More Deck and Interior Progress

Work is ongoing on the port and starboard cabin interiors, as both forward decks have now been on for several weeks and the plan is to work my way aft with completing the main interior areas and then making and installing stern decks. The port hull is still a bit ahead of the starboard, as can be seen below. Here the galley sink and shelves have been installed and the outboard cabin side is filleted in place. Only a small amount of cosmetic filleting remains to be done in this area.

Here's a view looking into the port galley hull from the area where the companionway will be. Another small shelf will be added on top of the middle stringer on either side of the sink, to utilize an otherwise wasted space. The companionway steps are also installed but not visible from this angle.

Here's an exterior view of the port hull with the outer cabin side installed.

From this angle you can see the plywood portlight trim rings and how they have been filleted to the cabin side. These will be fiberglassed over right along with the surrounding surfaces. The Lexan will be fitted from the inside with matching trim rings to hold it in place.

Below is a view of the port foredeck just after installation. The temporary screws have been removed and the holes filled with epoxy.

Here's the starboard foredeck after fairing and pre-coating with epoxy. The decks will be fiberglassed next and then the hatch coamings will be built.

Inside the starboard hull I'm working on the layout of the shelves and panel faces that will house the 12-volt switch panels, battery voltage monitoring meter, VHF radio, SSB receiver, stereo and an AC inverter.

Most of these items will be mounted under the shelf in the companionway area of the hull, where you can see the open vertical framing here.

Removable panels of teak-faced 6mm ply will be screwed to the outside of this vertical frame. The instruments will be fitted in the removable panels, and all wiring organized inside under the shelf and accessible by removing the panels. Now that these sheer-level shelves have been fitted in the starboard hull, in the next couple of work sessions I can finish and install the outer cabin side.

Upright and Moving Forward

Now that the drudgery of fairing and sanding the hulls is behind me, I've been having so much fun boatbuilding that I haven't wanted to take the time to blog about it. Since my last post I've turned the hulls upright and with several days available to work lots of progress has been made on various interior parts and the decks. The port hull, which I built first, is still a bit further along than the newer starboard hull, but I've cut and fit the foredeck and I'm working on finishing out everything below this deck area so it can be installed. Below is the starboard foredeck during initial dry fitting.

After aligning and fastening the deck stringers with temporary screws, the deck was removed for gluing on the stringers and filleting them to the deck undersides. All these surfaces were then coated with two coats of epoxy.

In the hull itself I began making and fitting the removable shelves in the hold compartment, like the ones I designed for the port hull. This division of space will make this huge storage area much more usable.

Back in the port hull, I finished the fitting of the custom-made galley sink and drilled it for the drain fitting, and then cut another shelf to continue the line of the sink counter forward into the front half of the cabin.

You can see this shelf with its fiddle rail fitted, below on top of the starboard deck. The smaller shelf in the foreground fits below it, on the interior hull stringer. The other assembly in the background will become the companionway steps for the port hull.

Here are the above parts installed. The galley sink and adjoining shelf forward, and the small shelf below it (just above the cordless drill in the photo). The clamps around bulkhead 3 are holding on a narrow trim strip of teak that is being laminated to the inside cutout of the bulkhead. A second laminate on top of this one will build it up to sufficient thickness. In the foreground below the bulkhead 3 cutout, you can see that the counter assembly for the stove has also been installed.

Moving forward in the port hull, here is a view of all the sections below the foredeck. The aft section is the foot of the bunk, and is varnished because it is part of the cabin interior. All areas above the bunks in the cabins will get 2-3 coats of marine spar varnish to protect the epoxy from U.V. light. Next is the bow hold compartment, with shelves removed in this photo. It is painted the same off-white that will be used on the decks. In the bow the sealed buoyancy compartment is painted white to allow easy inspection.

I finished today by installing the port fordeck Here it has been glued down and held in place with temporary screws. No fasteners will be left in as there is plenty of gluing surface for the epoxy along the sheer clamps and deck beams, and the edges will be reinforced with fiberglass wrapping to the bottom of the sheer clamps.

The foredeck hatch has been cut-out and a watertight double-coaming style wooden hatch will be fitted on each foredeck.

Origo 3000 Alcohol Stove

A shiny new Origo 3000 2-burner alcohol stove just arrived.

This is how the 2-burner stove will be incorporated into the galley on Element II. This is the main cabin area in the port hull, looking towards what will be the companionway entrance. The stove shelf and companionway step are just propped in place in this photo. Note also the sink, described in an earlier post, located on the outboard side of the cabin. This arrangement still allows easy entry into the cabin, sufficient room to turn around and sit facing either forward or aft, and access to the 7-foot length of bunk space forward of bulkhead 3. The aft bunk area in this hull, where you can see epoxy mixing bowls and other junk, will be used for storage of galley gear and supplies.

The stove I ordered for the minimal galley on Element II arrived Saturday. It is an Origo 3000, the ubiquitous non-pressurized alcohol boat stove made in Sweden and found on so many boats around Europe and North America. Marine alcohol stoves are criticized by many, and propane seems to be the fuel of choice for most modern cruising boats, but my reasons for choosing this type of stove are obvious when the focus of the boat and it’s intended use is taken into consideration.

First of all, there is simplicity. Simple, yet functional and efficient are the guiding themes of the Tiki 26 design in the first place, and something I want to adhere to in all systems and installations as much as possible. Sure, it would be even simpler to take a portable one-burner camp stove like I used on my sea kayaking trips and on my smaller Wharram cats, the Hitia 17 and the Tiki 21. But Element II will be going to sea, not just sailing from anchor to anchor in the course of a day. There will be a need to cook simple meals and make a pot of coffee or a cup of tea while underway, and this requires a dedicated stove mounted in a secure location out of the weather. The Origo 3000 is compact for a 2-burner stove and optional pot holders and gimbals are made for it that allow cooking in most any conditions. Camping stoves are fine at anchor, but I don’t want a stove with disposable propane bottles down below when it’s rough out. I’ve had too many leaks from these canisters in the past to trust them, and besides, all the camp type stoves I’ve used in the past quickly began to rust when used in the marine environment. The Origo 1500 one-burner stove I had on my Grampian 26 Intensity, however, is now 7 years old and still in great shape, thanks to the quality of the stainless steel used in its construction.

The great advantage of the Origo non-pressurized alcohol stoves is that they don’t use moving parts, or depend on secure seals or pressure pumps that have to be rebuilt often with everyday use. These stoves are as simple as it gets. Just keep the tanks filled with alcohol, open the burner valve when you’re ready to cook, and strike a match. It doesn’t get any simpler or more reliable than that. I especially like the fact that the stove is totally self-contained. No need for complex tank installations outside the cabin with hoses to the stove, as in propane, and no external parts or systems to worry about. If there is alcohol in the tank, the burner simply works, without fail. Another advantage of a self-contained stove like this is that just like the camp stoves; the Origo 3000 can be easily moved out into the cockpit or even taken ashore for cooking when the boat is not underway. I will probably do a lot of cooking in the cockpit under an awning or in a deck tent when I’m anchored someplace I want to stay awhile.

Cost is another factor in this choice. While the Origo stoves are more expensive than most camping stoves, they are still much less expensive than marine propane stoves and all the associated paraphernalia necessary for a safe installation. A two-burner model like the Origo 3000 falls somewhere in the middle of the price spectrum between the other two options. I got mine brand new from an EBay seller for about half the manufacturer’s retail price.

Safety is a topic much argued about among proponents of different types of marine stoves. I won’t get into this discussion, other than to say that cooking with any kind of stove on a boat requires common sense and a degree of caution. Propane can blow your boat and you with it to pieces. Spilled alcohol burns with an invisible flame and can spread before you know it is happening. James Wharram himself has stated that fire at sea is his biggest fear. It really is the one thing you have worry about most when your boat is as seaworthy as a Wharram. I’ll just say that I like alcohol because quantities of it can be safely carried in sealed containers down below, without the risk of explosion, and I don’t worry about it when the boat’s in a marina and I’m away from it for awhile.

Two other factors concerning alcohol are cost and cooking time, and these are both things I can’t do anything about, so I don’t worry about them. Denatured alcohol is ridiculously expensive, but if you shop around you can find large variations in price. The main thing is to stay away from places like West Marine, where it’s about double what I pay for it at a professional painter’s supply store. When factored into the overall picture, the cost of alcohol does not bother me, because I’m cruising on a simple boat that saves money in so many other ways, such as rarely needing to burn fuel for propulsion, and being able to avoid marinas by having so many anchoring and beaching opportunities due to shallow draft. I can set out with three or four gallons of alcohol and do all the cooking I want for many weeks.

And why should it matter if it takes a few extra minutes to cook a pot of rice or make a pot of coffee? When I’m on Element II I’ll be where I want to be and time isn’t going to matter. Using the Origo 1500 on Intensity I never seemed to notice that it took any longer to cook than on any other stove. Besides, while dinner’s on I’m usually busy doing something else anyway, like steering the boat or studying a chart.

Interior Fixtures

As I've been working on the keel and bulkhead fillets of the second hull, as well as cutting out and fitting the bunk and floor panels, I've been giving more thought to the interior layout of each hull and how the spaces will be used. In his design book Wharram describes the "flexi-space" concept and suggests that in the smaller designs especially that this idea should be used as there is not a lot of room for the built-in "furniture" seen in most yacht interiors. Flexi-space basically means empty hull interiors, where cooking and sleeping gear is stowed below bunks or in bags and then unpacked to be used when needed, just as in camping. On the Tiki 26 this would work well for larger crews of up to four people, using the boat for weekend or vacation trips. All of the berth flats would be available, making it possible to sleep two to a hull when anchored, and cooking could be done on deck under a tent or on the bunk floors just inside one of the companionways. There's nothing wrong with this camping type arrangement, but having done thousands of miles of sea kayaking and plenty of backpacking and other camping, I don't want to have to unpack and set-up "camp" when on board my boat if there is a way around it. Part of the appeal of cruising on a sailboat instead of out of a kayak is that everything can be set-up pretty much permanently and wherever you drop anchor your "camp" looks and feels the same.

Since I'm planning on doing most of my sailing singlehanded, especially on longer trips, I have a clear idea of how I will use each space inside the two cabins and have specific requirements I want to allow for. I still want the option of two dedicated bunks below decks, in the larger forward ends of each cabin, as well as one of the aft bunks to use in the rare case of a third crew member aboard for a short trip. But for the times when I am alone, I plan to use the starboard hull for sleeping and the port hull for cooking. Since I like to be able to brew coffee and cook meals while underway, either on long coastal trips or offshore passages, it is essential to have some sort of built in galley, however minimal. This means a fixed place to secure a stove that can be used underway, and a galley sink to make it easier to fill kettles and pots and to wash up dishes and utensils when it's not feasible to do so on deck with a bucket. To maximize the size of this sink without taking up any more interior space than necessary, I knew I would have to build it in, out of ply and epoxy, rather than buy a stainless sink off the shelf. I spent several hours inside the port hull with pieces of plywood, a tape measure, and components such as the Whale Flipper galley pump I want to use and an old stove I salvaged off my monohull, Intensity. Mocking up the galley like this insured that everything would work and still leave room to move around. I determined that the sink would fit in nicely along the outboard sheer, just under the portlights, and the shelf for the stove would go along the inboard side, below the sheer and just forward of the companionway. The aft bunk in this hull will be used only for storage. Smaller shelves will be fitted under and around the sink and stove fixtures. All this leaves space to sit comfortably either facing aft or forward, and access to the forward bunk is still easy.

After figuring out the placement of these built-in fixtures, I began cutting parts out of 6mm ply. Because of the design, this will be plenty strong without adding any significant weight to the boat. To get a nice fit on interior components like this, it is necessary to measure and cut each piece in the hull, then fit the next piece and glue it on, before moving to the next, etc. This could take days using epoxy, as each stage would have to be wired, screwed, nailed or clamped until the epoxy cured before moving to the next stage. There is a much faster way to do this that I learned from David Halladay of Boatsmith, while working with him in Florida. He and his crew build lots of yacht interiors, many for newly-manufactured vessels. These are completely finished before they are installed in the hulls. Assembly in the design phase as well as in construction is often done with quick drying cyanoacrylate glue -or Superglue. Not the ordinary Superglue found in your local department store, but a superior gap-filling type of Superglue sold in hobby shops, along with a spray-on accelerator that cures it instantly (see photo below). This glue is much more expensive than epoxy, but for certain applications like building these galley parts, it is indispensable. This galley sink and counter in the photos below was completed in about two hours, up to the shaping and coating with epoxy stage. Once it was all assembled and checked for fit, it was removed from the boat for the epoxy work, which included making strong fillets to reinforce all the temporary joints held together with the Superglue.

Below is the first stage, gluing the side panels onto the bottom of the sink counter, which is upside down on the bench. These side panels are cut to fit alongside the outside of the hull, which will form one side of the sink. Using the Superglue along the edge of the panels, it took mere seconds to put them together at right angles to the counter panel. This glue is plenty strong too. As with epoxy, if you smacked these panels with a hammer, wood fibers would tear out before the joint failed. The difference is that the strength is obtained in about 2-3 minutes. The splotches on the wood are simply areas wet with accelerator. This drys in minutes, leaving the wood unstained.

Here's a close-up of the Superglue and accelerator. This glue is Instacure +. The bottles are labeled with the name of the hobby store that carries them, but it is sold by many outlets and more information can be found on the manufacturer's website, at: http://www.bsiadhesives.com/

After gluing the side panels on, I put the counter back in position along the outboard edge of the hull and then measured and cut a bottom panel, which was then glued in place as shown below. To complete the sink I measured and cut a front panel, then removed the whole thing again.

Outside the hull, I fitted a small fiddle rail along the curved surfaces to prevent things placed on the counter from falling in a seaway, and to keep splashed water from the sink contained. The fiddle rail was made of two layers of one-inch by 3/16" teak. Again using the Superglue, I pressed them in place by hand, as these curves would be difficult to clamp. This only took a few minutes, pressing and gluing one piece at a time, then sanding the glued on piece with a belt sander before fitting the next on. (This glue is also sandable, just like epoxy.) The result was a fiddle rail of laminated teak, about 3/8" thick. A nice epoxy fillet was made along the inside of the rail, and wide fillets were made in the inside joints of the sink panels. Below is the result after the first coat of epoxy and the initial fillets. More sanding and smoothing of fillets will be required, as well as 2 more coats of clear epoxy. The sink measures 14" long by 9 1/2" wide and more than 10" deep. This whole counter and sink assembly is extremely light weight, hardly weighing much more than a bucket of similar size.

Here is how it fits inside the galley section of the port hull. A drain will be fitted in the bottom, with a hose connecting it to a thru-hull. No worries about hull integrity on a catamaran like this, as any failure of a fitting below the waterline would be contained by the semented design of the hulls with their watertight bulkheads below the waterline. The sink is also high enough that the drain could be fitted above the waterline, which is an option I might take. Another catamaran advantage is the lack of heeling, so there are also no worries about an off-centerline sink like this back siphoning when the boat is heeled over, as in a monohull.

The middle passageway in the hull is still unobstructed. Opposite the sink and just aft of the middle bulkhead (#3) is the shelf for the stove - which will be a two-burner Origo non-pressurized alcohol unit. I'm using this type of stove because it is self-contained, can be easily moved up on deck for cooking in fair weather at anchor, and it has a well-designed potholder system available. Alcohol stoves are a little slower than propane, but I've used these Origo models extensively and they are extremely reliable and safe.

Using the Superglue made it possible to design and fabricate all these galley parts in one day. Finishing the epoxy work will be another matter, of course, and will be done over time as I fit additional small shelves and other parts in the port hull in preparation for installing the decks and cabin sides.

Below is a photo of the starboard hull with the bunk patterns I made for the port hull fitted in place. The patterns fit perfectly, so I know I have two identical hulls. In the starboard hull I have all the keel and bulkhead fillets done. These are only lacking fiberglass reinforcement before I can begin installing the floor and bunk panels. That will happen in the coming weeks, but for now I'm off to south Florida again for two weeks, leaving tomorrow. I had not planned on going back to work there this year, but David asked for my help on another smaller teak job, so it's back to Palm Beach, where I'm sure I'll learn some more neat tricks working with Boatsmith.