Timber!

Today I hit a trifecta.  I've been searching for timber for the spars on and off for about 7 years now and today I got exactly the wood I wanted.  Well, not exactly-exactly as I'll have to whittle what I got down to spec but I'm thrilled with it all, especially the bowsprit piece. I tend to avoid naming places, but I got these over at Menard's which has a decent lumberyard in the back behind the moulding area. This pile has the chunk for the bowsprit, the four sides of the mast, and the unfinished yard/gaff and boom.

The bowspirt is a 4 x 4 x 12 chunk of beautiful, clear of Douglas fir, shockingly free of knots along the length and solid all around.  This is especially great as it means I don't have to laminate this up and then cut back down.  Of course if I cut it there may be a knot lurking below but upon inspection I don't see anything that would cause any trouble.

The boom, too, was sourced as a clear 5/4 x 6 x 12' of Select Pine.  This cut in half and epoxy'd together is near perfect.  And then the yard/gaff is a solid piece of 5/4 x 4 x 12', too.  This will be about 18 inches longer than the plans call for as it falls into the cockpit otherwise.  One wayward gaff knocked out a PocketShip skipper for a few seconds.  True story.

Careful readers will note that 5/4 is not the same as 1 inch.  I don't have a planer and will accept the extra 5/32 of width.  1/8 inches of wood, 3 inches wide, 12 feet long, is the same weight as a four cubic inches of wood.  Weight won't be a problem and neither will working the lines, so I'm calling that good and moving on.

This last piece of the puzzle means I have all of the major pieces in a rush to get this done by early October.  The sails will be here this week, the trailer is waiting for the keel bunk to be installed, the sailing hardware is on order, and I have all of the timber, lines, and paint needed to make a push.  I might be able to get on the water for a few days just before leaving.  That would be amazing but the amount of work still left to do is daunting.

Sundry Shopping v1 - Trailer Purchase

Usually late at night, when everyone's asleep and I'm done with my homework, I look for things to buy for my unfinished boat.  It doesn't matter how much I'd spent just hours before, or how many boxes are due to arrive.  I look.  Sometimes, it's stuff I really don't need, like stainless steel cowls (price: $200 each).  Or, maybe something I'd like but will put off for a bit, like an inflatable raft.  Or something I really do need, like plastic cowls (price: $22 each).  I'm pleased to report that I've solved a major problem yesterday.

Behold, my trailer, a Karavan KKB 17 1800', purchased from a local shop.

They had it in stock and agreed to hold it for me until I was ready to use it.  It's similar to the EZL80B that some owners bought and its specs are in line with the custom Trailex model.  I tried to get West Coast Trailers to build me the same one that a fellow builder got, but the guy couldn't be bothered to return my phone calls despite me begging for him to take my money.  One time, the WCT guy couldn't take my call because he was busy negotiating a new lease.  If he agreed to build my trailer he might be in a better position to negotiate.  So, no -- don't use West Coast Trailers.  Once I'm done with the painting and able to clear the garage a bit, I'll call some friends over for a Boat Flippin' Party, Part 2, and put it on the trailer for good where it'll sit until I finish the build.

But let me tell a little story about how I got to this point.  You see, I'd spent the better part of two weeks and dozens of hours researching, calling, and visiting trailer folks without much luck.  The problem is PocketShip is a strangely shaped boat.  It has a keel, but not much of one.  It's short, but wider than its length would suggest.  It's heavy (relative to its size) and tall.  So a narrow, long trailer doesn't work, nor does a short, wide one.  It can't fit it onto a personal watercraft trailer and anything that fits a bigger boat uses a much bigger trailer (like 20 feet long).  I really like that it's just over 17' end to end and the swing tongue brings it down to 15' for storage.

I'll need to add a keel trough (I can't put a roller forward as it doesn't have a long enough support bar there) but otherwise it's decent.  Just a tad wider, heavier, and shorter than the Trailex trailer, it's also about $1,500 less -- and that's a lot of dough!  Not to mention I don't have to put it together.

Speaking of dough, Doordash dropped these off today:

 

 

A sweet suite of donuts for an early birthday present from a friend of the family.  Things are looking up.

Re-sand, Re-paint, Re-pair

The second coat of primer had just barely dried when I reached for the final bottom coat.  I was moving along well and was excited to get the bottom done before moving to the topsides.

However, I couldn't shake something about the bottom paint so I went back to the PocketShip manual and the paint specs and realized I'd put topcoat primer, not bottom coat primer, below the waterline.  Big deal?  Wasn't sure.

A couple hours of research later definitely said yes, it's a big deal.  Not only would the water and rough stuff eventually wear its way through, but the actual bottom coat would not stick well to the topcoat primer.  The only thing to do was to sand it all off and reapply the proper bottom coat primer.  The level of defeat I felt was not good so I let it sit this way for a couple days and didn't even open the garage.

When I finally did, I decided to ignore the bottom and move to the topsides.  The grey primer went on quickly and looks good.  Most importantly, it was the right paint for the right job.  Once the topsides primer dried, it was time to get sanding.  So I pulled up my big boy pants, fired up a podcast (or 12) and sanded away about $50 of paint and a million dollars of hubris.  I only have bits of the keel to go before I wash this down and put the proper paint on.

Speaking of proper paint, here is the lineup I was planning to use.  I took this photo just before heading to the Marine Store so I knew which paint to get.

 

 

 

When I got to the Marine Store, like many other stores out there, they were really, really down on inventory and didn't have Ocean Blue, the color I chose for my boat. This color, I was told, would need to be special-ordered and take 2-4 weeks to get to the store.  In fact, this color was normally not in stock and I would need to special-order it every time.  He then helpfully said that Dark Blue is almost always in stock and they replenish that one regularly.

 

Faced with these choices, I decided to make a change to the color.  So, welcome to Dark Blue -- which is incidentally the same color as PocketShip #1.  I wanted a brighter blue but there wasn't really an option if I wanted to make progress.  The other in-stock options were black and red.  I had the red in my hand and decided with the tanbark sail I ordered, it wouldn't look great.  Black would've been interesting but I thought too dark for such a small, perky boat.  It would be like a goth cheerleader; too much of a disconnect.

 

While there, I also picked up West System epoxy and a set of epoxy pumps.  The pumps alone were almost reason enough to switch from MAS to West (MAS still isn't shipping with pumps due to a "global pump shortage.")  West was also about $75 cheaper for an equivalent volume including the price difference and saving on shipping.  In the end, it paid for the wasted primer and contributed a bit towards the right one.

Hoping to get this painting done this weekend and get it on the trailer I just purchased.  Yes, that happened.