Jknight611

Some time building boats isn’t as glamorous as adding big pieces and thinking I’ll be done in 2 weeks. Spent 3 days messing with PEX for the domestic water system. if there is a market for 4-6 inch pieces of PEX we may have a cottage industry! Cooled off a bit so we are planning on putting the lid on in a few days. I will update the google site tomorrow and show my either progress or lack there of!

Looks like another great time! Sorry to miss the raft-up, those are always a good time. Kalos was at the Madisonville Wood Boat festival again this year (that why we missed the Messabout) . She again got first place for sailboats. With the amount of drones in the air I am quite certain there will be YouTube videos soon.

Hi Peter, Carol and I were both very impressed with the quality of your cabinetry aboard your boat. Very beautiful boat, and I am still remembering how incredibly responsive it is to rudder inputs!

Update! Maybe not the exactly same topic, but quality lines count. I bought some EBay specials for the first set of halyards on Kalos. Initially they were hung up to relieve any twisting and they looked just fine. They were reasonably easy to splice and I thought “score”. Well after some use the lines started to hockle badly. Kalos has internal (in the mast) halyards and the hockling was inside the mast. Took a bit to figure out why the super excessive friction in my spiffy “all lines in the cockpit”. I have converted the halyards into spring lines and replaced the halyards with quality lines.

We have stayed in Bonner Bay several times, excellent anchorage. And there is pretty good fishing there if anyone is interested.

Likely won’t make this year’s Messabout….. lookout next year!

Well, the Looper project is progressing nicely (I think) engine is in and basically hooked up with all the attendant hoses and wires. I haven’t put the cabin top on yet thinking it might be cooler with it off, now that the temps have moderated a bit the lid is the last major piece to add. Started on the wiring, and boy there are some large gauge wires! The main DC wire from the batteries to the distribution point behind the helm is 4/0 wire. Think tinned welding cable. Started some priming in the V berth area and that help get the scale of the area it’s very roomy and should be very comfortable.

New lines are like new tires on your vehicle. Sure feels good!

I don’t think sawdust can be removed from a building. Unallocated building materials yes but you will always have a patina of sawdust. After Kalos left the nest I vacuumed, then blew the building out with an air hose, and finally a fine mist of water from a garden hose. Naw, still dusty.

Terribly sad state of events.

Looking good Steve! Glad you are enjoying your electric outboard. The most asked question about Kalos electric drive is “how far can you go?” I honestly don’t know but we do really enjoy the electric auxiliary drive. Initially I had “range anxiety “ but that seems to have evaporated. The instant torque makes messing around in the marina so easy. I would like to convert our Core Sound 20.3 to an electric outboard.

I start work at 7am and stop at 90 degrees, so progress is slowed when pot life of the epoxy shortened and the builder melts. We have our epoxy stash in an air conditioned room trying to gain a bit of pot life. Forward deck and deckhouse glassed into place. Thinking about various hinge/latch options on the anchor winch compartment lid.

Hi Joe, the Coppercoat seems to be effective on Kalos, it was chosen because it “trailers” well. Carol mixed and mixed and mixed, a friend and I rolled it on. 5 coats with some of the “leftovers “ on the leading edges of the bow, keel and rudder. The copper tends to settle in the roller pan so pretty much constant stirring seems to work best. It rolls about like a heavy latex paint. Hope to see some “vertical “ progress this week, and yep, it’s durn hot in the shop.

Update on the Looper project. Been some minor delays because of family commitments but back at work more “intensively “. Coppercoat is finally finished on the bottom, any idea how much fun it is sanding the bottom with 320…. It seems the formulation has changes slightly since we applied Coppercoat on Kalos! Much harder! The photo with the pinkish look is the sanded and completed Coppercoat . Anyway she is all sanded, upright and awaiting the deckhouse.

Here is yet another update on Kalos, this was in October, during the B&B Messabout.

Gorilla duct tape….. I made some bushings today in the Looper keel today with this tape, and it seems to be holding.

Years ago I built a nesting 2 Paws. We lived in “the city “ then and had a very nice older lady that lived across the street. She took great interest in the little boat build and would toddle over daily to supervise the project. When I got to the part where I was to saw the boat in half, she got really upset and actually called my wife at work to tell her I was sawing “the little bateau “ up. Nice to have neighbors that care.

Glad to hear about the Beta 38, we will be picking ours up next month. The plan to put as much solar on top as possible, and have as much the domestic loads done by the solar system as possible. It seems the solar panel technology is still accelerating so 1KW plus is entirely feasible. We have space allocated for 3 Epoch 460 ah (or similar ) batteries. The solar system on Kalos, our sailboat has exceeded all expectations. In the almost 3 years we have only plugged into shore power once last winter (our version of winter..35 degrees) to run a small electric heater when we were not in our home marina.

Almost finished with the “fill a fair, fill a fair, fill a fair, fill a fair….etc.

Well, with it being spring in the south, the wasps are homesteading all over the place. I have been doing some clean up and auxiliary filetting inside the boat. Know how crowded it gets under the boat with a bunch of angry wasps…..

Hi Joe, hope your project is going well, yea, with the cabinets already installed ( wanted the structure of the cabinetry to help spread the load) and the boarding platform on the rear kinda hard to figure a reasonable way to turn it over. We had 4 guys and 1 lady, took about 30 minutes start to finish to flip it over. Been sailing a few days but plan on starting glassing the bottom soon. Got a killer deal on 7 “kits” of Coppercoat so want to complete the bottom before going back upright. The bow is so tall, angled and slick so I am fabricating scaffolding to complete the forward 4-5 feet of the bow area.

With a lot of help from our friends the Looper is upside down! The inside is all glassed and all the cabinetry and soles has been in but removed for the flop. The outside is glassed almost to the waterline and as you can see the filling of the glass has started. Amazing how accurate the parts fit together, there are/were a bunch of parts but been reasonably easy to assemble. Poor epoxy pump!

Yea, probably time for a recap of Kalos. We have continued to add minor updates/upgrades to the rigging with the intent to make rigging easier. We can now rig from arriving at the boat ramp to motoring away in 1 hour 15 minutes. Not much longer than our Core Sound 20.3. Board up probably draws less than 30 inches, about 60 inches board down. The antifouling is Coppercoat, the boat normally lives in a marina. The boat sails beautifully, we have had her in 35 kts winds several times with no concerns at all. Initially we had range anxiety with the electric pod drive, but that has all but evaporated. The electric drive is just a small part of the sailing experience on Kalos, we actually don’t think much about it, it maneuvers much more positively than any boat I have ever sailed. Full torque at low speed and instant reverse stops the boat pronto. If we were to build it again, electric pod drive, no question. We have 200 amp/hr Battle Borne for the house batteries, 240 watts solar for the house, the Torqeedo 24-3500 battery and it totally adequate. 350 watts panel to charge the Torqeedo battery, with a interconnect buss if we decide to put all 3 panels to charge the motor battery (never had the need other than testing). We have shore power but have never bothered to plug in. We have about 60 gallons of fresh water, we have a solar water heater, refrigerator and freezer. Longest I have stayed aboard is about 2 weeks and been as comfortable as any other boat we lived aboard. Long winded answer, but it is a cool boat! We have invited and given talks at several local sailing clubs about both the electric system and the cat ketch rig. Coupla days ago we tacked down a river with a local hot J24 sailor and he really enjoyed short tacking in the channel.

Maine is a fantastic sailing destination, we had our Core Sound there 4 or 5 years ago. We had minor problems on where to leave the truck an trailer. Great sailing, beautiful shoreline. The beauty of trailerable boats! The scenery never gets old!

Hi Steve, just checking in! We built a similar cover for our Core Sound 20.3, it was/is a good thing! We could have sold seating under it during the Texas 200. Sure is nice an anchor and it seems to help sailing at anchor a bit. Just got home from a week or so on the Flinders and it will be getting a riding sail. It likes to sail around like the Core Sound does at anchor.