Diary on the construction of a Seaclipper 20, a plywood trimaran designed by Jim Brown and John Marples. Our boat's Sail No. is 50. The boat has been named GEODETICA and was launched on september 28th, 2024.
We now have to find a way to install the mast base on the vaka. The mast base is this
Given the particular shape of the base, we have decided to build a plywood step starting with two squares of 20 mm thick plywood, 10 cm x 10 cm each. We then glued the two pieces with thickened resin
When the glue sets, we will give this a proper shape...
Total work time to date: 786 hours
We spent three hours in this weekend to build the rudder mechanism as specified in the plans. To be honest I don't like it very much. We'll see how it works.
The system is based on a so-called "false transom" which is hinged to the transom at the deck level, on the vaka. The rudder's pintles are bolted to the false transom. When sailing, the rudder is kept in the "low" position by means of a rope tied to the false transom, passing trough a eye-strap fixed on the transom and up, via two bulls eye fairleads, to a V-cleat on the aft aka. So, when the rope is completely pulled ad cleated, the rudder is supposed to stay in the water, while if the rope is taken off the cleat the rudder is set free in order to avoid problems if running aground.
The following photo shows the two bullseye fairleads on the vaka deck.
Since we used thickened resin to reinforce the fasteners, we also coated all the carriage bolt holes to fasted the seats to the vaka deck.
Total work time to date: 785 hours
Three hours of work today. We installed the akas on the vaka using the s/s eye bolts which we special ordered from the UK, and then the seats in order to bore the holes for the carriage bolts to secure each seat to the cockpit deck.
We had also planned to attach the amas, but it was a bit late so we decided to postpone it.
Total work time to date: 782 hours
