Clif High - Boatshed5112014

May 11, 2014 - Clif High

17:37

Boatshed5112014

proa Nuc Squaxin build as of May 11, 2014, clif's boatshed, place of horror for all concerned. Wooden boat building is the process of converting sandpaper to dust. When enough sandpaper has been destroyed, a boat is revealed.

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	Good morning.
	It's Sunday, it's 820 more or less, May 11th.
	We're out here in my boat shed.
	This is a place of horror for all involved.
	And we'll get into that in a bit.
	I've had a couple of requests for information on the PROA and how the build's going and that kind of thing.
	I'm not going to bore you with all the details.
	If you want specific information about some of the techniques or any of that, let me know.
	We can do quick little videos about resin or finished coats or whatever.
	We're just now at the entrance end of the boat shed.
	We keep it sealed up here in order to maintain our heat.
	And we use a propane heater, which is ceiling mounted and runs the length of the boat shed almost.
	The heater is 33 feet in tubing, and the boat sheds 45.
	The boat shed is 17 feet high and 20 feet wide, 45 feet long.
	What we're looking at here is one of the two bows of the ProA.
	This boat is a Pacific Proa.
	It keeps its which means it's a specialized type of a catamaran and it keeps its outrigger towards the wind always.
	So it doesn't tack back and forth.
	It shunts, which means it turns itself end to end in order to deal with wind conditions.
	As you note, it's very narrow.
	It relies on the separation of the two hulls to achieve the ends required for sailing.
	This is a probably a very bad angle.
	I'm going to get better at this, guys.
	So, in any event, this is the main hull called a Vaca.
	It has a safety amma off on this side such that if the boat ever tips over, this area here resists by hitting the water and flipping you back.
	This material up here is a carbon fiber crane that will stick out on a platform, which is going to be between the two beams.
	The beams are here, intermixed with our foils.
	It has two rudders, one at each end of this little beam platform, and what's known as a bruce foil.
	The bruce foil is mounted on the amma at an angle and is intended to scoop the boat back in to provide a lifting force that keeps it down against the wind.
	The crane will rock back and forth.
	There's a major piece of construction yet to be done, and that is a traveler rail that will go from bow to bow and will arc across the safety yama held out at these side areas here.
	So the safety amma will be attached here, or will be attached, will attach the traveler to this part of the safety amma, and it will arc across to this other part over here, and then over to this other point on the bow, and be anchored there, or excuse me, be anchored here.
	This is a sacrifice piece here, that is foam filled all the way down, we have a very dirty water in South Puget Sound, it frequently has lots of debris in it, and we run into crap all the time, so just in case.
	Anyway, so, just to give you a quick look, forward hulls, flotation foam, another hold, accessible by, reached by, internal hatch, now we're into our dusty areas.
	We're just starting on the last bit of sanding, and then we're going to put a final coat of resin on all of this.
	And this is where the beams, one of the beams mounts, by the way, this is the underside of the, this particular bow.
	We call them A and B, just to be able to distinguish between them at this point.
	Really tough material.
	The boat itself is made of okome plywood up to this point.
	And this point is a door skins, three ply maple plywood door skins with resin and cloth, and a finish coat all around of my own devising.
	That's the thing.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Thank you.
	It's done with fumed silica and a few other materials.
	It's good to get a final coat of resin and then painted here pretty quick.
	Here's one of our deck pieces.
	The deck will be attached here hopefully in the next day or so.
	I'm actually at the point of doing the final sanding inside the habitat, our pod.
	So this is one of the bows, and at some point it'll be facing into the wind.
	And this would be your view as you're going on in.
	You're going to go underneath this little temporary beam up into the area for the door.
	That's the door I'm working on over there.
	These are hatch areas here.
	All these areas here are filled with opening hatches to provide wind.
	There will be a deck at about this level here.
	The deck will extend this direction 19 feet until it reaches the AMA.
	And then we'll be, and it'll be this wide here, approximately 10 feet wide.
	Or, yeah.
	This is the interior.
	I'm going to go and get that other light and bring it in.
	I have to have it for sanding in any event.
	But then that way I'll be sure that we've got adequate light for this video.
	Continue on about our boat shed here while I'm fetching our little light.
	This is the always to the windward side of the hull.
	Really rigid stuff.
	Some of it's constructed with spider foam, covered with adequate levels of glass and resin.
	Wave distribution accomplished by these guys, which are also adding rigidity to our platform.
	Bear in mind we're walking around in there all the time.
	The boat shed itself is a mess.
	It usually is.
	I don't think I've ever been in any boat shed that wasn't.
	I've been building boats since I was about four.
	The first boat I built was with my father in Alaska, but I've done it professionally as well.
	Hang on a second.
	It's always dusty.
	We use full-face masks here and very sophisticated respirators for protection.
	But because of that, you always end up with a dry throat.
	So this is the view from inside the first forward hull hold.
	This will be covered up with the deck in a couple of days.
	You'll see we have adequate levels of stowage below.
	We're doing a final sanding here.
	I am mostly at this point.
	And then I'll have my guy here this week.
	We'll get the last bit of resin on and get prepped for painting.
	I'll see if I can't edit out some of this crud.
	Anyway, so the interior of the pod coming in through the windward side door into the interior.
	This will be the main sleeping area.
	Got to have a stove here for heating the area.
	These are port lights, hatch, hatch, hatch, hatch.
	Just to give you some idea of the construction material.
	And port light, port light, hatch, and then escape hatch.
	And also to be able to notice and watch sail set.
	That's why we have the height here.
	And this is accomplished through this one.
	So I'm now currently sitting in the safety amaz on the lee side.
	And these will be covered up.
	Store almost food and that kind of items.
	And, you know, sleeping bedding and that sort of thing.
	At night or at rest, we're going to have a fold-out platform that joins these two so that you can actually live up at this level, which means, you know, you don't quite have full-standing headroom.
	But when sailing, you would.
	So it's not a problem.
	I'm going to have hanging chairs.
	As you can see, there's dust everywhere.
	I'm going to come on in and blow this off and finish out this final sanding.
	I'm not sure how much of this is going to render in camera format because we don't have a lot of hard edges.
	The whole boat is designed, the whole pod is designed to provide basically egg shapes, no matter what our profile is, to the wind.
	Because I've been doing research with what I call the two victors.
	One of the victors is Victor Schauberger.
	Forrester died, I think, in the 1980s.
	Anyway, he was a really observant fellow, and some of the things he observed, I've also observed.
	So I'm trying to encompass this egg shape presenting itself to the wind, no matter what the angle of the wind.
	This will always be the lee side.
	The sail will always be out here.
	So the wind will be attempting to come on in and deal with us in various different forms.
	And no matter what the angle oblique on, running, reaching, or whatever, there will be basically egg shapes presented by this particular shape of a pod.
	So it's sort of like a strange little multi-dynamic egg riding on a very, very, very thin set of holes.
	And we're going to have some other interesting things like a small diesel electric motor and hydronic steering and hydronic propulsion, that sort of thing.
	But those are obviously months away.
	We've got to get it in the water and then we can start tuning some of this other stuff.
	We'll be rigging it hopefully in about a month.
	The idea is that we'll be able to pop on up and have a look around, see what's going on, and also airflow.
	This is the extent of the accessible parts of the hull.
	As you can see, it's 32 feet.
	The pod gives us a very, actually, a very spacious internal living area, which we're going to require up here in the northwest.
	It's blustery and windy, and here it is, May, and we've got friends of ours reporting snow in Colorado.
	It snowed with other friends over here in Ukraine and in Russia.
	We've got nasty cold weather here.
	Also, as you can see, dust, dust, dust.
	This is a really hard surface coat material that we've got here.
	It takes a beating and just keeps on moving.
	This, except for the reinforcement of the door, this is all basically an eighth of an inch thick with various areas where it's joined and it's a little thicker.
	It's because of how I did this.
	It's geodesic.
	There's no internal supporting structure required, yet it's capable of holding my weight and then some.
	Actually, we don't know what its limit is because we've been unable to impress upon that limit in any meaningful fashion.
	In other words, we can't get the stuff to bend with myself and my vegetable Kale, who weighs about probably close to 200 pounds up here together.
	I'm not that heavy.
	I only weigh maybe 175 or something.
	I haven't weighed myself in so long.
	Might be as low as 160.
	Anyway, like I say, I'm not particularly a weighty fellow, but the two of us jumping up around sanding and stuff, we can't even get it to bend.
	So it's meeting its design characteristics all over.
	It's pretty good stuff.
	Relatively cheap to construct as these things go other than labor.
	Massive amount of labor in sanding simply because of the shape I chose.
	If I'd chosen another way of doing this, one of the ways that I thought about was a big balloon simply to hold fiberglass cloth and just build it out of cloth and resin in alternating layers on a balloon.
	And if I ever had to do it again, that's the way I would approach it.
	But this turned out extremely rigid and very, very, very nice.
	It will take all kinds of slamming by the elements.
	So since that's kind of what we're anticipating, that's good.
	As you can see from up here, there's our internal section.
	These areas all have to be finished, sanded, probably another couple of hours.
	And then a very, very, very thorough cleaning.
	And then we're going to put the decks down tomorrow.
	With any luck at all, hooray!
	Kind of a milestone for us.
	I'll try and edit out some of the crap, guys.
	Anyway, lots of work with plexiglass, resin, clamps.
	As you can see, all the Helen gone, sticks of wood.
	It's basically a wooden boat.
	There's no metal involved anywhere other than temporarily with the clamps.
	We've tried to keep, or I've tried to keep the design as straightforward as possible.
	So we'll have metal bolts for the beams, but there's no internal metal structures anywhere.
	And we're dealing with a wooden boat that I hope will outlast me.
	Trying to build a 40-year boat here just because I don't want to have to go through this again.
	However, having said that, let me point out something.
	Proas are very unique as boats go.
	This is the main living hull that's going to be always to the leeward.
	The wind's always going to be coming at it this direction.
	And the sail is going to be along here.
	But because of the nature of the PROA design, I could and actually have started thinking about plans for turning this section into the AMA, into the outrigger.
	It'd still be the control mechanism for a much larger boat.
	The deck then would extend over to a big main hull, but a main hull of a much simpler design that we're calling the 50-foot Vaca.
	And it would be made in a different fashion without anywhere near this much sanding.
	So I do have a form that would allow me to put a 50-foot main hull over here and use this guy to windward.
	So the wind would always be coming this direction.
	And you'll notice that even as the AMA, it works because the wind would always sweep over and it wouldn't include the sails at all.
	Also, in the 50-foot Vaca, I've been thinking about doing my advanced crabclaw crane sprit rig in a dual fashion and making a schooner out of it.
	But my only real reason for wanting to do the 50-foot Vaca, other than wanting to have it and to be able to use it as a big science platform, is that it would be able to employ a couple of guys.
	And since the planet is, you know, desperately in need of new projects to keep people off the streets and from causing problems, I was thinking, oh, if I could figure out a way to finance it, then the deal really would be very nice for my guy Kale because he could supervise him and train him.
	Then we could hire another couple of guys to help him build this 50-foot boat, the Vaca.
	And then it could be joined to this and we could sail around.
	And, you know, maybe other, maybe rich guys would want to own the thing and would want to commission it and we could put these three people to work.
	But in the meantime, at least two more people would have skills in boat building and building other things and be like regular humans for a while instead of out there suffering in our great vast depression.
	So I'm going to call this done at the moment.
	I think that's about long enough, really.
	And I'll edit down what I can, get rid of some of the glitches, and we'll go on to other videos here in the future.
	So that's ProA.
	And I'm going to get back to sanding in just a few minutes and take this camera out of this very nasty environment that only humans can survive.

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