Gangplanks and Pets

When you liveaboard, the act of getting from pier to yacht may come natural. Our long legs can bridge the gap over the water and allow us to step across to the other side. Our long arms allow us to grab hold of the deck gear as we secure ourselves as we cross over the water.

Our furry friends do not have this luxury, especially if they have short legs!

A gangplank will provide a safe and stable passageway from pier to deck without the fears of falling in as you make the journey. Our short legged friends will also appreciate the autonomy in letting them get on deck when they are ready, instead of having to wait for you to carry them across the gap (though they still need you to unzip the shrink wrap door).

Water Jerry Cans

When you need to fill your water tanks, but there is nowhere for you to pull your yacht into to fill your water tanks, you will be forced to shuttle water out to your boat in jerry cans. The most common size of jerry cans is 5 gallons, and these cans are big!

When you are shuttling the water back and forth, a large 5 gallon jug is just what you need! Since you have big water tanks, you will find yourself making a bunch of trips back and forth from your water source to your yacht. All of a sudden, you wish the cans were bigger so you could make fewer trips. This is your thought until you go to lift a full water can. At 5 gallons, you are forced to lift close to 40 pounds. If you had a 10 gallon jug, you would need to lift 80 pounds! Since you can't go bigger, you simply have to go more. 

If you carry 100 gallons of water, you could make:

• 20 trips with 1 five gallon can
• 10 trips with 2 five gallon cans
• 4 trips with 5 five gallon cans

All of a sudden, more cans sounds like a great idea! If you can fill a bunch of cans in your dinghy, you won't have to make many trips back and forth from shore to get your water tanks filled.

This train of thought will carry on as you get to the store to pick up a bunch of water cans. Then you see how big these cans are and find yourself wondering: "Where will I store these?" If you leave the cans on the deck, they will get eaten up by the sun. If you try to store them in a locker, you will have no space left in your lockers!

Here is the dilemma: Do I make a bunch of trips with a few cans or do I make a few trips and then need to store the jugs around the boat? If only there were an easier way!

A friend recommended I try collapsible water tanks since they still hold the standard 5 gallons but they fold up flat. Since they fold flat, they can be stowed inside the cabin where UV degradation is not a concern.

Since these fold up and stow so small, I got 6! We carry 160 gallons of water, so these 6 will allow us to fill our water tanks in only 5.3 trips to shore. This will let us keep our tanks filled while not having to worry about where to store the tanks or having to make a ton of trips back and forth to shore.

Making a Bed in the Cockpit: Part 2

With the frame cut to fit, it is time to glass everything up! 

Epoxy fillets go in the corner of structures you are bonding to smooth out the transition of the corner and increase the radius of the bend. If you didn't make a fillet, the fiberglass that goes over the corner would be forced to make a very sharp turn in the corner. This would stress the fibers and greatly decrease the strength of the corner's bond. The epoxy fillet solves this problem and makes the entire structure much more structurally sound.

Making fillets is really easy, check out the video below for tips that will walk you through the process.

Since the fiberglass needs the smoother radius bend to prevent fiber strain and breakage, you might be wondering why even use fiberglass? If you took the fiberglass out of the equation, life would be simpler! Right? Wrong, the bond strength of an epoxy bond is directly proportional to the surface area involved in the bond. Adding fiberglass tabbing adds a lot of surface area to the setup and makes the bond significantly stronger. If you didn't use tabbing, the bond area would only be the faying surfaces of the two pieces of wood your are bonding. By adding tabbing, you are adding the sides of the boards to the equation, greatly increasing the total surface area and subsequently, the bond strength.

Now, the bed rails are securely attached to the bed platform with properly made fillets and tabbing. The next step is to make the bed sit securely in place. If we get knocked down by a wave or a powerful gust of wind (the boat leans over really far and the boom falls into the water) the bed insert could come flying off its cleats and hit us in the cockpit. Getting knocked down is no fun, but getting hit by a giant piece of plywood during a knock down can lead to some serious problems.

Wooden hooks are being added to the front of the bed so that the entire structure can drop in and slide back into place. The bed will then be secured by a small dyneema line (because me) that will prevent the back from raising up and sliding forward.

With these two provisions, the bed will hold in place during foul weather while serving as a wonderful place to lounge as we stare up into the stars at night.

Making a Bed in the Cockpit

Wisdom was designed in the 1960's and built in 1968. The thought at that time was "slim is fast" as this shape would slice through the waves quickly and sail faster.  This whole "long and thin" concept is apparent all over the boat. One such places is the cockpit.

The cockpit on Wisdom is long and thin, flanked with two long and thin benches. These are great for sailing, but leave much to be desired when at anchor. Maddie suggested that I make the aft section of the cockpit a big bed.

Having a bed in the cockpit will allow us to sleep outside on hot nights, making these nights much more comfortable. The space under the bed could be used for storage, and the space will be very useful for relaxing when sailing on a long tack.

In the interest of time, I am making this insert out of plywood and fiberglass. Plywood is my least favorite type of wood because the wood is so adulterated. There is no grain to follow and each ply is set in a different direction. The thing that is nice about plywood is it is flat and fast!

Cleats were through bolted to the sides of the cockpit with the heads of the bolts countersunk to avoid any unnecessary scrapes and cuts on our legs. The plywood was then laid over the seats while I crawled under the plywood to trace the shape of the insert.

With the outline traced, I buzzed off the excess with a skillsaw. This let the plywood slip into the space between the seats. I trimmed stringers that would sit on the cleats and support the plywood flush with the rest of the seats.

The stringers were set inboard enough to allow the lazarettes to be opened with the insert in place. Then the plywood was screwed to the stringers, locking the assembly in place.

I trimmed the edge a bit proud of the stringer with a bandsaw, followed by a grinder to bring everything together and flush. I rounded the edges and corners of the plywood a bit to make it fit smoothly in the cockpit.

With the plywood in place and screwed to the stringers, it is time to cut the end flush with the lazarette lids and coat everything in fiberglass and resin. Once that is finished, we will be able to paint it have the cockpit cushion made to fill in the space and make the cockpit into a big bed behind the helm!

Heaving To

When the weather becomes intense, heaving to is a wonderful method to ride it out. The concept is simple: back the headsail and turn the rudder towards weather. This will keep the boat pointed at an angle into the wind as it slowly drifts backwards. This creates a slick to windward which calms approaching waves from breakers into rollers. The end result is the motion on board is quite comfortable as we ride out the storm. But what does it look like?

During a rather intense series of squalls we encountered, we filmed the ordeal to help shed some light on what it really looks like. This way you will know what to expect when you find yourself heaving to in a storm as you wait for it to pass.

Riding out a series of squalls in the Choptank river hove to.