For my son, master of word-play…

Ravenswing’s daggerboard is almost ready to paint. We’re being rather methodical and not-rushed about the fairing work. (Because the mast is still months away).

To finish shaping the board, we needed to add back the 1″ wide knife-edge taper to the trailing side. It was done in solid fiberglass on one side, a bit of thick putty in the middle, and another glass strip for the other side.

Then as the Aussies say, we coated the whole board in fairing bog. That’s epoxy mixed with the red micro balloons, mixed up like a very runny peanut butter and spread on as evenly as possible.

Also note the 4mm thick wood strips added to both sides of the portion of the board that stays in the trunk while underway. This finishes the ‘solve’ to the board having been too loose in the trunk case while sailing. (Geoff, I didn’t use plastic because this wood was sitting right in the garage and was easier to rip to the exact thickness needed)

Here’s the fairing bog after the first session with the long-board sanding paper. This nasty task brought back bad memories of the long-boarding purgatory from hull fairing a few years ago. Builders, are your arms burning yet, just reading this?

The dark spots are the too-low points, ie the sanding board isn’t hitting there to turn the red bog to the dull pink. We sanded further, looking for that fair-surface balance. You don’t want to go too far, though, and destroy the intended overall shape. getting better with a second fill and sand pass, but you can see we went too thin with the bog for a long section about 4″ in from the trailing edge.

There was another pass done after this photo, and by the weekend we should be able to show you the finished fairing work.

Update on the little 4hp Johnson: took the carb apart a second time and cleaned even deeper, but it still ran funky. Punt. It’s with Outboard Bill in Sausalito. I authorized two hours of search and rescue…

So when your wife gets you a shiny new pickup and you scrape together some dough to get it lifted up and accessorized, you DON’T expect the 4×4 shop to call with “well Mr. Carter, we had an incident on Saturday…”they got the suspension upgrade done and winch bumper mounted, then backed it into a partially rolled shop door. Geez. At the body shop now.

More reasons the daggerboard is taking too long: excellent rolling distractions. Who wouldn’t want to try out a genuine 60’s dune buggy on the Plumas County dirt track?!and while we’re in the north Sierra, hit some excellent single track on the new Hightower LT. holy cow, this bike is a bad ass! If any of you Ravenswing fans want to do some mountain biking when we’re not sailing, just holler. They’re lined up in the garage :)

Thanks Mom for road tripping to the Sierras with your kid. That was fun.

Ok, we’ll get a bunch of boat painting chores done this upcoming supposedly hot weekend. Literally watching paint dry!

You were probably wondering why it’s taking so long to reshape that daggerboard. Truth is, we split just after the last blog post. A great vacation trip to UT and CO. Once back home and the trailer cleaned up for the next adventure, we got out the shaping tools. Mom, the red stuff is the fairing compound applied directly to the foam core, getting the understructure shape just right before the final outer skin of fiberglass is applied.

Keith should be happy with this new foil shape. We’ve gone from a 12:1 aspect ratio to about 9:1. And remember there’s still a final 1″ knife trailing edge to add back once we get more epoxy on hand.

Next up was wrapping the whole board again with 17oz double bias glass. you’d think we’d be old hands at this by now. Got all materials prepped in advance and decided to wet out the glass on a table in the shed. Well, the combo of a fast epoxy hardener and the big cloth being folded many times to fit the tiny table led to heat build up. As I draped the wet cloth over the board the epoxy started kicking off. There was some frantic pressing in place, then realization that some had to be cut away and (thankfully there was enough) new glass cloth added. And of course, because the project is quite large, our normal “stretchalon” vac bag wasn’t quite large enough. I used 4mil basic plastic taped into a bag but that stuff just doesn’t handle as well. Only saw this on the pump and today we found some air pocket lumps on the board that mean a bit of grinding and reglassing.

Ugh, guess we’re not to be called pro yet.

Seattle Geoff stopped by today as he’s curious about current examples of upwind foils (he’s building a high performance 37′ cat now) and I was embarrassed he saw my vac bagging flub. He was kind about it :)

It’s been a few months since we finished the portabote seats and transom makeover. Today it finally got wet, using the Petaluma River launch ramp that is two miles from the house. Carlos, that thing still leaks – I need to lift it up, get some dye in the water and search for the hole in one of those seams.

The 4hp Johnson hadn’t been run in three years, including the fact that our 2016 oak tree fall had sideswiped it. Couldn’t get it started the other day so we put on the bravery pants, watched some YouTube and tore into the carb.

I cleaned out nasty old varnished gas and bad particles. But there’s still something affecting the main jet (?) because today it wouldn’t rev up beyond about 1/2 throttle. If any of you know what I should try next, please holler. This is an early 90’s OMC 2 cyl, 4hp. It’s VERY clean, acquired by a nice old man who only used it in Donner Lake.

We “ordered” the new mast six months ago now. The anxiety level about the time delay is high. Spoke to the builder on Thursday and he’s finished the ones ahead of us. Now they are doing some maintenance on the 144-head braiding machine and reloading it with the right weight carbon filament for us. It will also be used to make a boom for a J-Class boat. That’s pretty incredible sounding and somehow ironic that our main mast is the same construction as another boat’s boom! The builder won’t bother giving me a target finish date at this point – we just need to stay on top of the progress.

Alright, you’ve read this far, so maybe you’ll be mildly interested in the Carters’ western road trip. It can’t always be 100% about sailing after all. Here’s the trusty co-pilot in her pickup truck

Once into Nevada we jumped on to America’s Loneliest Highway (US 50)

Went underground in Great Basin NP at Lehman Caves

Then had the young’uns with us in Moab for their spring break. Jeanne rented us two of these

It was Jeep Safari Week in Moab

We spent a Saturday afternoon on the CO river

Met up with our Sierra Buttes Trails Stewardship team for awesome mountain biking

Jeanne found her hiking legs again and we promised each other to do more of it! Doesn’t she look great?

After Moab the SBTS team went to a conference in Telluride, which was nice but at 10,000′ on a cold morning I somehow pushed the new truck into a throttle sensor fault mode, which devolved into this on I-70 a coupe days laterthat was late on a Friday, so Grand Junction Chrysler handed us a loaner car for the weekend and we explored the beautiful area

Got more riding in at Fruita’s “lunch loops”

And the truck turned out to be a 30 minute fix on Monday for some electronics minor recall thing. A few extra days in the American West and we found various decorations to make the new trailer more homey. It’s just missing a nice framed portrait of Ravenswing in there! Maybe once the new mast is stepped…

We got back to the daggerboard reshaping this morning by digging out a bag of foam core scraps. This would take longer, piecing together odd bits. But it’s better than waiting days for a new shipment, and that stuff is expensive. So with the little tabletop bandsaw we got busy.

I’d forgotten that the 5lb density foam core is difficult to shape with sanders. For anyone else doing this, these abrasive wheels on an angle grinder so a nice job without leaving bad gouges. Easily found at Harbor Freight, etc.

Here after rough shaping.

Then we cut off the last trailing 1″, which will get rebuilt later with solid glass and putty so as to achieve a sharp knife-edge for smooth water exit.

After lunch we ran down to Napa Autoparts for some body filler. Since this will be buried under the fiberglass, we’re not worried about exposing bondo to the sea. And it has the huge benefit of hardening in 20 minutes. So the afternoon was spent flipping the board over, sanding one side while the other had its next skim coat hardening up. It took four passes to get where we’re happy this new core will give a fair fiberglass’s surface.

Ok, the tail end is ready; now we need a plan for bulking up the forward portions. Here’s how much it needs to grow:

Anyone have a clever idea of what to use for bulking up the board? Jeanne thinks craft-shop balsa that come in thin strips, adhered to flexible matting. Or we could rip very thin cedar strips on the table saw. I’ve heard of “core mat” but don’t know anything about it. Any good experience is most welcome.

When we built the big daggerboard from the same cedar stock as the hulls, there were a couple of days where the workshop smelled like Christmas and the forest as every plane stroke during the board shaping released more cedar aroma. And then it all got sealed up with epoxy, glass and carbon, never to be seen or smelled again. Until today. It was major surgery, but at least it smelled great.

Recall the prior post where you saw how “high aspect” the foil shape was. Over 12:1, and that’s likely causing some stalling, and contributing to the howling noises when Ravenswing got up to speed. The experts agreed, it needs a more aggressive rounding shape up front and more severe taper. So we pulled out the original plans, did some tracing, resulting in some fattening and shortening fore/aft.

The board is a bit under 2-3/4″ at its widest. The exit slot at the bottom of the hull is 3-5/8″. So the new shape is going up to 3-1/3″ and 28-1/2 wide, for a 9:1 ratio. The last 11″ wide aft are too thick, so that has to go. The front 18″ or so are too narrow, so that area will be augmented over the existing shape.

Step 1, saw in to one’s well built, but poorly shaped big ass board.

Then we cut 1-1/4″ off the aft edge of the rectangular head of the board so it will fit in front of a new shock-absorbing heavy rubber insert we’ll add to the back edge inside the daggerboard trunk on the boat. Great idea from Keith!!!

Got the board level and plumb up on a makeshift table, ready for a new tail end. This feels like we’re building an airplane wing – fun.

Now we need to transfer the skinny pattern into wood and foam core. We had the off-cut from the shape-checking guide board to use in transferring the angle to the table saw. Note the light piece of wood against the saw fence is the same as what was on the dining table earlier.

So while the rest of you were out partying Friday night, we played with string and wood blocks in the tiny shed.

And in this final photo, see how the new shape will butt up against the rectangular head section. It’s those little sharp triangular areas on each side that sit on the exit slot block at the bottom of the boat when the board is deployed. This weekend we’ll fill in between these wood blocks with foam core and get this new tail shaped and ready for fiberglass. I have a feeling adding the right shape to the board on the front half will be much trickier than this aft-half job.

For those Farrier builders reading this, fear not, this surgery did not touch the super-strong area of the board (embedded hardwood insert and 6 layers of carbon uni the full length of the board). Thankfully the surgery started about 4″ aft of all that.

And while on the subject of good smelling wood, here’s a gratuitous shot of last weekend’s homework. This time the missus didn’t just hand over a photo, it was a whole how-to book of iron pipe projects. This is marital bliss – Jeanne gets to display her treasures and Greg gets to see all her treasures find a nice consolidated home. Win win, and the vacuum glides along like the shelves aren’t even there!