Head Refit: Shower Sole Part 2

We have a shower floor! We can stand in here! Ouch, there are some prickly spots!

The fiberglass is mostly smooth, but there are some sharp spots, and some rough spots, and worst of all, some holes.

I thickened the epoxy with 407, as it gives good strength, somewhat ease of fairing, and most importantly, that lovely purple color! Once the surface was smoothed up, it was just a matter of sanding, then filling, then sanding, then filling, then sanding for days on end.

Fairing honestly felt like it was the longest part of the project. In the beginning, we had a giant hole. Once the foam went it, there was a drastic and rapid transformation. Progress! Fairing is just more of the same, with lots of work hours and little change. This can really dampen morale in the boat when days are spent working but it looks as if nothing is occurring.

Hurricane Impacts on Transatlantic Passage

When I was a small child growing up in Puerto Rico, I thought that hurricanes were conscious beings. That they could make choices about where to go and if they made the right choices, they could grow larger and stronger. The wrong choices would weaken them. I also thought that they chose to attack small islands in the Caribbean when they wanted to, or chose to avoid the small islands and spare the islanders who were living there. I was 5, give me a break.

Now that I’m older, I understand that hurricanes are merely weather phenomenon and their actions are not controlled by conscious choices but by the forces acting on them.

Crossing the North Atlantic in the Summer means that you will need to be aware of and avoiding the Hurricanes that (typically) are raging south of you.

Every year is different and every hurricane is special, but in general, hurricanes form off the coast of Africa and intensify as they travel across the Atlantic. Once they get to the Caribbean, they are powerful and will either deviate north which will cause them to skirt the East Coast of the United States or they will slam into the Gulf of Mexico.

In general, if you are North of the Doldrums, and East of Bermuda, then you are safe from hurricanes. Hurricanes have trouble making it through the Doldrums and tend to lose a lot of steam as they venture north. They are also incapable of traveling through the high pressure system known as the Azores High, which is why the Azores are safe from Hurricanes.

We know this information very well, but do the hurricanes?

In 2018, we were in the Harbor of Bermuda when Hurricane Chris was approaching. We sailed away and left to hide further east of it as it raged on to the North West of our position. We left Bermuda on July 9 and made it to Horta, Faial, Azores, on August 2. We had great sailing going across and were safe in our knowledge that we were where hurricanes could not reach us.

Debby formed in the path we sailed on August 9.
Ernesto formed in the path we sailed on August 15.
Joyce formed in the path we sailed on September 12.
Leslie formed in the path we sailed on September 23.

You get the picture. There is no safe place from a hurricane while out in the ocean. Areas of the ocean that are famous for stopping the passage of a hurricane and deflecting them away actually had hurricanes (Leslie) spawn in there and thrive for over a month!

The weather patterns of the past have changed and the storms are becoming more vivid and with fewer rules that they must abide by.

Hurricanes are a major consideration for choosing what route and when to sail across the Atlantic, but the important part is to make sure your yacht is never caught in the path of a hurricane. Do what you can to avoid them and steer clear of them because your life does depend on it.

Head Refit: Shower Sole Part 1

The solebearers are finished! It is now time to lay down the sole that we will stand on!

Most of these pieces are rectangular in nature with long straight edges. This is easy to make at the moment of work. The one irregular piece was made previously and is ready to insert with its flat edges facing the other rectangular pieces.

Assembly is really fast and easy, all I need to do is break a piece to size and cover both sides with Chop Strand Mat and Epoxy. Then position it in place and ready the next piece. This is as skilled of a production job as a toddler stacking blocks. It takes no thought and no concern for strength. The segments are all very small and with many vertical supports beneath them, they will be grossly over strengthened. Imagine if you actually tested the strength of a toddlers block tower where the blocks were made of solid white oak? The building materials are all vastly stronger than necessary and the small segments with many angles means that it will be plenty strong, regardless of design.

I did set everything inclined and draining into the shower grate with plenty of vertical supports to hold everything sturdy and well supported.

Once the sole has cured, I was able to re-enter the head and begin filling any gaps that remained. The blocks of foam are great but they do not allow you to “feather” the margins away. I completed this task by filling the ledges with epoxy fillets that slope down to make a smooth transition to the edge of the new sole.

Boatyard Projects

Sonder: n. The realization that every person is living a life as complex and vivid as your own.

Here we lay in this boat yard, working tirelessly to finish the refit. Months of our lives have been spent in the bilges as we work to ready her for the next leg of her voyage.

Years of our lives have been spent working on her, maintaining her, with our hopes and dreams suspended in her rigging. So much work, thought, and pride has been wrapped up in this one hull which now lays on the hard surrounded by other boats in various stages of their boat life. Some look new, some have been decaying for years, but each and everyone has a story, a past, and a voyage.

How many boats have had their stories pass through this yard? Where have their stories gone from here?

Custom Fit Coring

Nothing in a boat is square or straight. This means that anything you wish to add will need to be custom cut to fit your specific application. This also means that any “quick project” will never be quick.

The old head design was rather straight forward. When you entered the head, you had to step down a significant step. We wanted to bring the level of the sole up to be the same as the level of the toilet, that way you can easily walk in and use the toilet without your feet dangling into the shower area. It also helps to serve as a visual partition between the “head area” and “shower area”.

The goal was to make a piece of sole that would then be elevated to the level of the toilet sole. I chose to make this structure out of 1/2 inch closed cell foam covered with epoxy and fiberglass. This would give me a very flat and stable platform to work from while also imparting a great deal of strength. The issue was that the space this article would occupy was anything but regular.

The foam coring material I was using has a perforated grid cut into each side, allowing you to easily snap the foam off into the rough shape that you desire. This worked very well at matching the contour of the door side by simply breaking them off to allow better fitment. I never had to use a spiling batten to transfer the curvature onto the foam or anything, simply break off the little pieces as I needed to make it fit.

Once it was roughly cut to the shape desired, I laid a layer of chop strand mat onto it with epoxy to hold everything together and give it strength. I left the edges dry so that it could be cured into the overall design when production reached that point. When the day comes that I will glass in the rest of the floor, this irregular piece will easily fit into place just like all the other regular pieces I will be adding as well, saving me a lot of time and allowing the shower sole to be laid up all at once and in one piece.