Designer

Congratulations, she looks great. You mentioned that you forgot which side of the boat the sails go. Just to help you remember, I always rig the main to starboard and the mizzen to port. Why? I could have done it either way. The mizzen is easy to reef solo being smaller and is close to the helm. The mainsail rigged to starboard allows you to heave-to on the starboard tack giving you the right of way over other vessels while you are not under way. It was good that you got sail her in light air. she is a spirited boat and can capsize, it is easy to do if you are inexperienced.. If you need to remember one thing with a cat ketch, the main is your safety valve. When you are sailing upwind on a fresh day, if you release the mizzen in a hard puff you will swim. Releasing the main reduces pressure forward giving the boat weather helm making the the her come closer to the wind taking power out of the rig. Good sailing

Like Peter I have used the flame method but I did not realize that pipe glue was compatible with epoxy. When running PVC wire chases I used to just rough up the surface where I need to bond and glass the back side to the frame or bulkhead and have the PVC stand out far enough to get a nice fillet all around the pipe. The object was to waterproof the joint as the PVC passing through the frame and mechanically connected to the glass had more strength than it needed.

Hi Matt. Peter is right, the dimensions for the waterline are given in the plans. Because you are building from a kit, you have an easier way to get your boat level. If your boat is sitting in the building cradle correctly, that is with the forward bulkhead sitting over forward cradle frame and the aft bulkhead sitting over the aft cradle frame, the boat will be level if the floor is level. If the floor is not level, lay a level on the cradle rails and shim the legs until both rails are level fore and aft and athwartships.

Jan, Usually the angle between the sides and the gunwale is a little more obtuse than a right angle. Roundover bits are designed for 90 degree corners so I do that roundover with a plane and sandpaper. If you can use the router , have at it. Yes I do like to have a generous radius there to make it comfortable for my back.

Pete, There is not enough room between the cheeks for a tool. I can apply enough enough friction with my fingers pressing on the machine screw head to tighten the nut. Sometimes I have had to use the flat blade of a screw driver pressing against the head for a bit more friction. Of course you cannot use a nylock nut. When I assemble the rudder for the last time after painting, I make sure that I get some caulk into the thread.

Yes she will. I have done it solo with 60 # of gear. Naturally the more you load it the harder it is to get her going but on a broad reach with and some swell and you are brave, it is achievable.

Jan, There is no right or wrong answer to your question. You could flush trim every edge of the cockpit seating or do as you described. I am responsible for the overhangs. I think that the curves make the boat look better than the squared off look. This is how I do it. Flush trim the sides where you have the blue tape. I cut a strip of 1/4" ply about 1 1/2" wide to clamp to the beams and aft bulkhead and trunk cleats to act as a spacer and guide for the ball bearing on the flush trim bit. This lets you quickly get a constant overhang. I blend the curves to the straight lines. I prefer to use a 3/8" roundover bit for the sides as it is much more comfortable against your legs and seat than 1/4". I hand sand a small radius on the curves and blend the big to small radius starting with coarse sandpaper. There is no need to glass the aft orange tape joint as there is plenty of gluing surface created by the transom stiffener. The forward orange tape seam does need to be glass taped as well as the bottom to bulkhead joint between the mast step and the cockpit sides. You do not need to tape the cockpit sides to the forward bulkhead because they have a gluing cleat on the inside. She is looking good.

I chose 3/4" ply for the Core Sound rudders because being low aspect foils for shallow draft they had a pretty good cross section area. I did intend for them to be glassed. I don't have the numbers in front of me but I recall that there are at least 500 of Core Sounds out there with ply rudders not to mention 1400 Spindrift's and quite a few Bay River Skiffs. My memory is slightly less than perfect but I recall that Chick built two Core Sounds with ply rudders and I recall that Tom used a ply rudder on loon. Laminated solid rudders are clearly stronger than ply. Steel rudders are stronger still. My solid wood rudder built in 1991 is still going strong in Skimmer but it is glassed. My glassed ply rudder is still fine on Carlita. I would not be offended if Erik replaces his rudder with a solid wood one but glass it.

Jan, I am not sure about your second question as there may be some terminology issues. The cap goes on top of the mast. The ply piece under the mast is the step and the piece in the mast that fits into the step is the heel. I like to glue in the step last after all of the glass work is done and I like to check that the mast is vertical when the boat is level. The same rules apply to the step for the right clearance as for the collar. If the mast and heel is tight in the step, it is easier to adjust the step in the vise rather than in the boat.

Jan, You are fine. The mast in it's relaxed state sits vertical and the mast collar pitches down aft. This is why the mast is tight, you can see a gap at the aft side of the collar. There will be a gap on the underside forward. You just need to ease the forward top and aft underside until the mast slides nicely. I like to use a length of 1 1/2" PVC pipe or something similar to wrap some sandpaper around working it up and down. The trick is to make hole loose enough to allow for epoxy and paint without being sloppy. You do not need to fuss much at this stage as the deck has to go on which may tighten it up more.

While fiddling with some hardware I discovered that a Harken 073 eyestrap fits and slides surprisingly well in our sail track. I always have a couple of them in my handy repair kit and with a bit of lashing cord I can quickly make a repair and be back on my way if I should ever have a slide or two fail.

Sorry about not wrapping this up sooner. My shop built slides tested worst of all even though I had a larger cross section. After I looked up the mechanical properties it was obvious why as it was nowhere near as strong. I was surprised that the slides that come on our sails tested better than the ones that we buy domestically. Who knows where any of this stuff originates from anymore? We then searched the web and found the perfect slide right under our noses. It is a slide made out of stainless steel and coated with teflon for low friction. It looks exactly like our regular slides but black. It is a bit pricey at around $12. I am not going to rush out and change Carlita's slides, as I have said bfore that I have never broken one. On bigger boats like Jays MF246 with larger sails and forces I will use them at the head and tack and at the reef points.

Hi Frank, I am glad that you are still enjoying the boat. It was good to see your video of her sailing herself. You do not have any worries with the masts. They are just collars that keep the upper mast sections positioned. The upper section is buried into it's lower partner by about 9" and there is a lower bushing. With free standing masts there is very little mast compression, with most of the forces being side loading the glass epoxy layup can easily handle all the loads that the section can put on it. We bond the bushings because fasteners add potential corrosion in time, plus a slight weakening of the small section where it has it's maximum load. The same reason why we do not to weld them in place as you lose about 30% of the tensile strength from the high temperatures taking the temper out of the high strength aluminum. We know of one set of masts on a CS17 that were welded and as far as I know have not failed. This is because of the happy coincidence that the masts are stronger than they need to be to get the stiffness we want to get the right sail carrying power. It still goes against my grain to weaken a mast by that much. Over time corrosion is our enemy but I am not seeing any in your pictures.

I am responsible for the starboard motor mount recommendation. It is only relevant to motors that do not have reverse gear and transom mounted on 17 mk3's. On the CS15 or any of the CS mk1's you can mount the motor on whichever side that speaks to you. On the mk3 I had to cut the transom down for the exhaust to to clear the transom when rotated for reverse. No, a long shaft does not help as the leg extension is below the exhaust. The problem is that it is such tight fit that I can only fully rotate the motor by turning it to the left. To do this I have to lift the tiller straight up to clear the cockpit coaming, plus the motor tiller is on the left which puts it close to the coaming. If mounted to starboard I could just rotate the motor to port without having to remember to lift the tiller straight up. There are other motor possibilities for the mk3's which we can discuss elsewhere.

Scott, Yes, same as usual.

We started the little Suzuki yesterday for the first time this season and I believe that the Chick method works. I went through the standard starting sequence and gave it about 4 pulls, then Alan gave it a few pulls. He then blew down the fuel fill and she roared into life on the next pull.

I too think that Chick might be on to the problem. My Suzuki 2.5 has been the perfect engine except for the first start of a cruise. Once it has been run for a while it starts every time on the first pull. I am not keen on kissing the inside of a fuel cap but I know that I will become desperate enough to do it. I want to start mine soon so I will give it a try. I wonder if I can cobble up a cap with a hose to make it a bit more sanitary. Paul, I am glad that you got out for a sail. Your weather should be getting real pretty now.

I am lined up to go. I am 25 miles from Potters Marina so I will sail up on the 14th. John worked out a nice cruise. The weather has been crazy this spring so far but there is plenty of opportunity to refine the cruise as the weather dictates.

Peter gave you good advise. Having built these boats for over 40 years or more, my usual standard was to coat the inside of the trunks on Spindrift's with three coats of resin and call it done . On bigger boats I always glass the inside of the trunk sides before assembly. Alan pointed out a while ago that it maybe quicker to glass the the trunk insides than do three coats. It can never be bad to have better abrasion resistance. So the upshot is that, coating or glassing works, but glassing should be better. The other issue is glass taping the trunk to the bottom. Again this is a complicated issue. It is always better to glass both sides of a joint. The problem is that, as been pointed out, it is hard to taper around the inside of the trunk bottom slot so that you do not narrow it and do not get any bubbles in the glass as it does not like to go around tight corners. I decided that it was too hard for home builders to do well without a lot of pain, so I decided to eliminate the inside corner taping and double up on the fillet and inside taping. I stagger the two layers of 3" tape by 1/2". We ended up with a pretty competitive S10 racing fleet so instead of cutting the bottom slot to the trunk rectangle we cut out the bottom to match the profile of our dagger board to have less turbulence. This would be impossible to tape inside without a lot of work. I have never seen a failure in one that was done this way so far.

This subject keeps coming back. There are many ways to measure strength and one of plywoods greats properties is that being a low density material it's stiffness to tensile strength to weight ratio is close to ideal. For instance, if we were building an aluminium Spindrift and trying to keep it from being too heavy, we could look at 16 gauge which is a cigarette paper thicker than 1/16" or 1.651 mm for our mathematically challenged European friends. Now if we compare it's weight to 6mm okume, it comes out at about twice the weight per square foot or meter. That already is a pound or kilo too far for me to cross already, not to mention that the bottom would probably need stiffening with a couple of stringers, compounding the build by a lot of extra welding. We do not even need to factor in that aluminium does not float. The Gougeon Brothers used to have great display at boat shows.They had every material that you could build a boat out of. Each piece was cantilevered 12" past the edge of the table and was exactly 1" wide and weighed the same. They varied the thickness of each piece so that the weights would be exactly the same. When the same weight was placed on the end of each piece, people were amazed to see how much stiffer wood was compared to the other materials and compared to steel, which we all know is very strong. The only way to beat wood is to lower the density further and that means to use a core material. As we have seen that can work but a little more resin here and there and we have lost the weight battle. A little extra weight is not a big deal in a work boat but in a tender that has to be manhandled a lot in often awkward conditions, it is a big deal.

I have no problem with a few worts. I would rather them than than have nothing. It is the beginning of the learning curve. I also subscribed to their channel because I love to see their Spindrift living and doing what I intended. I have sailed those waters and it is a lot of fun to see what has happened with the yacthing explosion. In 1975 I cleared into Pukhet in the commercial harbor. The chief of police strongly recommended that I not stay in the harbor as thievery was a problem and told me about a good anchorage, there were no marina's. I was the only sailboat in the area.

I will add my 2 cents worth for plywood versus composite materials. I built my first Catspaw stitch and glue in the late Sixties. We could get thick epoxy for gluing but the the only resin available to me was polyester. She was used for full time cruising which meant that she was in the water if we were not under way. By the end of 1970 the glass tape was de-bonding from the ply even though I used isothalic no wax laminating resin which bonds better that orthothalic resins. I cross hatched the bonding area with a piece of saw blade and primed the wood before laminating. She even got marine borers and had to row with our feet over the borer holes or we would have a tiny fountain. I did the obvious thing and built a masonite female mold and laid up a fiberglass hull. I stiffened the bottom and gunwales with foam. She was a bit shorter to save weight but she came out heavier. It solved the problem with water but it was not as tough as her wood predecessor. While the glass boat was better against sharp objects, she could not take hard use and abuse as well as the wood version like getting crushed at the dock etc.. By 1980 she getting tired and looked like a patchwork quilt from repairs so I decided to build a new 4mm okume plywood Catspaw but with epoxy this time. She was much better than her fiberglass sister and served me well, became the boatyard work dinghy after I quit full time cruising. Around 2005 a friend borrowed her and lost her in a hurricane. She was no great loss as the ply was getting soft. She was not sheathed and spent all of her life in the weather. Don't get me wrong, I love composites and will use them in a flash if I think that it will be better. I like to see experimenting. Plywood has the advantage that it is cheap, user friendly, light and tough. I sincerely hope that you can hand your carbon Spindrift down through generations but only time will tell. Here is a picture of a Spindrift 9 nesting, working hard for her owners. They are about two thirds of their way around the world and I suspect that after they finish, their Spindrift will be ready for another lap with a just a modest refresh. https://sailwiththeflo.wordpress.com/our-dinghy/

I have gotten pretty intimate with the 5.80 plans recently so I will attempt to answer these questions. I have seen and created all or some of the above suggestions but I think that Don has struck the right balance for this boat. It not a gunkholer and never will be. It is a no compromise deep water boat. The keel profile is a heavy steel plate that also has the bulb profile. There is a heavy steel flange curved to the hull rocker which he wants welded by a certified welder (there is so much weld length that I would be very confident of my welding). This flange is bolted with 5 pairs of bolts through 5 heavy oak floors. The lead bulb is made in two halves with three large bolts bolting the three parts together. The bolt holes in the lead are counter bored for the heads and nuts, and faired with a soft filler so that it can be dug out. The idea is to have a simple strong structure that is the ultimate in simplicity, strong, reliable with the maximum righting moment for the weight and not interfere with the limited interior. It can be trailed but needs to have a deep ramp to launch. I have trailed a J22 which was possible but restricting. The keel can be all easily unbolted and man handled if necessary, say to get it into a container or long term storage.

On looking a little closer I see that the 3/4" x 1" cleat that tops the side bulkheads is not installed yet. it connects the side bulkhead to the seat.

You are still going at an incredible pace and with very nice results. I see that everything is done for installing the seat tops real soon but I see one omission that I hope that you just have not gotten around to yet and that is the cleats on the forward bulkhead and the transom. They support the ends of the seat tops and go between the side stringers and the side tanks.