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So, I don't have much room to start building my boat yet until my wife and I move into our new house so I started with the rudder.




Here is what I have now. It needs a little more touching up and then epoxy with glass cloth.




We visited my parents this past weekend and we got the keel built! Moving right along.

We did run into issues the first attempt at joining the 2 layers. We laid epoxy down on both sides and then combined the two layers and ran down the length countersinking and using 1" screws to hold it in place. This didn't work... My 1" screws didn't have enough grip on the second board to pull them together so after all was said and done, the epoxy soaked into the board and did NOT hold the boards together but for a few spots about the diameter of a #2 pencil. After that failure, I took a screwdriver (using only my hand) and was able to split the 2 pieces apart!!! (after pulling all the screws) No damage was done to the boards. At this point I took 60grit sand paper and sanded down both sides of the board to get the epoxy smoothed out. Once we were ready, we made up more 2-part epoxy and slathered it on, flattened the boards against each other, and used 2x6's laying around on both sides of the keel and clamped it together with about 24-26 clamps. We used a couple 1.25" screws to hold the boards in place at the bow and stern while we clamped the middle first. Once that was held down we clamped the rest of the length of keel. This did the trick. There are no gaps and the keel is strong now!

Ken, I'm glad the keel worked out in the end. When I started building my Pocket Cruiser two years ago, I worried a great deal about my keel, too. I think you're doing fine. I'm not an expert, but my boat is about a week away from launching and I have maintained a blog with lots of commentary and photos, if you're interested. At the very least, you'll know what not to do. Here's the link: http://buildaboat.wordpress.com/

Paul

Paul,

Thank you for posting the photos of your bow "chain work" on your blog.  Paul R. is designing a leaner stem for my Weekender, so I'll need to incorporate a bob stay on my boat as well, and it's helpful to see how others have approached this.

Kurt Ayres
Avon, Illinois

You can see that my work here is a bit rough. I'm doing the minimum with the rigging until I can get in the water and see how it all works. I'm way out of my Sunfish comfort zone.

I'll look forward to updates on your project. Good luck!

Paul

The bob stay is a necessary evil on most sprit equipped boats. This is because of the amount of "purchase" the sprit has in the boat. On a Weekender, it has almost enough purchase, but with the knee cut down, it's best to be safe than sorry. The amount of purchase means how much boat the inboard end of the sprint "grabs".

I have a ketch that I'm building. It has a little (28") sprit, which isn't very long, but if it was attached like the Weekender, it would need a bob stay. I designed it to run under the deck (nothing to trip over on the fore deck) and the purchase is almost 5' into the boat, back to the second bulkhead. It also has a supporting bulkhead about half way back, between the bow and the inboard end. This means the sprit is so well secured, that it doesn't need a bob stay. You see, when a load is placed on the sprit, it attempts to pull the outboard end up, but it also tries to push the inboard end down (cantilever), plus since it's captured (attached) at it's inboard most end and the bow, the section between the inboard end and the bow tries to bend down (which is why I installed an intermediate bulkhead there). All this bending, twisting and yanking is why most sprit equipped boats need a bob stay. The ketch I'm doing has almost an 8' long sprit, but only 28" is sticking out of the boat, which is why I can skip the bob stay.