Florin {VACATIONER}

So can anyone recommend any type of adhesive which can be used to glue the blue foam to painted wood or to itself???? Thanks Florin

For what it's worth.. A couple of years ago when we were ready to caulk we were debating which caulk to use. We considered doing the epoxy fillet as well instead of the 5200 because that darned marine stuff is so expensive, but epoxy fillets are time consuming and did not want to spend the time. I ended up shopping around for caulk for about a week at all possible hardware and paint stores. I ended up buying a big cartridge of that PL crap too. It started bubbling.... Thank God we only caulked part of the lazarette with it, cause it sure looked like hell. I then ended up buying from HD the DAP exterior windows and doors urethane paintable stuff. It works very well, it stays flexible forever, it is paintable, and it's cheap (4 bucks a cartridge). The downside is... it's very messy to work with (use gloves), and it takes up to 7 days before it is paintable... it does cure to touch in about 1-2 days, but it still offgasses for a week after (depending on temperature and humidity) and should not be painted untill fully cured. On the tube it says it is guaranteed for something like 30 years and that's good enough for me. It still looks mighty fine so far, and the paint didn't peel off. Good luck Florin

I've already checked that and there's no provision for small boat in the policy... although this is no small boat, and there's more than just a few "thou" in receipts I already have for this boat. As it stands right now the boat is about 80% finished (or 20%) unfinished and 50% to go, and I wanted to have some sort of coverage for it sitting in the garage in case anything happens. The sum I mentioned is Canadian $... and not woth anywhere near as much as the US $. In any case, I've seen and heard of too many people who have lost property in fires and had no insurance. If I can at least recover the losses for the materials and a few "thou" for my labour is far beter than not getting anything at all. When finished, it will get appraised and the true value will then be insured. Thanks Florin

Well, we've finally got it. For the ones who are looking to get insurance on the boat, here's how we've done it. Barb called pretty much all the brokers in the phone book with no success. No-one wanted to touch a home built with a 10' pole. I just hapened to know this broker guy aquaintance of mine and I brought it up over a pint of beer last week. He said he could probably do it for he's been in the insurance business forever and a day. He called yesterday and told me he found an insurance company interested in taking my hard earned money. Western General insured my boat. The price is $366.00/year, based on $30,000.00 value of the finished product, it is an "all risk" policy and has $200.00 deductible. The caveat is that the boat insurance has to be a rider on the house policy, no big deal, we just switched our house policy with Western now. So call your broker and ask him/her to check with western.... If they can't do it, contact me and I'll put you onto Barry and hopefully get you some coverage. Cheers Florin

Jan, If you want to raise the roof, some of the drawings for the cabin become pretty much useless. You'll have to reverse engineer a lot of them. If you go with straight walls and square-front it will be much easier to build. I particularly like the rounded looks, but that's my own personal opinion and you shouldn't let yourself be influenced by it. Go with whatever you think looks good for you and is most practical for your application. We've raised the roof by 6" on our Vac and it was a real pain in the a$$, but it was worth it. It added at least an extra month if not two to the costruction time, but then again, the Vac has angled cabin walls and that throws another monkey wrench in the formula. Good luck Florin

Andrew, the Stevensons are right about that and many others. When you get to that stage (and even earlier) all the compounded errors come into play and you have to cut to fit (a lot). I cut my seats a bit larger (1" both ways I believe) and then trimmed to fit. It doesn't take too much longer to do this. The end result turned out pretty good although it's not perfect, but that's what we've got bondo and caulking for :-) Last thing I've done is I used a flush trim router bit to trim the front of the seat tops flush with the front panels, but then I changed my mind and used a 1/2 roundover bit after to ease it a bit for it looked like too sharp an edge to have in a cockpit. It really looks sharp now! We've pretty much built our boat $100 at a time as well, mainly due to the lack of space we have in the boatshed and couldn't store all of the materials in there at once. Obviously I've ran out of materials numerous and sundry times, but I've found out that there are many many other small chores to be done while you're waiting for more lumber. I have a running list of boat chores that I write as I go. Although it's getting increasingly longer (and I have a few of them lying in the boatshed) I do bring it out once in a while and check off some of the stuff when done. I hate lists :-) Good luck! Florin

It really loks like you've had a really good time sailing Craig, congrats! We still didn't make it out on the water this year and it now looks like we'll have to do it next spring when the hard water goes away again. Unfortunatley we didn't finish to launch as planned :-(.... Life got in the way. Cheers Florin

And a good job you've done Joel. I saw that similar jig pic posted somewhere a couple of years ago. Similarly, like most of other jigs I've decided to make, I thought this one would take more time to build than it would save me afterall, so I decided not to build it and instead do the whole thing by hand and just check my progress with a long straightedge. Obvoiusly this is one of the jigs I should have built, for it sounds like a good idea now. I must have spent about 4 hrs. sanding down the stringers on my Vac. When will I learn? Good job! Florin

Tom, Welcome aboard! As Barry had mentioned in his post, we did modify the interior of the Vac quite a bit. Mainly the cabin, and a bit in the cockpit. We just wanted to customize the boat to make it as comfortable according to our needs. We have 5 children under the age of 14 and a large 100lb landlubber dog. The Stevensons Vac just hapened to meet our criteria. Of course no matter what boat you build or buy will never be big enough, nor will it be the perfect boat, there's always SOMETHING you're missing, and I think this is due to our human nature. As just about everything else, this boat was a compromise to us. The cabin and cockpit is large enough, but let's be realistic, even with the improvements we've done by adding berths, etc it will never accomodate all of us onboard overnight. There's just not enough space. We learned to live with the idea that we'll have to stowe a pop tent in there somewhere and some of us will have to sleep on the ground in the tent. The berth we have inside is about the size of a queen sized bed. No way could you have 7 persons in there and get a good night's sleep. The cockpit is too tight for 7 people as well. We'll just have to deal with the situation when we get to it, some of us will have to sit on the forward deck, some down below in the cabin. All in all, we think we made a good choice and are happy with the end result even though we haven't got her wet just yet. Anything bigger would have cost too much and would not be trailerable. The gals and guys on the forum are a great bunch and helped us a lot. This also made building a pleasant experience we will not forget. Enjoy building! Florin

You should be able to cut a couple of pieces of ply to fit in there. Use battens on the inside, sort of like panel joiners. Once you glass over it you'll never notice the difference. Actually, if you still have them , the pieces you cut out of there should do the job. Good luck!

That makes sense guys. I think I'll stop worying now. The poles on the side are nice, the only problem I can see is them beying as useless as the trumpet on the keelbox; by the time the hull comes in contact with the poles on the side, the keel is already in the box, so there's no real need for them, except for when you wanna tie a flag to them... Just the way I see it :-) Florin

Mike, I will build the keel box for sure on the trailer. To me that goes without saying. I've owned a few stinkpotters that came on roller trailers and just the fact that they were all a bugger to load up on the trailer because they couldn't be aligned easily had me convinced that in this situation a keel box would make this task a walk in the park.... well, maybe... I've heard it's still hard to line up the keel with the box on the trailer just as the front of the keel comes onto the trailer when it's windy... We may have to build some sort of side-ramps at the rear of the box to make this job easier. The box is definitely going to be built, it's a good idea. Thanks Mike

Hmmm! That never crossed my mind. It's a good idea. Maybe I can just carry an air tank in the lazarette.... I can fill that when I leave the house, and should be plenty for at least a 10lb bag of spuds. The tank can double up as floatation too.... what a genius idea! Too bad my lazarette is closed in by now :-(. Something you guys who have the lazarette still accessible might want to consider.

I'm sure Paul will make good, there's no question about that. This move is probably the break he was looking for. Everyone makes a mistake every now and then, afterall he's gotta be only human... Give the guy a week or two to get settled in and the sails will be coming. I don't think there's any reason to get frustrated over an move... As long as it's not to AbhuDhabi :-) (spelling?) Cheers

I think we're done agonising over the trailer now. We just picked up a 2000lb axle and tires, and coupler, winch, jack, fenders, lights kit, etc. for our new custom built trailer today. There's no going back now. We got the 92" wide axle, which should more than accomodate Her Majesty. Anything more and it's not legal on the street. All we have left to do is get the tubing stock and get cracking on building the thing. We've spent waaayyyy too much money in the past week, we'd better get building soon. Shopping is sooo much fun. Here comes the fiberglass dust... yuck! Cheers

The rack and pinion decided to start leaking fluid all over our driveway on the Aerostar towing monster a little while ago. So obviously it had to be fixed... really soon. Since the boatshed is full, I really had no way of fixing it myself in there, so we called arround to some auto repair shops for a price..... darned steep... they wanted $700 to do it. The part costs $130....?????... So, since I like to spend time at HD drooling over powertools... I found this great deal on a 5hp compressor which comes with a $hitload of airtools in a big box... for $500. My proposal to the Admiral: Honey, if I fix the van... for free.... can I get that compressor????... it adds up to the same amount anyway :-).... She is so nice..... I now have to spend tomorrow covered in grease and oil.... But I got the compressor two days ago :-) :-) :-) I think it's a win/win situation... plus I don't have to deal with constantly power-washing the driveway. I love the noise impact guns make :-) I'll post some pics soon.

I'll take some pics when I have the rudder box put together again. I just took it off yesterday for I'm getting it ready for the fiberglass phase. thanks!

Yeah, I know what you mean Craig, we've had about a month of that here, I almost thought it was the monsoon :-) Now we are having a heat wave.... it's been going on for a couple of weeks. I'm just afraid we're going to run out of heat by the time we launch. I't kindof a pain to work on the boat in this heat at 30 degC. But the bondo sure cures fast hihihi.

Yeap, they're right! On the Vac you have to install the floor boards on the keel first and then put in the panel joiners and the stringers because they would be too hard to lift if done first for they are heavy. But drilling and screwing from the bottom up is kindof a pain and ye have glue dripping on you while you do this, plus there's not much room there to work... For the Weekender is probably a lot easier to assemble them on the floor and then screw them to the keel. Florin

The rope is not installed yet (actually I will be using a/c cable, but that's besides the point). I never got to hooking up the cable because I wanted to sort out this problem first (if it is indeed a problem). Where I can see it hanging up is at the straps. It's kinda hard to describe and I don't think the picture would be good enough for you to see (you kinda have to be there) but I'll try to describe it better. It all started with making the straps. I don't see any description in the plans for the radius of the curve of the straps... they describe to bend it 180deg, and that's it.... so I used the thickness of the rudder box and keel post as the diameter of the bend. They are 2 1/4" thick, so the radius is 1 1/8". I then followed the instructions, installed the straps and made the fillers (this would anly apply to Vacationers, because on the Weekender they use eyebolts). Then the plans call for drilling a 1/2" hole in the fillers, on the centerline with the center of the hole 1/2" in... in from what? this is where it didn't make any sense to me... so the first set of fillers I made, the holes were too close to the rudder post/rudder box and culdn't even put in the 1/2" ready rod... the holes wouldn't line up. So I made a second set of fillers and drilled the holes very close to the outside of the circles (only have about 1/4" of "meat"/wood left between the rod and the strap)... this was better, I managed to get the rod in, but now like I said, the rudder box can only turn about 35 deg on either side. The only way I can see this work is by modifying the straps, i.e. elongating the curve, to make it like 1/2 of an ellipse to get the two pieces "away from eachother, because the way it is now it acts as a cam and the more it turns the more the strap/curve gets closer to the opposing member. If you guys figure it's ok like this, I'll leave it and worry about it if it becomes a problem turning later on when we launch. Thanks

Congrats Konrad!!!! And so the saga begins :-) Good luck, and enjoy every moment.... time goes flying too fast to miss anything.

So I've been working on rigging up the wheel and rudder and the steering components for the past couple of days. I surely didn't think it would take this long to get this done. Anyway, I can only seem to get the rudder box to swing 35 deg to port and 40 deg to strbrd. Is this normal? I have no idea what the turning radius should be. I've triple-checked the plans to see if I've done something wrong, but other than the fact that they're a bit on the vague side, I couldn't come up with anything. The hinges seem to bind against the rudder post and rudder box when they get around the 35 deg. mark. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

Bob, that looks really nice! We should have done it like that too. Oh well, we can do that when we re paint the keel whenever that'll be. Good idea.

Yep, it is indeed a good place to come to. These two forums became part of my life for the past 2 years. Don't know what I would do without you guys. Thanks

You're right BOB! Why the heck didn't I think of that? Probably 'cause it's too easy, and since I'm known to always complicate things I came up with the brilliant idea of making a new one. Pretty silly eh? I'll just laminate another 1/4" on top just like you said and will be done in a jiffy. Thanks