Clif High - Boatshed5112014

May 11, 2014 - Clif High

17:39

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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Time	Text
	Good morning.
	It's Sunday.
	It's uh 820 more or less.
	May 11th.
	We're out here in my boat shed.
	This is a place of horror for for all involved.
	And we'll get into that in a bit.
	I've had a couple of requests for uh information on the proa and uh how the build's going and that kind of thing.
	I'm not gonna bore you with all the details.
	If you want specific uh information about some of the techniques or any of that, let me know.
	Uh we can do quick little videos about uh resin or finish coats or whatever.
	Uh we're just now um at the uh entrance end of the boat shed.
	We keep it sealed up here in order to maintain our heat, and we use a uh propane heater uh which is ceiling mounted and runs the length of the uh boat shed almost.
	The heater is uh 33 feet uh in tubing and the boat shed's 45, the boat shed is 17 feet high and uh 20 feet wide, 45 feet long.
	What we're looking at here is a uh one of the two bows of the Proa.
	Uh this boat is a Pacific Proa, it keeps the its uh which means it's a um 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 uh separation of the two hulls to um achieve the ends uh required for sailing.
	This is a uh probably a very bad angle.
	I'm gonna get better at this, guys.
	So in any event, um this is the main hull called uh vodka.
	Uh it has a uh safety ama off on this side such that if the boat ever tips over this area here resists by hitting the water and flipping you back.
	Uh this material up here is a carbon fiber crane that will stick out on a platform which is gonna be between the two beams.
	The beams are here, uh intermixed with our foils.
	It has two uh rudders, uh, one at each end of this little beam platform, and what's known as a bruise foil.
	Uh the Bruce foil is in uh mounted on the uh AMA 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 uh rock back and forth.
	There's a major piece of construction yet to be done, and that is a uh traveler rail that will go from bow to bow and will arc across the safety ama held out at these um side areas here so the safety arm will be attached here and or uh will be attached as we'll attach the uh traveler to this part of the safety 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.
	Uh this is a uh sacrifice piece here that is uh foam filled all the way down.
	Uh we have a very dirty water in in South Puget Sound.
	It um uh frequently has lots of debris in it, and we uh run into crap all the time, so that's just in case.
	Anyway, so just to give you a quick look, uh forward hulls, uh flotation foam, uh another hold, uh accessible by um reached by internal um hatch.
	Uh now we're into our dusty areas.
	We're just starting on the uh last bit of sanding, and then we're gonna put a final coat of resin on all of this.
	And uh this is where the beams one of the beams mounts, by the way.
	Uh this is the underside of the uh this particular uh bow.
	We call them A and B just to be able to distinguish between them at this point.
	Uh really Tough material.
	The boat itself is made of uh Okome plywood up to this point, and this point is a um uh door skins, uh three ply um maple plywood door skins with uh resin and uh cloth and a finish coat all around of my own devising.
	It's done with uh fumed silica and a few other materials.
	It's gonna get a final coat of resin and then painted here pretty quick.
	Here's one of our deck pieces.
	It'll 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 uh habitat or pod.
	So this is one of the bows, and at some point it'll be facing into the wind, and uh this is would be your your view as you're going on in.
	You're gonna go underneath this little temporary beam up into the area for the door.
	That's the door I'm working on over there.
	Uh these are uh hatch areas here.
	All these areas here are filled with opening hatches to provide uh wind.
	There will be a deck at about this level here.
	Uh the deck will extend this direction.
	Uh 19 feet until it reaches the ama, and then we'll be um, and it'll be uh this wide here, approximately 10 feet wide.
	Or yeah.
	This is the interior.
	I'm gonna go and get that other light and bring it in.
	I have to have it for sanding in any event.
	Um, but then that way I'll be sure that we've got adequate light for this video.
	Uh continue on about our boat shed here while I'm fetching our little light.
	Um this is the always to the windward side of the hull.
	Really rigid stuff, some of it's constructed with spider foam, uh covered with uh adequate levels of glass and resin, uh 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.
	Boat shed itself is a mess.
	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.
	Uh the first boat I built was with my father in Alaska, but I've done it professionally as well.
	Uh hang on a second.
	It's always dusty.
	We use uh full face masks here and uh very sophisticated respirators for uh protection, but you know because of that you always end up with a dry throat.
	So this is the view from inside the first uh forward hull hold.
	Uh this will be covered up with the deck in a couple of days.
	You'll see we have adequate levels of stowage below.
	Uh we're doing a final sanding here.
	I am mostly at this point.
	And then I'll have my guy here this week.
	And we'll get the last bit of resin on.
	And get prepped for painting.
	There we go.
	clap
	I'll see if I can't edit out some of this crud.
	Anyway, so interior of the pod coming in through the windward side door into the interior.
	This will be uh the main sleeping area.
	Gotta have a stove here for heating the area.
	These are port lights, uh hatch, hatch, uh hatch, hatch.
	This will give you some idea of the construction material, and uh port light, port light, hatch, and then uh escape hatch, and also to be able to notice and watch uh sail set.
	That's why we have the the height here.
	And uh this is accomplished through this one.
	So I'm now currently sitting in the safety AMA of the uh on the lee side, and these will be covered up.
	Store all of our um food and that kind of items, and uh you know, um sleeping uh bedding and that sort of thing.
	At night uh or at rest, we're gonna 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 headrun.
	But when sailing, you would.
	So it's not a problem.
	You're 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 uh Schauberger.
	Forrester died, I think, in the 1980s.
	Anyway, he was uh 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 this in various different uh forms, and and no matter what the the uh angle oblique on um running, reaching or whatever, there will be basically uh egg shapes presented by uh this particular shape of a pod.
	So it's sort of like uh a strange little multi-dynamic egg riding on a very very very thin set of holes.
	And we're gonna have some other interesting things like uh uh small diesel electric motor and uh hydronic steering and or hydronic uh propulsion, uh 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.
	Uh 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.
	Uh this is the extent of the accessible parts of the hull.
	As you can see, it's 32 feet.
	Uh the pod gives us a very actually a very spacious uh internal living area, uh, which we're gonna require up here in the northwest.
	It's uh flustery and windy, and here it is May, and we've got friends of ours reporting snow in um Colorado.
	It snowed with uh other friends over here in um uh uh Ukraine and in uh Russia.
	Uh we've got uh nasty cold weather here.
	Uh also as you can see, dust, dust, dust.
	This is uh really hard surface coat material that we we've got here.
	Uh it takes a beating and and just keeps on moving.
	This uh, except for the reinforcement of the door, this is all uh basically an eighth of an inch thick with uh 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 um supporting structure required, yet it's uh capable of holding uh my weight and then some.
	Actually, we don't know uh 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 this stuff to bend with myself and um uh my vegetable kale who weighs about uh probably close to 200 pounds uh up here together.
	I I I'm not that heavy, I only weigh maybe 175 or something.
	Uh I haven't weighed myself in so long, might be as low as 160.
	Anyway, like I say, I'm not not particularly um uh weighty fellow, but the two of us jumping up around sanding and stuff, we can't even get it to bend.
	So it's uh it's meeting its uh uh design characteristics uh 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 had chosen another way of doing this, one of the ways that I thought about was a big balloon simply to hold uh fiberglass cloth and just build it out of cloth and resin and alternating layers uh on a uh 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 uh very, very, very nice.
	Uh we'll take uh uh all kinds of slamming by the the elements.
	So uh since that's kind of what we're anticipating, that's good.
	As you can see from up here, there's our uh internal section.
	These areas all have to be finished, sanded uh probably another couple of hours, and then a very, very, very thorough cleaning, and then we're gonna put the decks down uh tomorrow.
	With any luck at all, hooray!
	Kind of a milestone for us.
	Uh I'll try and edit out some of the crap guys.
	Anyway, uh lots of work with plexiglass, resin, um, clamps, as you can see, all the hell and gone sticks of wood.
	It's basically a wooden boat.
	There's no metal involved anywhere uh other than temporarily with the clamps.
	Uh we've tried to keep, or I've tried to keep the design as uh straightforward uh as possible, so we'll have metal bolts for the beams, uh, 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.
	Uh, this is the main living hull that that's gonna be uh always to the to the leeward, the wind's always gonna be coming at it this direction, and uh the sail's gonna be along here.
	But uh because of the nature of the proa design, I could and have actually have started thinking about plans for turning this section into the AMA, into the outrigger, and still be the control mechanism for a much larger boat.
	The deck then would extend over to a big uh main hull, but a main hull of a much simpler design that we're calling the 50-foot vodka.
	It would be made in a different fashion without anywhere near this much sanding.
	So we I do have a form that would allow me to put a 50-foot uh 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 uh include the sails at all.
	Also in the 50-foot vodka, I've been thinking about doing my advanced crab claw crane sprit rig in a dual fashion and making a schooner out of it.
	But uh the my only real reason for wanting to do the 50-foot vodka, 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 the planet is uh you know desperately in need of new projects to keep uh uh people off the streets and from causing problems, I was thinking, oh, if I could figure out a way to finance it, then the the deal really would be very nice for um uh my guy Kale,
	because he could he could supervise them and train them, and then we could hire another couple of guys to help him build this 50-foot boat, uh the vodka, and then it could be joined to this, and we could sail around, and you know, maybe other maybe rich guys would want to uh own the thing and would want to commission it and we can put these three people to work.
	But in the meantime, at least two more people would have skills in boat building and uh building other things and uh be like regular humans for a while instead of out there suffering in our in our Great Vast Depression.
	So all this done at the moment.
	Uh 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 uh videos here in the future.
	So that's pro.
	And I'm gonna get back to sanding in just a few minutes and take this camera out of this very nasty environment that only humans survive.
	Talk to you guys later.

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