Team Seacats

I took a picture of the new SailMax.biz kevlar center traveler mount. Sometimes rigging is as much about personal preference as functionality. Originally, the cleat for the control of the traveler is mounted to the traveler itself and slides up and down as the mainsail traveler moves. Personally, I feel that it makes the line slightly more prone to tangles but mostly I don’t like it because I don’t ever really know at what angle the traveler line is going to be. If the cleat is mounted in the center of the rear beam, I can count on it being in the same spot and usually grab it without looking. Obviously a lot of folks feel the same way and SailMax.biz came up with a great solution. This mount will mount to all Nacra / Inter catamarans with an extruded “D” shaped beam.

I covered the new hatch/port in the port hull last night to keep the dew from getting into the sealant. I uncovered it this morning and it looks great. I like these Beckson ports because they have a nib on the inside for attaching a screw for a lanyard (so you don’t drop the thing overboard when open). They also have a larger thread that is less likely to jam and a tapered O-ring seal that seals better than the other ports I’ve used in the past.

The Self tacker installation went anything but smoothly. What should have taken about an hour took nearly three. I first discovered that the end of the mount was bent and probably happened somewhere during shipping (it was wrapped in bubble wrap so it wasn’t evident until I had unwrapped it). I needed to remove the Harken traveler track so I could straighten the base unit using a vice. It’s not that it’s hard to bend – it’s aluminum – it’s just that it was bent in a funny place and I needed to support it properly to get it back to shape. I had about 4 of the 12 screws retaining the track that were galled and difficult to get out. I had to retap those holes and run the screws through a die to clean up the threads and it went back together very well. I also noticed, like my F18 did, that the self tacker had four sharp points on the traveler stop – and we don’t like sharp things on a sailboat. I ground and polished these points and applied a little “Georgia” anodizing (spray paint). I then had to lay out the positions for the mounts on the front beam. Since my F18 has the same beam, spinnaker pole, and mast base position, I used it as a guide. I first measured and drew a straight line on the beam that matched the upper edge of the “T” shapped tabs that the tacker pivots on. I then marked the position for the first two inner tabs measureing them from the tacker and from center of the mast post. Then, because the self tacker still wasn’t perfectly symmetrical, I held the tacker up to the front beam and marked the location for each tab. The 3/16″ holes were drilled, 5200 applied copiously, and each tab was riveted in place. I elected to set the stainless rivets by hand since it could be viewed as a good hand strength excersize – it really wasn’t that bad (those weights at the gym are paying off!). I then pinned the tacker in place but found that I had several interferences with the tabs that resulted in the tacker only having about 5 degrees of freedom – it should have more like 110 degrees of freedom. Comparing again with My F18, it appears that a couple of the stainless tabs are shorter letting a couple of legs hit rivet heads and weld fillets, and that the one rivet I had to replace from my stock (I lost one of the supplied rivets) has a larger dome. With my frustration level peaked, I decided to move on to some other projects for the time being.

I then sprayed gelcoat as a test on a 3′ section of the hull. Remember the spot where I overheated the core and had to repair the same area twice? I was almost as interested to see how my fairing job came out as I was to see how difficult the gelcoat was going to be to work with. I was pleased on both aspects. There are tons of conflicting advice with regard to dealing with gelcoat and it’s difficult to sort through it all. However, I now have a plan. I was limited with the materials I had available for this test and thinned the gelcoat with acetone instead of, what I intend to use, styrene. I also top coated it with PVA mold release to seal the gelcoat from the air (for a full cure) instead of using the wax additive to the gelcoat as I intend to do in the final run. I made a quick trip to a pharmacy to get a baby medicine dropper so I could accurately measure the MEKP hardner. I first thinned the gelcoat and then and mixed in about 1.25% hardner to gelcoat. I found that, as I was advised, the acetone evaporates too quickly and was probably mostly gone from the time the gelcoat left the gun and hit the hull. This resulted in substantial orange peel (surface that looks like the outer peel of an orange). Some organge peel is expected – but I could certainly tell that it was too thick to lay down well. I then cleared the spray gun with acetone (twice) and poured in PVA mold release and applied. It went down smoothly and after a few hours the gelcoat had kicked and cured. If you’ve never worked with gel coat, it is a polyester based resin and will not “dry” like paint – it has to form molecular bonds in order to become hardened just like fiberglass polyester resin. It also has the risk of hardening in the spray gun if you take too long or get your hardener ratio wrong…and THEN if you don’t get the hardener ratio correct or seal the surface from air, you end up with tons of goo to remove from the object you just sprayed it on. While the risks are higher than working with paint, gelcoat does give you a thick repairable surface that can take a good bit of abuse but still look great after a few minutes with a buffer. We’ll need this feature for the multiple full-speed beach landings we expect in the Tybee 500.

I then went back to examine the self tacker and decided that I was still too frustrated to work with it. So I started on the trailer box. It needed to be mounted to the trailer and have hardware installed to secure the lid. I made a trip to the hardware store to pick up some materials and decided to go ahead and carpet the inside of the box. I mounted the box to the trailer by first placing some scrap pieces of marine carpet between the box and the trailer, then placing three 1/8″ aluminum reinforcing strips along the bottom inside of the box. I drilled a tap-sized hole through the strip, the box, the carpet, and into the trailer cross members. Then I came back and drilled through holes through the strips and the bottom of the box. I then ran a tap into the trailer cross member so it will directly receive the bolt. I countersunk the reinforcing strips so the flathead screws would sit flush, smathered 5200 between the strip and the bottom of the box (to adhere it firmly), put locktight on the screws, and bolted it down. I then vacuumed out the box, and used contact cement to work in the capet – first gluing it up one side, then gluing it in the corner, then down the center strips, then the other corner, and finally up the other side – trimming it to fit. I then cut several small strips and glued them to the top lip of the box to form a gasket for the lid (keep down on the rubbing and the noise). In between rounds of letting the contact cement cure, I cleaned up the enormous quantity of tools and equipment I had unleashed on the backyard today. I’m quite happy with the progress made this weekend – if nothing else it served as a really good endurance workout!