A summer summary...

It's been quite a while since I posted, mostly because it was a very busy summer once the boat hit the water. So let's take a look at some of the events since the boat was launched!

Here's one of the first photos of the boat on the water taken by my sister Bonnie.

A couple weeks later we had the official launch party. Everyone who had contributed to building the boat was invited, the weather cooperated, everyone got at least one ride and the official bottle breaking was held.

A bit of a humorous story goes along with the bottle breaking. I thought a lot about who to ask and finally decided to ask Caitlin to do it and she agreed. I did warn her that failing to break the bottle on the first swing would condemn the boat to a lifetime of bad luck. She clearly took that to heart for when she swung that bottle it was like she was swinging for the bleachers!

There was champagne and glass everywhere! I'm still finding little pieces of green glass. :-) Photo courtesy of Dan Holt who caught this on his cell phone.

Rides were given and everyone had a good time.

All the kids took one last trip together and they wanted MAX SPEED!!! So we did a full speed run and they all had great big smiles when we got back.

At the end of the day a toast was given, in the Tolman tradition, of Yukon Jack to the designer of these fine boats, Renn Tolman.

The rest of the summer was spent fishing (here's the first one caught by Kenneth) ...

Whale watching (a thrill every time!) ...

And generally poking around Southeast Alaska. A trip to Tenakee Springs was made and each trip only reinforced the confidence this boat inspires.

The boat has been put away for the winter, but some final numbers. The motor was run for 139 flawless hours, 487 gallons of fuel was put in the tanks and that means I average 3.5 gallons per hour. Impressive numbers for a 24' boat.

There's still more to do on the boat, but those projects will just have to wait till spring!

Tweaking the prop

New prop today and some very rough numbers and a graph.

Prop: 15.25x15
Weather: Windy and somewhat lumpy seas. I was able to find some calmer water, but some of the runs were done downwind, some upwind. A calm day and two way runs will be required to get better numbers.
Engine: Still some tweaking to do here as well. The recommended RPM range is 5500-5800.

Knots    MPH    Gal./Hr   RPM     MPG  Theo Speed   Slip
2.8      3.22      0.5     630   6.44    4.66      30.9%
4.3      4.95      0.8    1000   6.19    7.40      33.1%
6.0      6.90      1.3    1500   5.31   11.10      37.8%
8.0      9.21      2.1    2000   4.38   14.80      37.8%
12.3    14.15      2.8    2500   5.06   18.50      23.5%
16.5    18.99      3.8    3000   5.00   22.19      14.4%
21.0    24.17      5.0    3500   4.83   25.89       6.7%
23.1    26.58      7.1    4000   3.74   29.59      10.2%
27.3    31.42      8.6    4500   3.65   33.29       5.6%
30.0    34.52     11.1    5000   3.11   36.99       6.7%
33.5    38.55     14.5    5600   2.66   41.43       6.9%

So it looks like the sweet spot is somewhere around 3500RPM right now. We'll see if those numbers can improve. I'd be thrilled to get 5MPG!

It didn't sink...

Yep, after finishing some last minute details the boat went in the water today. It was one of the rare beautiful days with almost flat calm water.

Gotta tell you though, I was really nervous when we went to put it in the water!

She sits about an inch higher at the bow than the stern and I didn't need to cheat the waterline, my graphite is about one and half inches above the water at the stern.
It was floated and run for the two hour break-in period today. Once I sorted out a fuel system boo-boo everything ran great.

Now for the motor. It's quiet at idle, in fact so quiet at idle you have the leave the rear door open and really listen for it. The guy at the fuel dock even commented on how quiet it is.

I've got the wrong prop on it. I was pretty sure when the dealer handed me a 14.5x19 that it was way to much pitch and I was right. I was only able to get the RPM to 5000 when WOT should be 5800. But I gotta tell you, at 5000RPM we were doing 36 knots! That's 42MPH! WooHoo!!!

At WOT (Wide Open Throttle) it's a little loud in the cabin, but it's still all hard surfaces. It was still perfectly possible to talk, you just had to speak up.

I can also tell you she'll come right down in speed in a hurry. We were coming in at 4500RPM, when all of a sudden at about 30 yards out, OMG THERE'S A WHALE SURFACING!!! Very quickly pulled the throttle back and without slamming you forward we dropped to almost no forward momentum so quick I couldn't believe it.

Quite a day. Can't stop grinning. Thanks once again to my friend Kim who helped with sorting out the hydraulic lines, cleaning up the stuff around the boat, being my deckhand, and putting up with the crazy maniac who was having a blast ripping around at full throttle. I think she's a little crazy though.

She wants to water ski behind it. :-)

There's still work to do before the official launch, but that'll probably be next weekend.

Yay!

Left is right and right is left

<chuckle>

Well, tonight was interesting. My friend Kim came over to help me hook up the hydraulic steering. The instructions were less than clear, but we finally managed to figure things out and get everything hooked up. With all things hydraulic, one has to add fluid and bleed the air bubbles out.

On this system that means adding fluid at the helm and bleeding the air from the bleed fittings at the stern, port and starboard. So after a couple of attempts Kim and I finally got to where we were doing swell. She'd open the bleed fitting and mange the oil at the back, while I turned the steering wheel and added fluid at the front. We went back a forth a couple times and figured we'd gotten it all taken care of.

Then I turned around to watch the motor as I turned the steering wheel.

And guess what?

I hooked up the lines backwards.

All together now...

Ding, Dang, Durn It!!!

All we could do was laugh about it. Oh well, I'll swap the lines tomorrow and we'll do it again.

At least we know what we're doing this time. :-)

3 Hours

No longer marking days...

Nope. Essentially everything from here on out will just be projects. A lot has happened since the boat was put on the trailer so I'll briefly bring you up to date.

In the last post the boat had been put on the trailer, but the shed floor and two walls were still left. A neighbor offered to buy what was left so off it went. I went over later the next day to start breaking it down and it turns out he brought his three boys over and they had gone to town. This is all that was left.

They came over later that night and collected the rest. I went through and cut all the joints out of the PVC pipe and piled it and the conduit up into piles to sell.

Then it started raining again, record rainfall. So I tarped the back of the boat to wait it out.

The motor arrived on Tuesday and with a couple hours off from work today I took the boat over to the shop and I helped Mark and Ben hang the motor. Then with the occasional helpful comment from Ben and parts from Mark I installed the prop, the shifter and throttle cables, connected the wiring harness, installed the battery cables and pretty much cleaned everything up. Ben inspected my work and made a tiny adjustment in the throttle cable as I wouldn't have been able to take the engine to full throttle. "No big deal," he said, "I sometimes do that intentionally for certain customers."

:-)

Ben covered a few details that I didn't know anything about and then I took it all home.

Now it's a boat. I've the steering system to install tomorrow and run replacement fuel line as it turns out I need to run 3/8" all the way to the engine, not 5/16" from the filter. Need a couple fittings to fix that up.

Off to read manuals!

3 Hours

Day 250 - Smile

1 Hour

Day 249 - What goes up...

Sure comes down a lot faster...

Thanks again to my friend Kim who came over for a couple hours and worked with me in the rain showers.

Bit of a problem when we went to rotate the boat to move it onto the trailer.

Yeah, that beam's not supposed to be rolled like that. So that put the kibosh on any more work tonight. I'll need to figure out a Plan B. Probably sling it onto the trailer. Time for the yellow pages!

Kim - 2 Hours
Me - 11 Hours

BTW... 1344 Hours to date! :-)

Day 248 - Done enough

After one very long day she's done.

Or at least done enough that if the weather holds out tomorrow I'll be taking the top off the shed and moving the boat to the trailer.

List of things done today.

1) Front side of front windows scraped.
2) Found a gap in the forward edge of the roof, filled with spackle and then painted.
3) Hole drilled in one of the access hatches in the cuddy.
4) Mounting points for the porta-potty restraints installed.
5) GPS mount got another coat of white paint. GPS antennae installed with screws and 4200. GPS antennae cable run and added to the NMEA 2000 network. Cable and wire restraint removed and re-installed for the GPS cable.
6) Floor in cuddy and cabin got it's final coat of paint with a commercial anti-skid mixed in.
7) PEX conduit for the shifter/throttle cables cut to length, installed and 5200'd into place.
8) Cabinet door latch built and installed.
9) Rear window cut and installed with white silicone.
10) Rear door installed along with upper door track. Last coat of paint on the inside and outside of the door.
11) Extra wiring in the starboard battery bay cleaned up and put away.
12) A plan was developed for moving the boat to the trailer and building the fixtures needed to do that.
13) Cleaning the floor of the shed.
14) Moving all the spare wood into the garage.
15) Moving all the spare PVC outside.
16) Taking all the power tools out to the truck.
17) Filling three more trash bags with stuff to throw away.
18) Starting to box up stuff that's not needed any more.

Kim came over today to help and spent most of her time cleaning. Not glamorous and the one task I tried very hard not to ask any of my volunteers to do, but today it mattered. She also helped with the rear window and with hauling stuff out.

Pictures.

Very tired. Maybe longest day yet. Motor should be here, might get it installed Thursday.

Happy 4th!

Kim - 3 Hours
Me - 13.5 Hours

Day 247 - A new window

Another long busy day and we're getting down to brass tacks.

So let's see...

The divider under the rear-admirals seat was installed.

The captains seat was installed.

Then the white paint was pulled out and some little areas got done. Under the transom well, the GPS antennae mount, a little more around the front windows and some little touch up places around the boat.

The lower door support was 4200 and screwed into place and and some white paint was put on the top edge. The squeeze out of 4200 from when the center fuel tank fixture was installed was trimmed out and the screw and washer removed.

A coat of maroon paint was put on both the inside and outside edges of the windows in the door.

And I finally decided what size and where to put the rear window. So here's the steps for making a window.

Draw the outline making sure all the lines are square, plumb and level.

Mark the radius of the 3-1/2" hole saw and drill the holes for the corners.

Connect the holes with the jig saw.

Use the router to make a rabbet.

Prime the edges.

Now the paint needed time to dry and it had stopped raining and looked like it might stay that way so it was time to swap trailers. I traded my three axle King for a two axle EZ Loader plus some cash. He needed a larger trailer for his much heavier 24' boat and I needed a smaller trailer for my much lighter boat so this would work out well.

After discovering that there were some parts needed for the replacement trailer I went to Home Depot for many 1/2" bolts, washers and nuts, and Western Auto for a replacement trailer jack. The bolts that were used to hold the trailer bunks (the long flat pieces that the boat sits on) were very well rusted and I knew they were going to have to be replaced. I had started spraying them yesterday with anti-seize in hopes I could break them free.

The new trailer was taken over to the shed and work commenced. Even with some serious grunting I couldn't get even one of the bolts and nuts free. I grabbed the impact wrench.

No go.

Wow, these things are rusted good!

So it was time for the final option; the sawzall. Every single bolt had to be cut off. Yikes. Thank goodness for power tools!

And with that the bunks were free.

I cut a quick jig out of 3/4" plywood to match the shape of the hull at the transom.

And then got to work resetting the bunks. I marked on the jig the centerlines of the stringers and set the inner bunks to centerline on the stingers and the outer bunks to provide continuing side-to-side support.

Then the forward hardware was installed and the trailer is basically ready to go.

I'm contemplating changing all this though. I'm going to see if I can hang the cross-members under the frame instead of sitting on top. That would lower the boat five inches, which would be really good from a launching and center of gravity standpoint. We'll see. Research to do on that.

Then it was back inside the shed to do some final painting. The rear window got it's first coat of white and the GPS antennae got its second coat.

And with that I called it a night.

10.5 Hours

Day 246 - Do overs...

What a busy productive day! After the past couple it sure was nice to get a lot done.

Painting continues along with the first big do over I've had in a while.

The upper and lower guides for the door have been done for a while and sitting on the bench. I kept thinking I really need to get those installed, but I was really unsatisfied with the quality of the finish work so I finally took the sander to them. With 200 grit they were sanded smooth with all the high spots taken down. If going to bare wood was what it took, then that's what happened. They were sanded smooth to the touch and then the first of three or four coats of white paint was put on. After those, the other two loose pieces also got another coat.

The conduit between the battery bays was installed. After painting the grey from yesterday white, the PVC was cut to length, slid into the hole and a union glued to each end.

Those two holes you see are for mounting the engine.

The fuel filter was secured by tightening the two bolts that hold it down, the two fuel lines, 3/8" from the tanks and 5/16" to the engine were attached, and the three power wires and the 5/16" fuel line were run through the conduit. Plenty of room!

The power cables were connected to the batteries and the big fuses installed.

A deep breath and the main switch was turned on.

No bangs, pops, snaps or the smell of burning was a real good sign! I turned around to discover that every light in the cabin was on! Into the cabin and the lights were turned off, then the switch was thrown for the side navigation lights. And they came on! Yay!

From there it was time to finish cleaning up the wiring in the cabin. Originally the wiring was being held in place with a zip tie mount screwed to the ceiling. That left the wire suspended away from the ceiling and I really didn't like the look so I switch to a round mount.

This looks and works much better. It puts the wire right up against the roof and in the corner.

After fixing the cables inside the cabin, the stern light was done. The cable was cut to length, the sheathing slit back, the wires connected with a butt splice, and the sheathing wrapped around everything, zip-tied in place and mounted to the roof.

Doesn't look great, but until I come up with something better, it'll have to do.

Back up to the roof I went for a measurement. I've spent a lot of time thinking about whether to purchase a GPS antennae or not. There's one built into the chartplotter, but since it doesn't have a full view of the sky it probably won't work worth beans in a place like Tracy Arm (which is a narrow fjord with 3000' cliffs on either side). So I bit the bullet today and bought one. Since it will mount on the roof and the roof isn't flat, I needed to figure out where to mount it and what the angle of the roof is at that point. I decided to put it starboard side outboard of the grab rail and the angle at that point is about eight degrees.

Off to the table saw. Set the blade angle at eight degrees and raise it all the way up. Run a piece of clear Douglas fir through, finish the cut with a hand saw and even that out with the sander. I decided to make the mount round and slightly large that then puck shaped antennae so I started the cut with a hole saw, then drilled the hole for the cable to go through and finished cutting the piece out with the hole saw.

Back onto the roof to place and level my piece of wood, and to continue drilling the hole through the roof.

While I was up there I painted the inside of the holes for the antennae and the anchor light and wired the anchor light. Then went down to the cuddy and put female spade connectors on and attached them to power.

The power was turned back on and the stern light and anchor light successfully tested. Just for grins I turned on the chartplotter and it too works!

The bezel was installed on the gauge; I selected black as I've got enough white in the cabin and I didn't like the look of chrome.

The nut was installed and tightened on the steering wheel.

And I scraped the paint off the inside of the front windows. Not nearly as painful as I expected. I'll get the outside tomorrow.

After pulling the screws in the transom well for the splash protectors and the sonar transducer a batch of epoxy was made and using a syringe the epoxy was squirted into each of the holes. Then the wood fitting for the GPS antennae was liberally coated with epoxy.

At this point is was time to do some cleaning. All the trash was hauled out of the boat, all the wiring stuff went in one box, manuals collected in a single place, empty boxes pitched out of the boat and stuff consolidated. Grabbed the shop vac and went to town in the cuddy and cabin cleaning up all the dirt and sawdust.

Now I've been thinking for a couple days that I really didn't like what was happening on the floor of the cabin. The white paint was taking a beating and really showing that it wasn't an appropriate color for the floor. So I've decided to paint it gray. It'll match the transom well and kind of continue that color through the boat, plus I'll add some non-skid (purchased this time) to make it safer to walk on.

I think it looks pretty good.

Last before heading home was another coat of white on the door supports and the loose pieces. I'm really glad I decided to redo the supports, they look a hundred times better and that makes me happy.

8.75 Hours