Jknight611

Thanks much guys , and we PLAN to take you up on your offer Steve. I put Coppercoat on the bottom but this spring Kalos (with Coppercoat) almost grew to the bottom so I put an ablative bottom paint on it and this boat will get it too. Quite disappointed with the Coppercoat in semi salt water. Our marina is on a river so more fresh most of the time probably had a lot to do with the growth on the bottom.

Well, today marks 2 years on the Looper build. The structure is complete, the interior is coming together and the exterior is multiple layers of Awlgrip 545 primer and lots of longboard sanding. I was originally planning to be completed by now but…. I have decided to use the Orca system as my navigation system, largely because of it integration to NEMA 2000 is pure magic when played with in the shop! Everything connects with these cool little connectors and the system seems to sort out what’s what. I might be able to steer the boat via the autopilot from my iWatch from the foredeck all with the can-bus system. Seems to work indoors but… Been incredibly hot here in my personal sauna with sanding dust so I have sewn up the interior cushions and tried to build little items in air conditioning. With B&B’s able assistance in dimensions and weight we have “ordered” the trailer. Sure costs plenty to be a kid nowadays. ‘Still shooting for the Messabout this year but not sure if the boat will be completely outfitted if we make it. (See last sentence in last paragraph) A link to my current progress https://photos.app.goo.gl/8ady6twen48hxSv68

On board 3D printer…… Alan, you need to get out of the shop more!

Coppercoat saga……our boat has been in the marina pretty much continuously for about 3 years and I have been tickled with Coppercoat’s performance keeping “stuff” from growing on the boat. This year has been an unusual year, lots of rain has displaced the saltwater in our marina and allowed a dense carpet of Berber carpet like growth. We also have had a major spider attack which is a colossal mess!. So just completed 3 coats of Microlon CRC bottom paint. Over the last few years the Travelift market “down south” has taken a bunch of hurricane induced damage, so the remaining machines have carte blanche on price!

As we all do I get an endless string of “sale” emals on boat jewelry. I noticed some discussion on ballast pumps on the Mk3 series, Hodges Marine has the bronze Jabsco wake board pumps on sale, about 1/2 price. This is the pump I installed on my Core Sound 20.3 build quite a while back and it has pumped a lot of water in and out of the ballast tank. Only negative is noise, it howls!

You boat is beautiful, really going to be a treat to use it. Vacuum bagging sure gives a great finish, good resin ratio, everything! Wish I had bagged some of the more intricate areas of my current build.

Been several comments on the windvane self steering on Alan and Paul on the EC2026. We have an B&B Designs windvane on Kalos. Works like magic! I have always felt that I could feel minor wind shifts as we sail along, naw, watch the vane react to the tiniest wind shift is so cool! I have said numerous times I want to make a bracket to use a tiller pilot attached to the windvane rudder so when we motor or whatever we can replace the vane sensing with the electronic brain but yet to happen, works pretty good as it! IMG_0834.mov

The foam we built the deckhouse with is 25mm which is very close to an inch or is it vice versa? After a brief introduction I agree it is some cool stuff to work with. You will enjoy it. Once you pre coat and first layer of glass, no difference. I may have cheated somewhat. I have some areas that are a little tight radius for the glass to want to follow the foam. This technique is only applicable in Southern Mississippi, and I assume no responsibility if it makes a sticky mess, (that’s what a rasp is designed to cure). There, that’s said.. After some of my tighter radius areas precoat had gelled I took little 1/4 X 3/4 ish inch long pieces of basting tape to hold the glass into place till I could saturate it with epoxy. Sure made it more manageable not to have the glass 8 feet from you in a pile on the floor. Tried industrial sized straight pins with some success but tiny pieces of basting tape worked great. Tried blue masking tape but that seemed to pull the glass out of column. The tiny pieces of basting tape seemed to disappear/disolve/or just go away after saturated with epoxy.

The Looper deckhouse is PVC foam with 1708 biaxial glass, single ply on the inside, single ply on the outside with up to 4 ply where some components with be mounted.

Not sure if the foam you are using is the same as the foam that the Looper deckhouse is built from, we sure got practice in stirring epoxy! Seems like we were precoating a sponge. The overhead of the Looper has some relatively large unsupported areas and after laminating both sides we could hold a square dance on the top!. I will mention peel ply….

The insulation on Kalos is super nice. The boat has been in a marina (mostly) for 3 years and no unusual smalls, drips, or condensation issues. Building the entire boat with foam will be a game changer.

That is a nice jig. For us the planking was rather amazing, it planked up so quickly that Carol started hauling galley supplies out to the shop.

Congratulations Joe, good to see the new boat’s progress. I am so very confident you will love the design. I am here to help when you do the heavy lifting, other than sanding……

A day of rest, 78 f and 100% humidity. That’s water streaking the bottom paint running off the hull.

The Mathew Flinders cabin is foam with ply skin on both sides and it works great. Surprising amount of insulation with that technique. This is PVC foam that will glassed on both sides, currently only the inside is glassed. The fore cabin is the same construction and I had concerns about it till I glassed the second side. It as firm as the sidewalk. This is an easier technique than the built up as I did on the Flinders.