by Kevin Agee.

Time to sharpen your saws, chisels and planes, buy in some marine plywood, Douglas fir and epoxy, then get to work preparing for next summer. You will also need the plans, which can be ordered from our pricelist.

See more about these and our other designs on our main website or our mobile website.

Didi Sport 15 Adaptive - Sportboat for those with Handicaps

I have written in previous posts about the Didi Sport 15, aka the DS15. You can see one of those posts at this link or use the search window to view the many other posts.

This design caught the attention of two sailors in Santa Cruz, California. George Arthur and Luc de Faymoreau are involved with an accessible sailing program, helping sailors with disabilities to get afloat and sailing. They asked if it would be possible to redesign the DS15 to be suitable for disabled sailors and still have good performance.

The resulting design process has produced a specialised version of the DS15, using the same hull and foils as the base platform but with modified deck and sail plan. The name of the new design is the Didi Sport 15 Accessible, aka the DS15A. We don't yet have a design page for it on our website, that will come with time.

The DS15, basis for the new accessible boat

The deck modifications are to allow two sailors to sit in tandem in secure seats. The crew are seated in a narrower cockpit that allows them to brace themselves against solid structure when they feel the need, or to lean against something solid. The cockpit has low comfortable coamings that crew can hook an arm or an elbow onto, to hold themselves to windward if they want. Severely handicapped or weak crew can be strapped into the seats with harnesses if needed, to assure their safety.

3D Image of the DS15A accessible sportboat.

The rig has been reduced in power because the crew will not have the benefit of the stability advantages from mobile crew and single or twin trapezes. The ballast bulb on the daggerboard will be standard equipment rather than an optional item as with the DS15. It has a smaller asymmetrical spinnaker as well, on a shorter retractable bowsprit, for more advanced sailors in the program.

DS15A sail plan, reduced power but still exciting.

Sail controls are all led to the two seats, with camcleats on the sidedecks or cockpit sole, to share boat handling functions between skipper and crew. Some controls can be operated from either seat, to help with sail training or to better serve crew with different disabilities. Steering is by means of joysticks mounted in front of each seat, driving cables that are connected to the tiller.

This boat is not only for those with physical handicaps though. It is also well-suited to those who feel that they no longer have the agility or fast reactions demanded by a powerful boat like the standard DS15. It is also less intimidating to many wives and other less adventurous people who would still like to get out onto their local sailing waters with less fear that their thrill-seeking partners are going to scare the daylights out of them.

The first boat is about to start construction in Santa Cruz, being built from a plywood component kit, accurately cut by CNC router and shipped from our kit supplier on the East Coast. Construction is radiused chine plywood, giving a round bilge hull that is within the abilities of amateurs. From this first boat they will make moulds, whereafter fibreglass boats will be produced for the use of their own program and to fill orders from other programs and individuals.

We will also sell the design on the same basis as applies to the DS15, so it will be available as plans only, plans with full-size patterns or plans with a CNC kit.

I look forward to seeing the first of these versatile boats sailing. I will update progress with future posts on this blog.

To see our other designs, go to our desktop website or our mobile website.

"Black Cat" Launch Video

In November 1997 we launched our Didi 38 "Black Cat" after 2 years of building, only 2000 hours for an amateur-built ocean-crossing sailboat. That boat launched a whole series of designs and new developments in plywood boat construction.

That was 20 years ago. I had video of the occasion that was recorded off the TV with a VCR. It was bad quality and it was recorded on the PAL system used in South Africa. Attempts to convert to the NTSC format used in USA were pretty disastrous, resulting in unusable files.

Today I have received a good copy of the video, in a usable format. Watching the video now reminds me just how long ago this all happened. I didn't even have much grey hair then, now it is totally silver.

This video shows the shape of "Black Cat" very clearly. So many people came to me at that time and would not believe that this beautifully rounded shape was a plywood boat. Nobody had seen a rounded plywood hull before and they would only believe that it was not fibreglass after going inside to look at the structure.

Now my radius chine plywood designs are well-known and have been built in many countries. "Black Cat" is no longer unique but she remains the leader of an exciting time for plywood boatbuilding.

To see more of our boat designs, visit http://dixdesign.com/ or http://dixdesign.com/mobile