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Latest updates:
28 May 2017 - Last Christmas I finally got around to
carbon fiber re-in forcing the deck and
adding a deck pad - added a video of
"The catcher" surfing at Raglan Beach
15 Feb 2014 - Worst Blogger in the universe
Where did that year go?
Fear and loathing over the sides
I have a blank
The attack of the electric planer
23 Feb 2014 Shaping 101 - fair your bottom first
9 March 2014 - rails locked in
dye-ing to do some staining
True colours wetout
More fear and loathing - can I paddle this thing?
16 March 2014 - Paua shell inlay and deck wetout
Skeg box glassed in
6 April 2014 - Deck glassed (or at least a start)
12 April 2014 - Progress - slow as a wet week
Non-skid oval secured
Nose vents
Leash plug
28 April 2014 - Hull glassed building complete!
3 May 2014 - We have a launch Houston!!!!
24th May 2014 - Shaking down
I dinged my board
I built it, I can fix it
Racing my SUP Orca (there is a movie)
8 June 2014 - Deck dinged again
More repairs
The cunning fix
Naff surf movie of the SUP Orca in action
This is a blog of my build of an ORCA Surf capable, Standup paddle board kit from the Wood Surfboard Supply company in California Wood Surfboard Supply.
Having built a couple of strip plank kayaks: A Nick Schade Guillemot Expedition kayak and the infamous and ongoing MAE593-76 baidarka , this build was going to be for the pure joy of it with no time limits. Started in April 2012
An Unexpected Journey - A stand up paddle board for the Pirate ... Now just how did that come about??
Well ... I have been surfing since I was a little tacker. In my latter years I have gotten tweaky and very inflexible. Going from prone to standing on a surfboard is still possible, but not quite the same fluid and graceful transition that it once was. I still go out on an ancient and classic, "Dunlop Dunga" on occasions when there is "mouse surf" [would be really good if you were the size of a mouse]. Recognising my own lack of mobility, I have taken to being the 'BOOGIE MAN' ... and been getting some good mileage out of my boogie board. Indeed, I have never been 'Tubed' so much since taking up boogie boarding and I have had some great rides. So "Beware the Boogie man" and give him some respect - next time you see a boogie board rider, look carefully ... it might be me!
Pete with his arsenal of surf toys ... about to be complimented with a hand crafted, custom patterned SUP ORCA
With a SUP, you are standing up before you even start and, I quite like that idea. Standing up at the outset would certainly resolve all those "flexible like a cat ... NOT!" issues that I am having. Thinking about it, all I would have to do is point the SUP in the right direction, paddle gracefully once and I would be off surfing the waves ... maybe a fanciful notion, but that could suit me just fine.
Rewind the clock to about 6 months ago when I was idly doing some modern, dry, in-the-comfort-of-your-own-home type surfing - surfing the net (that is), I came across the Wooden Surfboard Supply Co. site ... "I liked the cut of their boards" and book-marked their page.
Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago when Mrs NO!!! bought some new bedside cabinets. During the long and nostalgic transfer of stuff to the new cabinets, I discovered the best part of $300 US Cash that I had forgotten about. Criminey ... what to do? Being US cash and me being in New Zealand ... the cash looked very unusual and foreign. Indeed, some of that cash would have been left over from various adventures to Bermuda Petes' Fabulous Beruda adventure and Puget sound Puget Sound Ramblings of a cruising kayaker dating as far back as 2005. Criminey again. That meant some of that US cash could be as old as 7 years ... or more ... The thought that "It might not even work " nagged on my mind.
The cash was burning a hole in my pocket as I desperately figured out what to do with it ... with a high NZ:US exchange rate, punitive Bank rates and hefty fees ... exchanging my rediscovered loot for Kiwi 'pesos' was not a great option.
Then I remembered the Wooden Surfboard Supply Co. dudes and emailed them with a proposition:
"so cunning ... that you cold put a tail on it and call it a weasel".
I said: "If I post the cash over to you guys ... and it arrives [now what could go wrong with that picture???: 'going postal' ...lost in the mail ... stolen etc. etc. etc] would you send me a kit for an ORCA Standup paddleboard ... please?"
The reply to my unusual request from the Wooden Surfboard Supply Co. dudes was positive. So off in the mail, in an unmarked plain white envelope, went the precious US Dollars on their repatriation mission. Unbelievably (this comes with a warning: don't try this at home folks) the cash made the perilous journey safely to its destination (Bless the US postal service) ... and ... the SUP ORCA kit was winging its way to New Zealand.
Now that has to be worth a beer (or two) to celebrate.
Speaking of beers ... I didn't actually have $300 .... it was a little shy of that. The ORCA international kit cost $275 US .... so there wasn't quite enough for a tee shirt as well. Despite explaining, that during my trips to US, I had probably violated every tipping protocol possible ... see, we don't tip in NZ and us Kiwis have absolutely no idea about the finer points of tipping ... that is if we remember to tip at all. I reckoned that there would have to be some divine justice if the Wooden Surfboard Supply dudes just shouted themselves a beer with the 'balance', restoring some 'Karma' for all my heinous overseas 'tipping atrocities". Ironically, there probably might not be enough cash left to buy a beer .... if one was to include the tip.
Despite all these weighty tip issues - the Wooden Surfboard Supply Dudes (bless their hearts) insisted on sending me out a Tee shirt anyhow.
A done deal!!!!
An Unexpected Journey??
So, the unexpected journey (coincidentally the title of the first Hobbit Movie, which is being made just around the corner from me in the neighbouring suburb of Mirimar and New Zealand) was finding myself once again building a floaty thing. Especially since some time ago I had resolved to 'retire' from building, to focus spending more time running around doing stuff. Building a wooden surfboard is something of a builders 'Holy grail' because unless it is done well, the results could look pretty clunky. Additionally shaping the board, particularly the rails, is a dark and precise art that can make or break the performance of a surfboard. And believe me, there are good surfboards and not so good surfboards. So over and above the build itself, there will be decisions to make and skills to learn that will make the project something an an adventurous journey of self-development with challenges and drama. Not the sort of dramas that would make a good movie ... or even good reality TV, but plenty enough to keep myself entertained for the construction. After that, since I haven't ever been stand up paddling, there will be plenty of adventures ahead getting used to my new toy. So let the journey begin
Getting just a few logs of wood
Easter Holiday Break came along while the ORCA SUP kit was being shipped to New Zealand. This happily coincided with the Annual British Seagull Outboard motorboat race on the Waikato River which I sometimes participate in.
Seagull outboard motor boat [not] racing during the great Easter seagull race Seagull racing on Waikato 2012
The two day boat race passes through Hamilton City where one of New Zealand's well known producer of Paulownia is based: Rod Lawrence Paulownia (light weight, light coloured balsa-like wood ... ideal for surfboards). The week before the race, when I rang, Rod had recently sold out of paulownia, but was having some kiln dried that could be ready in 3 weeks. However, despite it being a weekend at the time, Rod took time out and searched out a primo 15 foot long 8" x 3" plank from his private stash that would enable plenty of 12ft clears for an ORCA SUP. And an almost instant start to my building project.
Also, one of the racers, Ian, had a plantation/orchard including some Paulownia. Ian had a couple of 10 ft, 4" x 2" planks that he could sell me ... and he would throw in some New Zealand grown (ultra fast and ultra lightweight) redwood .. the redwood would provide the perfect colour contrast for paulownia which would enable me to build trendy pin-stripes, highlights etc. etc. into my board.
Happy circumstance ... and because I would be passing through during the Easter seagull race, I could pick up the wood and (somehow) lash it to my roof-rack and drive it all back to Wellington, saving myself freight. cool !!!
Phase one, mission complete: Home in Wellington NZ, with enough wood for a SUP or two .... and a minimax racer perched on top
Thinking about it
Not much happened during the week after Easter while I was waiting for my ORCA kit to clear customs. Being a real Kiwi bloke ... it is in our rule book that we never read instructions ... unless it all turns to gooey custard - I can't say, but I 'might' have spent a bit of time 'looking' at the e-manual supplied by the Wooden Surfboard Supply Co. I also surfed the net for bits that I might need - like a fin, fin box, vents and leg rope plugs. Curiously enough, Wooden Surfboard Supply Co. has the vents and sells a fin kit with the fin box and leg rope plugs. So I reckon that I will have to get back to them on those vital bits.
Not that I am a 'girly swot' and prone to flights of fantasy .. and not wanting to put a Jinx on proceedings, but I sketched out a deck and hull pattern. During my strip built kayak projects, I tried to get a pattern going with various shades of the western red cedar available to me especially for the Expedition Single project. The pattern sort of worked out, but the contrast was pretty subtle and I could do better next time. With the Baidarka project, I ran out of NZ grown western red cedar and made contact with Rod to get some paulownia to finish off the project. Serendipitously, the paulownia/western red cedar contrast made the Baidarka very distinctive. With the SUP wood that I have from Rod and Ian (Paulownia and NZ grown Redwood), there is the opportunity for a custom hand crafted and distinctive patterned board ... hopefully the pattern comes out and my aspirations are not too ornate, verging on the fairly classical ... However, sometimes "just letting the wood do the talking" is the best option and that can save a lot of angst - think about it - an ornate wooden surfboard, from a distance, looks.... just like any other wooden surfboard.
However, if you have an ornate wooden surfboard ... you might have a chance of getting your precious board being allowed into the house and maybe into the bedroom on a good day!
So, the moral of the story is maybe give it your best shot.
A cunning design - one part subtle; one part Ornate [Potentially] ,,, watch this space
I am still thinking about it. I will probably start with a paulownia center strip on the deck and look at a thin redwood strip, thin paulownia and then double redwood GT stripe. That way the paua inlay will stand out a little more. I am not so sure about the pinstripes on the hull .... I could use some western red cedar that I have lying around in the rafters and hope I have enough redwood left over to do the solid rails.
So a tentative cutting plan for the DECK strips will be:
Paulownia
1/4" x 1/4" (6mm x 6mm) longs 4 for the temporary? rails [I might leave mine in to help glue the solid rail laminations] + maybe 2 extras to address the rolled edge immediately adjacent the temporary rails.
1/4" x 1/4" (2) for the central GT stripe to match the redwood 1/4" x 1/4" strips)
3/4" x 1/4" strips for the deck (about 22 strips)
Red wood
3/4" x 1/4" strips for GT stripes (2 full length).
1/4"x1/4" narrow Gt Strips (2 full length)
How much wood for an ORCA SUP?
That question is rhetorical ... for a start, a lot depends on how thick the saw is that you are going to use to cut it all up. The 'kerf' of the blade (the width of the saw blade whizzing at a million rpm (and sometimes wobbling a bit while it is doing it) takes out 1/8" to even "1/4" inch each time you make a cut ... this reduces a good % of your wood to sawdust. Then there are issues of the size of your strips that you want/ can achieve from the wood you have. More losses can come from the planks asymmetry (not all planks are 4" x 2" for their entire length and some planks are warped or twisted which all equal losses). All these intangible things make estimates of how much you actually need ... very much a 'guestimate' at best.
My approach, for this project was to get "heaps". The advantage of this was that I could have the greatest choice ("high grading") of strips for my board ... and there would probably be enough left over for me to make a second board. [I quite like the idea of the 11 foot Malco already]. A bit extravagant, but a happy place to be if you are building a strip plank SUP.
Happy to report that the Kit arrived safely in New Zealand a couple of days after I returned from my Easter British Seagull Outboard Racing adventure
A complete SUP frame kit and a tee shirt - all the way from California to Wellington NZ
Chapter 1/10: Construct a building table.
21 April 2012
This was a strange and distracting start to my project and not very SUP- like [Wood for a building table, just about to be lashed down and driven home].
The SUP frame has to be laid out on a stable base that can be used to check the symmetry of the kit framework, prior to stripping. $103 worth of wood and my version might end up a bit on the skinny side (the table is 23" wide and the board is 30" wide - but I figured that would be at the widest part of my SUP, and I figure that most of the board would be less than 30" - maybe this will come back to bite me, but I reckon "She'll be right" (ancient Kiwi adage).
Tools: Skill Saw
Pencil
Measuring Tape
Square
A couple of clamps (I clamped one of the longitudinal struts to act as a fence to rip the 8' x 4' sheet into two 8' x 2' sheets to be attached end to end (and trimmed to just shy of 13')
Drill and bits
Mini electric screw driver
Screw driver
Glue
A jar of square ended self tapping screws
Pen knife
An afternoons work results in a freshly completed building table - pictured upside down at this point
22 April 2012 Skipping to Chapter 4/10 -
Glue the sections of the longitudinal strut together
I unpacked the longitudinal strut components, sanded them and cut up the ply provided for the backing patches to be glued either side of the joints. Just before gluing, I roughed up the areas to be glued. That cleans up any dust and dirt and provides a 'key' for the glue to hold on. Then I mixed up some epoxy (I am in no hurry) and glued the bits together.
Bit of an OOPSIE: NEXT TIME I WOULD MARK OUT A SILHOUETTE OF THE PRE-JOINED TOGETHER MAIN STRINGER COMPONENTS ON THE BUILDING TABLE BEFORE GLUING, SO THAT WHEN IT WAS GLUED, I WOULD BE REASSURED THAT THE JOINS WERE BUTTED TOGETHER PROPERLY AND THE TARGET SHAPE WAS BEING LOCKED IN
This is because, when I did it, the glue and backing ply obscured the join. A fair amount of nervous tweaking and eyeballing resulted in what is hopefully the right shape - In the end I had to revert back to basic instincts and just trust my 'eye' after all: "If it looks alright ... it probably is".
So, the longitudinal shape of my SUP is set for better or worse. Form 28 has to be the pointy bit/bow. Gee my ORCA SUP is going to be fairly long and deep too. But a start has been made
Tools:
Sandpaper
Cling wrap to stop things being glued to my new building table accidentally
Square
Pencil
Japanese draw saw
Cutting block
Rubber gloves
Cover alls
Epoxy, stirring stick and mixing bowl
Brush
Cleaners
Dive weights (hoarded spare ones ... it is what divers do)
The longitudinal stringer sections glued together, shape set and a few dive weights to get gluing pressure
A Bit of a break and time to consolidate before starting the build in earnest.
The 'boat building shed' is really the garage for the car. Building any project requires space (including a SUP) and the ORCA will require the car to be kicked out into the elements for a period. I had planned to hang the building table and completed frame in the rafters, but my building table flexes a bit. So, now the plan is to sharpen my tools (Chapters 2 and 3); cut and then pre-bend my strips ... then build the deck in a rush when I have a break in field work/weather. Once the top deck is stripped, it can be released and stored in the rafters for leisurely completing and that way I can bring the car back in from the rain.
so don't stay tuned too keenly folks ... we are going into a bit of a hiatus
*I ordered a 2 piece Werner name brand carbon-fiber paddle - no point poling myself around on a custom, handcrafted wood ORCA SUP with a piece of aluminium and plastic ... no siree! I want the sort of dignity that only the state of the art carbon fiber and state of the art design can give.
* I thought about sharpening up my chisels and plane blades ... but didn't quite get around to it
* Doh!, double doh! and DRATS: a set back. The u-beaut 2 piece Werner name brand carbon-fibre paddle that I ordered from Outdoorplay was going to cost $500 US in freight alone [despite furious attempts to find alternative freight options].
EEEEEK, one would have thought that a 20 0z. broom stick might be freighted from US to NZ for 'naff all'. So it will have to be plan B: Maybe make my own paddle. I think I can get a carbon shaft blank for about $70 and I can fit my own blade and handle ... of course it is all entirely academic at this point as I don't actually have a SUP board yet. I would be better off hunting down a fin kit from the Wooden Surfboard Supply dudes in the meantime.
28 April
Strip cutting time
I made it back from a Dive field trip to Kaikoura. Sensational weather with calm seas and warm, sunny topside conditions at the time. The seas were alive with Dusky Dolphins, Seals, penguins, Albatross, giant petrels and sensational scenery.The diving was hard work with all my samples hiding under giant kelp, in the murky shore waters, periodically hammered by 2 ft swell sets (now where was that SUP when I needed it??). Flying home was punctuated with a bit of a Mexican stand off at the Blenheim airport with the airline person (prone to sea sickness and a staunch hater of the sea) who was offended by the naturally 'Fresh smell of the sea' aroma of my gear - insisting on wrapping all the 'offensive smelling' dive gear and samples in giant plastic bags ... Well, you don't often meet a real, dyed in the wool landlubber. She was the yin for my yang .... she hated the sea [and would be one of the people least likely to ever buy a standup paddleboard] ... In complete contrast, I practically spend all my time in the sea.
I guess it takes all sorts to make the world ... and lets never talk about this again!
Todays TASK ONE, catch up with buddy Steve Dorrington and whittle that fine 8x3 plank that I got from Rod into tiny little 1/4" x 3/4" strips. Steve is an engineer by trade and his tools and skills provide strips to die for: precision engineered and uniform ... stripping the WSS ORCA frame with Steve D strips will fit together like a glove and won't be needing much fairing at all.
Tools: working with wood and power saws: It is a no-brainer. At the very least you need ear protection. Eye protection. A pair of overalls would have helped keep the sawdust out of our clothes. And a respirator ... who would believe it. Newly sawn wood smells divine, but those cunning old trees protect themselves form pesky bugs and other encroaching plants with an arsenal of chemical systems. Along with all the (actually toxic) aromatics will be clouds of atomized wood chips. If you are planning on the long term, you want all of the above. Plus a good dose of careful around all that lethal sharp spinning around at a million rpm machinery is a good thing.
Tools part 2:
Table saw
Thickness-er
Dust extractor
feather boards
run out table
lead in table
Hearing, respirator, eye protection (discussed above)
Calipers, rules and tapes
various clamps
Fruits of our labours a bunch of strips laid out. Did I mention GT stripes and ornate - fresh cut Ian's redwood and Rod's paulownia strips ... just like I imagined it
Pre-bending: this could work?
The old garage/boat building shed is pretty messy at the best of times. Long term plan is to buy a chimnera (unauthorised by Mrs NO!!!) and burn all the handy scraps of wood lying around on the floor. That will keep me warm while I do the barbeque and tidy up the boat shed (of course, I mean garage). The only nagging thing at the back of my mind is that once I burn all my handy wood scraps ... I will need them [There in lies foundation of a suspected hoarding problem].
The pool polo boat in the middle of the SUP construction area belongs to the Son. He has beaten the kayak to death during numerous polo competitions and is taking up my valuable building space to repair numerous tears in the hull using (to rub salt into the wounds) liberal amounts of my SUP epoxy. 1 of the 101 things that can delay and disrupt your build. But as of now and despite Sons and their polo kayaks, there should be enough strips being pre-bent to complete the deck of my ORCA SUP. I am starting to look down the barrel of a serious start to my project.
It's all about me!
Somewhere off the Whanganui Coast - A slave to the machine, tending an umbilical cord to an underwater camera array (putting me out of a job = diving and taking pictures)
Building got put on hold over the very weekend that I had hoped to make a start to my build. Instead of building my ORCA SUP in perfect sunny weather, I was working off the coast off Whanganui. Why document this in my build? Well, life and all manner of things will get in the way of a good build. Just keeping the blog focused only on the building details might give a soul the wrong impression: that building is straight forward. In the ideal world, you would have plenty of space and free time and no distractions ... I would like that. I can picture my days: leisurely breakfast, glue a few strips, go surfing or kayaking for the rest of the morning; come home for lunch and do a few more strips; maybe spend the afternoon going for a cycle ride and spend some time wondering what the poor people are doing before doing a few more strips after supper.
Sadly for me, being in such an idyllic position isn't going to happen any time soon. I have a job and a family. Demands on my time and random disruptions are numerous and varied. Like having to work the perfect weekend off Whanganui. The disruptions amount to being a challenge in their own right to the challenge of building. But delays and disruptions aren't insurmountable and can usually be resolved with a little patience ... "nothing like putting off today, something that you can do tomorrow". A little focus and persistence and eventually your goals will be achieved. That is the joy of being an amateur builder ... the only time pressures are the ones you put on yourself.
In the end, getting up really early every day and working all weekend wasn't all bad. We finished off our work (and don't have to go back there again) and saw heaps of whales and dolphins. Super extra bonus was that I never in my wildest dreams ever thought that I would see a name brand BLUE WHALE ... at least not in my lifetime. While in transit from Wellington to Whanganui, somewhere in the Northern Cook Strait, we came across some whale spouts. Usually, if you see whale spouts they are relatively close by - no more than half to one Nautical mile away. These spouts were enormous fountains, so big, that judging the distance was initially difficult and confusing. For example it looked like the whales might be only 1 nautical mile away [In reality they were over the horizon at about 5 nautical miles]. When we traveled a nautical mile to where they should have been ... The spouts were still way in the distance? ... "that is just weird. What is going on here??", thoughts went through my mind
Eventually after crossing lots of ocean, we got proximate to the whales and one conveniently surfaced nearby, so we could get a few indications of what sort of whale it might be. In the end the size of the spouts, the size of the animal, light grey/blue mottled colouring and a stumpy looking dorsal fin pointed to a BLUE WHALE .... COOOL!!!
At the time, I was too gobsmacked at what I was seeing to take any definitive photos. Partly because when the whale surfaced (we got a good glimpse of it's back and fin) it looked to 'sound' immediately. I figured: "well, that was impressive as!!! It has dived and we won't be seeing him again anytime soon ... no point getting ready to take a photo". But. then, the Blue Whale re-surfaced almost immediately and then again for a third time (before finally disappearing into the depths below - each time I didn't have the gumption to take a photo. Besides, any Whale photos that I have taken aren't that great. The whales are usually quite a way away, in blurred full zoom hand shaking saskwatch photograph mode .... and at best whales pretty much look like an awash rock.
For example:
This is a picture of a (probably) Humpback whale scampering away in the distance, that I eventually took on the way back to Wellington some days later
However, when the BLUE WHALE had finally dived and I stopped being so excited by the event, all that was left was a lingering 'prop wash' bubbling on the surface of the water from the animals passing ... at least I got a good "You had to be there" photo of that:
The lingering 'prop wash' left behind after the BLUE WHALE dived the third and final time
One other striking thing about my BLUE WHALE sighting .... I immediately understood how the old sailors got the idea that "Thar be seamonsters out there": We never saw either the whales head, nor its tail, just a huge sinuous back snaking out of and back into the water. What, with the mottled skin and whale spout, reminiscent of smoke (ergo: fiery beasts etc. etc.) and should two blue whales ever dive one after the other ... that would definitely be grounds to imagine an enormous sea serpent about a mile long. And if you didn't know what a whale looked like at the time - well that is just how legends are born.
Dusky Dolphins frolic on an early morning bow ride
The weekends work was broken by the threat of rough weather - so we all traipsed back to Wellington for just one day. I managed to rough out a rudder for the ongoing Baidarka project and clean up the SUP stringer and mark out the building table [center line, rib positions, upright stick positions ready for the next stage]. contrary to the instruction, It looks like for an ORCA SUP I will be needing little upright 'sticks' ranging in length from 7" - 9 1/2" and I there will be about 15 of them.
Cold weather and another interruption - a dive trip to the Diving Mecca of the Poor Knights (North of Whangarei). I was last there in about 1985 and even then it was as good as Jacques Cousteau himself reckoned = world class. This time was no exception and a memorable adventure was had by all .... but I am starting to show signs of being too old for road trips.
A picassa album of some of my photos is here for the record: Pirate Petes sensational Poor Knights diving adventure photos
It is hard to get the perfect Moray Eel photo - this was my best effort
Swanning around at the mouth of Air Bubble Cave, Poor Knights Island - very, very pleasant diving - but not very productive SUP building action
Back home in Wellington and it is time to bite the bullet and start building
Gentlemen, start your engines - the pre-cut struts and stringer ready for a date with a hot melt gun and a square
The stringer set up in place, temporarily suspended in space and time
Ribs slotted in their place. The computer cut slots are 0.5mm out and the ribs hang just a touch too low
Off and racing - Now I have a clear idea of what my SUP ORCA is going to look like and how big it is. The forms are teasing me because there is a fair amount of tweaking and angst ahead of me to line them all up accurately before I can start laying down the strips and really locking in my SUP ORCA shape.
Locking the ribs into position with mini clamps, dive weights, wooden triangles and buckets of hotmelt glue
I am making serious progress. The stringer was a bit wonky despite all care and responsibility when setting the row of upright sticks as square as possible. It was so wobbly that the old laser eye, had to be set aside and a string line set up from bow to stern. Then I went along bracing the stringer with extra struts at strategic points using hot melt glue and carefully placed dive weights putting just enough pressure on each strut to hold it in place while the hot melt glue set. That straightened everything out nicely.
At days end I had 11/28 ribs set in place. It was a fiddly and time consuming job. I resolved the 1mm rib/stringer slot issue by suspending the rib on a temporary 'H' comprised of temporarily clamped struts making the 'upright-goal-posts' and the rib the 'horizontal-bar' part of the "H". Then it was a matter of tweaking the rib into a horizontal position (measured to the nearest mm and referenced to the height of the stringer at that point) and ensuring that the rib/strut was at the right height. This required much to and fro-ing. Once satisfied I could then fire up the melt gun and set the shape. Sometimes, if the rib was warped, a follow up strut or two had to be set before moving onto the next rib.
In the picture above, you can see the set up. Two big homemade squares to ensure the rib isn't warped and the struts are located in the right place. Two little homemade squares to ensure things are square as reasonably possible. Mini clamps holding things in place while the hotmelt glue is curing and a trusty old 'persauder' dive weight to add a bit of pressure where it is needed while the hot melt glue set.
I just want to start stripping and then go surfing. But it is vital that time and patience is lavished on the project at this point otherwise I will be Stand Up Paddling a warped banana. I like to think that things are looking good at this stage. When I fit the temporary rails in place, I figure they will lock the frames in place and give a fair indication whether or not things are on the right track.
Underneath things are looking a bit like a pier under construction ... the extra struts help tweak 'floppy' ribs and the stringer into position
Well it was a pretty full couple of days (with the usual suite of interminable interruptions disrupting building progress) setting the ribs in shape. Things seemed to be going slowly, then all of a sudden I was working near the bow section (having started from the back) and I was almost done. The forms are looking rather good and a pleasing orderliness has developed over what is clearly a 3D shape of a standup paddleboard. For the next while, building takes on a more leisurely pace with lots of relatively short bursts of activity followed by time to do other things while glue dries. In the ideal world I wouldn't have picked up the winter 'man' flu (along with heaps of other Kiwis) that is going the rounds at the moment - then I could be out doing a kayak race in between dabbling with my SUP ORCA building project instead of sulking around the house feeling sorry for myself.
There is 'more than one way to skin a cat' and I have digressed from the excellent Wooden Surfboard Supply manual instructions. I figure that the temporary rails will be important for locking in the shape of the board. Also, I secretly don't think I have enough redwood to laminate solid rails. The rails are quite deep. So, I glued little backers on every other rib end (I figured that with 28 ribs with an end on each side = 56 bits of backing wood and extra weight - hence every OTHER rib) so I can clamp and glue permanent rails for my board. I should also be able to use these backers to make a semi-stepped semi-hollow laminated rail which theoretically should save on lumber and weight. Well, that is the plan anyhow.
Easying back into dabble building. Step one glue upright backers to clamp permanent 'temporary' rails to my SUP ORCA frame
Permanent 'temporary' rails locked in place, rib-stringer interfaces locked in with epoxy and just about to do my center srip
Did I say easing back into the build. Well, that was a bit of a lie, I am starting to get the 'bit between my teeth' as the build gains momentum. The excitement of the build is starting to run away on me. [Not at all helped by me seeing two stand up paddleboarders at Lyall Bay with 1.5 - 2m surf running this morning = paddle board heaven and salient inspiration reminding me of where "I want to be at"].
The rails are now locked in place and, again straying from the advice of the Wooden surfboard supply manual, I painted the joins where the ribs meet the stringer with epoxy to glue them in place. Ideally I should have run my angle grinder over the top of the ribs at semi-random places to make the 'limber holes' to help drain water. And I need to chamfer the top rail to conform to the rolled top edge. But it will take about a day for my epoxy to set, so I am going to bore on and start laying my strips down. That 'GT' stripe is only hours away from being permanently set. I will sort the rail chamfer and limber holes tomorrow ... before I lay down too many strips.
I put the bottom rail down first (the ORCA has a flat hull). Some say there is no finer or fairer curve than a bent piece of wood and the bottom rail locked the shape in nicely and identified 3 ribs, that were not quite level (high on one rail side, low on the other). I broke the offending ribs from their hotmelt glue bonds and reset them. I am now pretty confident that my frame is very, very close to being perfectly true - at least true enough for me to be happy with where I am at.
Progress.
Jackass SUP building with extreme tools - Limbering up
Don't try this at home folks
The stunts performed in the building of the SUP shouldn't be copied
All care and no responsibility
Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc.
Extreme tools? Way back when, I built a carport extension on the side of the garage/boat shed/mancave. To comply with council boundary regulations and supposedly make it easier for myself, the boundary end of the carport is not square. It is angled to make an un-contestable and legal gap of about 1.5m from the neighbours boundary. At the time it was an easy solution and easy to build. However, the roofing material I used was the ubiquitous corrugated iron (fabulous for New Zealand conditions and because it is steel, corrugated iron has desirable strengthening structural properties = great stuff) only comes in square ends.
Not a problem, I discovered somewhere, that you could buy cutting disks for hand held circular/skill saws. The disk I got, was about 8" diameter and was like a thin angle grinder blade. It bolted on my skill saw in place of the wood cutting blade. Cool. So armed with my modified skill saw I started trimming the corrugated iron on the end of my carport extension. Things went fine, the blade cut through the corrugated iron like it would if it were wood = easy as. Things were going fine and from a real Kiwi Bloke point of view it was serious fun because the cutting was accompanied by showers of sparks and extreme noise ... and with the element of danger I was pretty much in 'Jackass heaven'.
Serious fun turned to wild amusement when I finished trimming.
The great 8" disk had been ground away to a tiny little wheel about 3" diameter ... hilarious.
So ... what does all this have to do with SUP building???? ... well ever since Steve Dorrington gave me an angle grinder, I have discovered 101 woodworking uses for an angle grinder. Yeah sure, angle grinders are extreme woodworking tools and their use requires a very soft and delicate touch, heaps of protective gear ESPECIALLY SAFETY GLASSES and the nagging thought at the back of your mind: "What could possibly go wrong with this story????????".
I used an angle grinder to cut the 'limber holes' in the deck frames to facilitate the draining of the board, should 'dread the thought' any water make its way inside the hull.
The angle grinder ...... "Worked a treat". I guess that makes ..... 102 uses
Extreme Jackass tools - I used an angle grinder to make the 'limber holes' in the deck
Fast forwarding ahead to where the deck is stripped and the board released from the table- the little extreme angle grinder limber holes
show up like tiny mouse holes - happy with that
Strips being laid down and that 'GT stripe' is finally a permanent fixture
Thursday 7 June 2012, a week on from that 'serious start' here in New Zealand we are zero-ing on the middle of winter. It is cold and gloomy with the sun low and well to the north. Not great building conditions. But I console myself with the thought that my SUP ORCA project should be ready for summer.
I am well into laying down the strips. Here is that 'GT' stripe, permanently glued in place with only a bit of trimming and fairing needed for completion.
Comments; the saran wrap (Glad wrap in New Zealand language) system works pretty well. Indeed I can get enough tension on the stretchy lunch wrap to dent the paulownia strip edge in places ... sometimes I don't know my own strength? I started off with a 1m length of glad wrap on every second rib, but after a few strips, things are quickly widening out dramatically. Lately, I am trending towards 1.5 m strips of gladwrap on every rib. Clamped sticks on the bow (pictured) and stern keep the strips in the same curve plane ... The stern is coming together extremely nicely and I am stripping in a hollow bow curve - when viewed head on (for no particular reason .... I do want a sexy looking bow that doesn't look like a duck bill - the arc is very shallow and shouldn't affect surfing performance). Once everything is trimmed it should be sweet as!!!
I started off with a hiss and a roar getting 3 sets of strips down on the first day. Things dwindled to 2 strips the next day and today: only one strip. But with a weekend coming up and a bit more spare time, I could be close to having most of the deck stripped before I have to go off on the next diving adventure mission [Don't get too excited it is in Bluff, about 420 Nautical miles south of Wellington where I live and far too close to Antarctica for my liking]. The weather in Wellington lately has been bitterly cold with much snow falling down south. Diving in Bluff at this time of year is going to be 'character building' to say the least. With 6 m Southerly swells forecast, odds on the viz will be bad and it is unlikely that any good underwater photographs will be posted [I might have to go to 'stock footage' for this blog].
Slowing down the building pace, gives me some time to think about how I might be able to cope with those curved deck edges .... It looks like I can bend and twist most of the strips and only at the ends which should be easy ... but I might also need to put in a stepped strip or a couple of skinny strips along the midsection. I will continue stripping and cross that bridge if I need to. Watch this space.
The frame is stiffening up and becoming 'solid as' with more and more strips being laid.
I like what I am seeing
Trimming and stripping
Todays effort was to trim the strips at the bow and stern. The act was arguably premature, but it was an excuse to remind myself of what I am building and gave me an opportunity to think about what sort of treatment I am going to give to the stern. A pin tail will theoretically give me more waterline length = speed and a clean exit = more speed. Traditionally longboard sterns are squared off, but then this is the year 2012 and tradition was a long time ago.
The photo below shows the trimmed bow and the slight curve I created with creative stripping. The arc is very subtle and with the trimmed curve, you almost can't see it.
I think I might just get away with it.
Trimming the bow strips prematurely and the gentle curve that I stripped into the bow ... because I could
I trimmed the stern into a pintail - just to see what it would look like
I trimmed the stern into a pin tail and like the look of it. Plenty of time to trim it square if I get sound advice and need to. The lens of my little olympus Mu camera makes the strips look like they are fanned. I assure you they are completely parallel for the entire length of the board. But the photo is inspiration for fanning the 'GT' stripe on the next build ... maybe. It would be easy to achieve. Just fan the strips out from a point (say rib #5) and fill the gaps with wedge shaped strips. Sure, that would be just a little more fiddling around, but I think the effort would be worth it.
I like to think the effect, especially at the stern would give the impression of speed .... the board would look like it was going fast even when it was sitting there!!!
Next time???
Moving along - stripping progress. Just a couple more stripping days and it will be a done deal
Stripping action.
It takes just over half an hour to undo the cling wrap 'lashings', trim the ends of the next strips, apply the glue and then rebind the next lot of strips permanently into place with clingwrap lashings. A little trick is to clean up the glue squeeze and check that the strips are lying nicely flat (particularly in between the forms) by going around pressing the strip from stem to stern and checking the edge joins. The pressure applied by the cling wrap can sometimes warp the strips very slightly. On reflection, I have cove and bead bits and could easily have run all my strips through my homemade milling table. Cove and Bead strips tend to rail together in the spaces between the forms. The cove and bead also provide more glue-ing surface. But then, putting on cove and beads is an extra step and there is plenty that can go wrong ... the feather edges of the coves? are easily damaged and if your router isn't set up dead right ... the resulting asymmetric cove and beads become problematic. Plus you mill away quite a bit of saw dust which means that you are going to need more strips.
I would have to agree with Wooden Surfboard Supply dudes that, square edged strips are working out nicely and look fine. I just might have to do a touch more fairing than I might have if I had cove and beaded.
It is looking like the strips are twisting and conforming naturally enough to the rolled deck edges and the board is shaping up quite nicely at this stage. It is looking likely that I won't have to do anything special to cater for the deck camber other than carry on stripping like I did when I started.
I haven't been paying much attention to colour matching my strips. I confess that I have been choosing the lightest coloured strips that come to hand, but once the paulownia is epoxied I expect it all to go a nice honey golden colour. Randomly putting down the strips at worst will give me that nice classic pinstripe deck look - otherwise I would be looking at 'a lot of white'.
Speaking of which: already my deck plan is wavering and I am starting to consider a pair of killer whales on the top deck either side of my GT stripe and putting my lightning bolt on the underside. That way, I can fill up all that blank canvass and maybe not upset too many dolphins. Still plenty of time before I cross that bridge. I can finish off the stripping and doubt that I will be able to stop myself from doing a bit of fairing before releasing the board from the table. While I am doing that, I can mock up a couple of killer whale silhouettes and a lightning bolt and see what they are going to look like in real life. Also, I will have to remind myself of my own adage "let the wood do the talking".
Comments: I have recycled the cling wrap that came with the board for the 'lashings'. The name brand cling wrap is a little more stretchy and less likely to dent the strip edges than the roll of food cling wrap that I am using. I should have tried a little harder to source some more of the Wooden Surfboard Supply recommended cling wrap.
Winter Port Survey In Bluff = a break in the building
Building was put on the back burner while I went down to Bluff to join my workmates for a week of Bluff Port survey. I went with some trepidation because it was winter and my dry suits leaked either tragically or catastrophically during my Poor Knights adventure. At the Poor Knights the water temperature was 18c and flooded drysuits weren't much of a problem. However, in Bluff, in winter the water temperature is likely to be 8c and a flooded drysuit wouldn't be a funny thing. My desperate attempts to repair the zip of my dry suit with liberal applications of namebrand 'aquaseal' before I went way down south managed to reduced the torrents to a trickle.
I am happy to report that after a days diving in the 8-9c murky waters of Bluff Harbour (stirred up by the rough weather at the time - bluff harbour can be surprisingly clear and is one of our prettiest harbours to dive) I had a damp left shoulder and slightly wet right hips and was dry and warm everywhere else = bullet dodged.
Stock file footage of a Bluff Harbour Nudibranch on a clear day ... this trip the viz was too murky to attempt underwater photography
Mollymorks (mini albatross) usually spend all their time in the middle of the Southern Ocean. They do occasionally venture into harbours and Fjiords when the Southern ocean is well stirred up and snotty (Gale to Storm force winds with 6 m swells were running for the week). Mollymorks being present in Bluff Harbour ... did not bode well. At times weather conditions weren't a lot of fun, but we lucked out with a couple of dry-ish days which helped.
A wintery week of not building, doing Port survey work in Bluff Harbour. Mollymorks in the harbour wasn't a good sign
Deck completed 17 June 2012
Never believe anything you see on the internet. Below is a cunning picture of my completely stripped deck. Well ... not actually, the cold southern weather followed me north for a miserable cold weekend back in Wellington. My glue took forever to go off, so I didn't lay down as many strips as I had wanted to. There is a small half strip remaining on the port side yet to be sorted out early next week.
Things are close enough that I can pat myself on the back and kid myself that I am 'half way' there and that is some cause for celebration.
Nobody needs to point out that after I strip the hull, there is a small matter of the 'rails', shaping, fairing, sheathing, fin and leg rope holder fitting etc. etc. So in truth I am sort of 1/3 through the build - if you are an optimist.
At least now I can get a real feel for my board and I don't have to use quite as much imagination any more.
The glue lines stand out, but I expect that they will be less obvious once some fairing is done and they will be even less noticeable when the deck is sheathed in glass and epoxy. Pity, because I like the stripey effect.
Back home in Wellington and the weekend sees the deck planked (almost)
No need to worry about the roll on the edge, the 3/4" strips easily conformed to the required shape
I was worried about how I might faithfully strip the rolled edge. In the end, the 3/4" strips wrapped into the shape rather nicely and very easily. I didn't even do any 'rolled beveling'. Any gaps will probably fill up with epoxy and in the end it was a no brainer.
Building trickery - a couple of strip ends on the port side hung a little too low. Here they are temporarily "propped up"
I am not a carpenter by trade and my work is full of trickery, cunning and 'on the hoof' panicking leading to desperate solutions. A couple of the wrapped strips on the port side hung down a little low on the ends. With no easy way to clamp them into place, no saran wrap twisting and not enough time to stand there holding them till the glue dried .... I just cut a length of scrap to about the right length and wedged the prop into place ... problem solved.
I am still thinking about running the hull strips through my cove and bead router bits... namely "because I can" and to see if it helps. My square deck strips need a bit of fairing, which won't be a bad thing. My strips are thick enough for that not to be an issue and it will shed a bit of weight too. But I reckon the cove and beaded hull planks won't need much fairing at all and it will be worth the experiment.
WEEKEND 23 June release the board from the table
Lots of distractions and not much SUP building. 60 knot winds gusting at times during the weekend made it hard to work up enough enthusiasm to leave the safety of the house. But I still managed to do a little bit of fairing and released the board from the table. It is hard to beat the tangible evidence of being able to swing a half built (actually quarter built) SUP around in your hot little hands.
Pressing on later in the weekend when the weather fined up, I cleaned up the underside and put in some reinforcing blocks for the skeg box.
Building a long board sanding long board; trying out a bit of fairing; and saving the saw dust before releasing the board from the table
Don't get too excited. This is a fairly sober build and builder. My stash is some sawdust harvested from 10 minutes of fairing. Mixed with epoxy to a consistency of peanut butter, it will make a handy and cunning invisible hole filler. I got the idea from NIck Schade Guillemot kayak building book. The best ever sanding dust comes from the catcher of my random orbital sander. Sometimes, with cheap sand paper, the saw dust is contaminated by chips of glass/sand grits, but still makes a serviceable invisible filling compound when mixed with epoxy.
I thought having a stash of saw dust might be academic because initially the deck was looking very, very good.
However, this morning I noticed a few garks mysteriously picked up from swinging my board around the place. Before releasing the SUP from the building table, I had considered fairing the deck and coating it with epoxy to help protect the deck from such hazards. On reflection that would have been good insurance .... Next time.
The strips don't need very much fairing, but there are a couple of low spots near the port bow that will require a bit of attention. And since I am still undecided about what sort of inlays I want ... I figured it might be best to leave fairing to a whole board exercise.
Using scraps of paulownia to reinforce the area where the skeg box will eventually be fitted. Blocks are economically packed out by a line of strips
I spent the afternoon looking for some scrap Paulownia that I had saved from my MAE593-76 Baidarka build and then cut them to fit the space where I will eventually fit the Skeg box. I packed the blocks out with a layer of scrap strips to give extra width. If you look carefully in the photo above, I have pulled the near side front block away to reveal the stacked strips - just before I glued and clamped them into place.
It is great to have some tangible evidence of a SUP in your hot little hands
The down side of releasing your SUP from the building table and parading it around the place is that my pristine deck is gaining a few unnecessary garks. But having tangible evidence of your SUP in your hot little hands is priceless. I was a bit sceptical about the whole concept of a wooden surfboard ... but the Wooden Surfboard Supply Orca is looking pretty good to me. And I was surprised about how light it was when I released it from the table. Sure the board has the hull, rails and plenty of epoxy to be added, but I doubt the board will end up too heavy at all.
SWEEEEET.
The underside of a SUP Orca before stripping
The cunning plan - For no rational or logical reason [other than it is important for evil bean counting bottom line feeding corporate accountants] this week is the end of the financial year. Along with a bunch of meetings and a training course, work will be particularly hectic and there will be little chance to make much progress on my SUP Orca project. The best I can hope for is to tidy up my fin box reinforcing efforts and maybe attach reinforcing backing strips on every other rib to provide extra gluing area and the chance of being able to get a bit of clamping pressure on the hull strips when I start laying them.
We have been besieged by endless, particularly foul, rainy weather these past few weeks and I feared that I would never get a half decent photo of the underside of the Wooden Surfboard Supply's frame before I started stripping. The clouds parted for a moment and I stole the snap, pictured above. Unfortunately the picture doesn't capture the delightful rocker that the board has. It was the best I could do at the time.
MORE ABOUT ME
Sure enough, not a lot of progress:
Mid winter and the weather has been very uninspiring to say the least. Really, really cold and mostly wet. Along with work commitments, the weather and car woes: I have made close to no progress on my SUP project.
But I have been to Auckland for a meeting - I flew in on the old red-eye with a carbon footprint that would make hobbit footwear look normal. My colleagues from Christchurch landed in Auckland soon after me and both experienced aircraft lightning strikes - apparently it was 'pretty exciting' for them. On the walk to head office along the water front, I came across the strange scene below - presumably it is a car sitting on a submerged raft. Probably advertising the Rally of New Zealand that had just finished the day before. Kind of cool, but remind me not to buy that car as it almost certainly has a serious rust problem developing. That water is pure New Zealand Pacific seawater in the Viaduct basin!.
Car parking in Auckland City must be near crisis point as illustrated by this creative solution at the Viaduct Basin
I finished the week off by going diving under the Research Ship Tangaroa RV to inspect the myriad of swathe mapping and various sensing pods that adorn the bottom of the hull like a mushroom field. The weather topside was sunny, but a cutting Southerly wind direct from Antarctic made things refreshing to say the least. Underwater it was dark and murky. So it wasn't inspiring diving. My latest round of aquaseal applications to my Drysuit zip hasn't resolved the damp left shoulder and wet right hip issues. So there is more repair work to be done, but at least I was mostly dry and warm.
Photo by Roberta D'Archino - Pete T Pirate not working on his SUP project, somewhere under RV Tangaroa in Wellington Harbour
During the weekend I bought some more clamps and made progress of sorts: the fin box reinforcing is completed and I have reinforcing clamp plates on every other rib. I backed every rib near the bow and stern, where a bit of pressure will come in when the strips are bent steeply at the tips.
You can never have enough clamps - reinforcing backing on every rib near the bow and every other rib in between
Cunning boat building - a piece of scrap oak, bent and glued on the bow to give a bit of thickness
HEADS UP WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING
Okay, Some time after this stage, during surf sea trials (see somewhere near the bottom of this blog) I discovered that the deck is prone to constant dings from heavy (me) foot traffic. On reflection it would have been a good idea to reinforce the underneath part of the deck, particularly the mid to tail section with glassed cloth. That would have significantly strengthened underneath the deck where it needs it.
By the time I realised that I had a problem, I was left no choice but to repair and reinforce the deck with more glass and a touch of carbon fibre.
A cruel fix to what was a lovely pristine deck, but the SUP Orca surfs so well that rather than just stick to flat water only, I will retro-reinforce so I can surf - and damn the consequences
The last act prior to stripping the hull: I put a little bit of packing around the nose and stern to maintain thickness at the ends. This extra thickness should come in handy because the ends will be less prone to dings and the wider radius will enable the glass to 'lay' nicely and make a good seal. The lateral bend was pretty acute and even the heat gun wasn't going to help the scrap of oak that I found, conform to the arc of the nose. I made cuts 3/4 the depth of the little oak strip 1cm apart and 'cracked' every cut to get the oak to bend - you might be able to see the little nicks at intervals, in between the clamps around the bow.
Note: I am always reluctant to throw wood away and the strip of oak lying in the rafters was just what I needed as a packer. Also, I reckon all boats ought to be made of stout oak ... or at least have some oak in the build ... for no other reason than "it looks good on paper" and bragging rights are priceless: "Ahhh ... that SUP is made mostly of paulownia, redwood .... and "Stout Oak".
Like watching Paint dry
The weather has gotten colder and damper. There hasn't been this much South East wind blowing (Cold, from Antarctic) for so long since the Rose Noel Trimaran Capsized in the Pacific Ocean and washed back up on Waiheke Island in Auckland. Now that may not sound unusual, but New Zealand lies in the best part of the Roaring Forties with the West Wind Drift (at 40 knots) prevailing most of the time. It would have been reasonable to expect the Rose Noel to washup somewhere between Chile and Tera Del Fuego, things being equal.
Protracted South EASTERLIES at this time of year, is suggestive [to me] that the strong La Ninja Oscillation we have been experiencing for the last couple of years might be shifting, maybe to a fairly strong El Nino - that means lots of boisterous Westerly winds for the coming New Zealand summer. And that is not a good thing for my diving which is often in areas exposed to Westerly wind - we still get some calm weather, but the 'weather windows' are fewer and further between ... but that is my business and I will deal with it when and if I have to.
Right now, all the cold Easterlies means that it is taking forever for my glue to go off. I have dropped from being able to lay 3 pairs of strips a day, to 2 pairs and now I can barely get 1 pair down in a day. After all the preparation work it was good to start laying down the strips for the hull until things ground to a halt on account of the damp and cold ambient temperatures. Now I have a new understanding of what it is like waiting for glue to off. It is right up there with watching paint dry and grass grow ....and enough to make you go grrrrrrrrr. Just when you want to make some serious progress ... you can't.
Things to report / Notes:
Too cold and too wet to get around to doing any cove and beading - my home made router table needs to be set up outside, and I had given up waiting for good conditions. Despite all the 'cove and bead' bravado, I am progressing on the hull with square strips and they will do just fine.
There has been a bit of escalating going on in the clamp world = I am buying more and more clamps. at $75 NZ for a 30" sash clamp, I suspect that very soon plan B will have to be engaged. I am not sure what plan B is, but might involve drilling a few holes in the ribs so I can revert to using a saran/glad wrap lashing system.
I put little reinforcing bits on (mostly) every other rib so I could get a bit of clamping pressure on the strips as they are glued. The system works nicely. However, I opted for every other rib - to save weight. The clamps work really well and it wouldn't have been a good idea to put little reinforcing backing bits on EVERY rib because that would have helped lock in consistent pressure.
I had two New Zealand Redwood strips left over. They were blotchy because a bit of sap wood mixed in randomly with heart wood. This gives the strips odd grain and colours that morph and fade inconsistently. However, I considered the patterns funky enough to use them anyway.
Before stripping, I painted the ribs, stringer and underside of the deck with epoxy. This was to seal the wood (in case any water makes its way inside) and to help glue the joins and strips to the frame. It is a bit of a gamble because the epoxy will add some weight, but I reckon that it should potentially be less weight than any water insidiously soaking into the wood and staying there. So the internal epoxy sealing should make the board stronger and last longer and for the cost of a small weight gain is probably worth doing.
Prep-work completed - time to lay some hull strips and feeling like I am making progress again
Notice the clamps - more and more and more starting to appear on the scene
After all the talk - 'I put my money where my mouth is' and splayed out the hull strips at the stern. Not the best joinery, but I might get away with it
Having talked about it, I fanned out the strips on the tail. Because I was going to route a hole for the skeg box, I figured that it might be good idea to splay my GT stripes out a bit. That way they wouldn't get broken up by dissappearing into the skeg box when it comes time to fit it.
Also, secretly because I have a round bow and a pin tail ... It will be helpful to figure out which one is the front and which one is the back :)
The splayed strips are just a bit of free lance 'hokie pokie' stripping and I am not sure where things will end up. I think of it as 'The ripple effect'. I am not sure what the repercussions are or how they will come into play. I am gambling that the growing width of strips being laid will 'outstrip' the flare by the time I get to the rails ... I will cross that bridge when I get to it
Still more disruptions
I can't say .... but I might be off for a weeks BIG GAME fishing in Vanuatu with my Brother and a psycho (extremely keen) fisherman called 'Gid'. I haven't done much Big Game fishing and a week of fishing in the nearby Tropical South Pacific Paradise was too good an offer to pass by. I wouldn't have made a lot of progress on the SUP on account of cold weather and forecast rains. Once again the build gets put on hold while I swan off on yet another adventure. But think of the pictures and stories that I will be able to share!
The project has been slung unceremoniously into the rafters and don't expect too much progress for the short while.
Positive things are that I could make space for the SUP ORCA in the rafters which bodes well for having somewhere to put it when I have finished. Another positive was that the car can also fit into the garage. This is significant because it means that the project is future proofed = My new SUP ORCA won't have to spend time rotting outside in the elements when I have finished. Instead it will be hanging in the rafter ready for instant action when conditions come right.
The half-completed SUP ORCA unceremoniously slung in the rafters while I swan off BIG GAME fishing in Vanuatu
Distracted Pete - BIG big game fishing in Tropical Paradise, Vanuatu 2012
Well, big game fishing for 5 days in Vanuatu was bigger and better than I could have imagined. It seems Pirate Pete, the Marine Biologist has shown his dark side earning the nick name "Lucky Pete, the fish whisperer". I caught all the really, really big fish and snaked the rest of the ones that mattered. I don't know if every Big Game fishing trip in Vanuatu is as action packed, but there wasn't much time or inclination at the end of the day for much in the way of extracurricular activities. Plonking down under the nearest veranda and sipping on a quiet rum and reviewing the days action was about the best I could do. I can only recommend that you try game fishing in Vanuatu with Nautilus Charters before you are too old or all the fish are gone.
"Lucky Pete" snaked the sailfish of the trip, while Bro Steve and Gid were distracted with some Wahoo wrestling... Deck hand Thomas about to release the tagged fish
"Lucky Pete's" 100 lb plus dog tooth tuna took 3 strong men to carry and fed the entire village in the Maskelyne Islands (North of Epi)
Not all the fish were giant with big teeth ... I think that this is a coral trout and is free of Ciguatera, but just in case he was released back into the wild
Dugout outrigger canoes were not tourist gimmicks but practical tools for fishing and transporting goods in the outer Vanuatu Islands ... maybe I should have been making one of them instead of my SUP?????
To cut a long story short, we had a very exciting 5 Days BIG big game fishing, capped off with a memorable mornings SCUBA diving before having to come back to the cold harsh realities of Winter in Wellington. If you are interested, I have thrown a few of my Vanuatu adventure photos on a Picasa site: Pete's BIG big game fishing adventure in Vanuatu
Safely back in Wellington and besieged by cold (11th coldest sea level frost on record for Wellington) and rain - so not surprisingly, building is going at a tortuously slow pace. On the Saturday I got back, I managed to convince Steve Dorrington to help rip up a plank of paulownia to complete the hull planking and reduce the remaining plank of New Zealand grown redwood and a half plank of western red cedar into strips for the rails. Then it was progress at about two strips per weekend. Despite the slow progress, the added strips soon exceeded the capability of most of my clamps. So it was 'plan B' - drill holes in alternative ribs to enable some saran/glad wrap lashings to help keep pressure. And they worked .... maybe the integrity of the hull has been slightly compromised, but it saves me buying more and more and bigger and bigger clamps at about $50 a shot.
Slowly getting more planks down. Plan B - to get clamping pressure as the strips get wider and wider: Drill a series of holes to enable the plastic wrapping system used for the deck to work
Rumbling along and making slow progress on the Hull (on account of winter, distractions and end bends) - Shot showing lashings of lashings and clamps [the lightening hole system works fine - one end is anchored with a simple knot to a matchstick scrap of paulownia]
Being distracted by my distractions ... and a useful website
There is nothing happening with my SUP build. I had planned to while away the weekend dividing time to making progress on my SUP project; starting my cycle racing comeback with the first of the Balfour Pennington cycle races on Saturday; a kayak race on Sunday and round my spare time off with some Olympic games watching on TV. But Nooooooo - I got the message to scramble south to Bluff at the bottom of the South Island, on Thursday to link up with commercial paua divers on an expedition to Fiordland.
As far as distractions go, that isn't a bad one. Fiordland is relatively inaccessible and rightly renown for its breath-taking scenery and sandflies, so it is always a thrill to get there. And I guess if I wanted an instant SUP, I would just go out and buy one.
In the end, conditions for diving Fiordlans South Coast, were marginal with 6 foot swells running most of the time and surprisingly low viz (1m). I got dealt a lesson in snorkeling from the commercial paua divers who can only harvest paua with snorkel. They were able to operate all day at 7m plus (23 foot) with a surge running; 1 m (3 ft) viz and a 2 m (6ft) broadnosed seven gill shark lurking about.
With over 2,250 logged SCUBA dives behind me the urge to breath at depth these days .... is overwhelming and I effectively have the breath hold capacity of an asthmatic Newt. I could get to 7m a few times, but soon had to retire with the excuse, that I needed to get into very shallow water (where there was zero viz and SUP sized surf making life extremely difficult) to collect my paua samples.
The Fiordland southcoast. The romantic looking 'sea mist' is a result of 6 foot waves atomising on the shoreline - not great conditions for a mere mortal to snorkel up research paua samples
A Standup paddle board e-magazine
Getting home to Wellington was delayed 24 hours by a 'Jack the Ripper' fog enveloping Invercargill aeroport. Heaps of flights were disrupted by the fog including every flight that I had been booked or re-booked on. While I was waiting for a shuttle to take me to Dunedin to catch a plane from there instead, I came across a free New Zealand SUP magazine. It was pretty interesting and I clutched it all the way back until I eventually left it behind in the taxi from the airport. But it was an e-magazine and I remembered the web address: Standing Room Only - well worth checking out.
Over the 'HUMP'
The central hull sections, particularly around the bow and maybe not so much the stern, have quite a compound curve to deal with. My build required a bit of creative use of the heat gun, little extra struts and much 'fiddling' to get my strips to conform to the tighter bend and to keep them all in line. I am eager to 'faithfully' strip the lift in the bow to prevent 'Pearling'. Apparently 'pearling is the bane of surfers and something you don't want your surfboard to do. Pearling happens when you get a late take off wave and dip the nose of the board into the face of the wave as you are moving. The resulting nose dive and flip, with associated 'flicking' of the rider into the air is impressive to say the least. "A pearler" in the Australian vernacular means something quite impressive!!! So faithfully stripping the abrupt curve in the bow section may make life easier for myself once I hit the surf on my SUP ORCA. [Sure, you can reduce the chances of purling by pitter pattering down the back of the board when you catch the wave ... but the down side is that if you go too far aft, too soon, you risk the chance of loosing the wave at the outset].
Now that I am past the tricky bends at the bow and stern, Stripping the rest of the hull will be 'a relative walk in the park' to finish off the rest of the hull - and so I am 'over the hump'. On reflection, I reckon stripping the deck was relatively easy and stripping the hull was a bit trickier. I expect the rails to be a step up again in creative stripping (mostly because I am a bit short on stripping material). The idea of using ply for the hull appeals. Until you think about the requirement for two sheets and the scarf join in the middle that would be required to sheath the SUP ORCA hull with ply. So, maybe pursuing the ornate strip approach is best in the long run.
My hull stripping efforts are looking a little hairy on account of having to do a few butt joins to get my dwindling supply of strips long enough for the middle sections. A serious builder would have scarfed the joins. But since it is the bottom of the board, nobody will really closely look at it, because I have those handy rib backing pieces making a nice butt join reinforcing platform, because I am lazy and butt joining is easy ... I took have taken the easy route and butt join wherever I think I have too.
The only possible problem with my butt joining efforts are the colour matching of my strips. One strip join, in particular, stands out as particularly mismatched. Sure it is nice working in the sunhine, but the extra light can sometimes trick the eye when it comes to matching strips. Curiously the camera flash has washed out the mismatch, so looking at the photo, one might be excused all the histrionics. Maybe it will all come out in the wash once I do a little sanding and get some epoxy on the board.
The bow section showing some of the pesky compounding curve that has been slowing me down and extra reinforcing struts that I added to keep the bow strips in line
Butt joing 101. Two adjacent butt joins is 'bad form' but this rib was strategic to cope with the pressure coming from the curves at either end.
Butt joins .... I might get away with them
Pete's folly - the arrowed strip with butt join is a "What was I thinking colour mis-match" - but in the photo it doesn't look too dramatic at all
Maybe with a bit of sanding and some epoxy ... it won't end up too bad??
Progress - Slower than a month of wet Sundays
August 28 2012
'A month of sundays' - by my calculations, that would be about 2/3 of a year. Since I did start in April, by my optimistic estimates: my build won't quite be that long, but I am starting to feel that it would be nice to be out on the water playing with my new water toy sometime soon. Despite some impatience starting to creep in, there is progress and after all, the delays are my own [not] doing [or more accurately: lack of application]. In between cycle racing and kayaking in the weekends distractions, I am managing to get 1 set of strips on Saturdays and a second strip on Sundays .... but that is it. At this rate I should still be on track to finish the build sometime between September and October.
Half the problem has been the fancy flared strip treatmetn that I have done at the stern. Quite a bit of clamping pressure is required to get the strips to conform and subsequently the glue needs a good cure before releasing the clamps. With the weather continuing mostly cool and damp, I reckon it is taking a 24 hour cure before I dare lay down the next strips.
However, I am getting there and the pin stripes on the hull are sort of coming together. Maybe the hull pattern is not convincing at the moment, but hopefully when the hull gets glassed the pinstripes should stand out. Rod's, full length strips were darker than the almost snow white strips I got from Ian's plank of Taranaki paulownia. Serendipitously, since I started the hull from the centre, using the darker paulownia strips, the hull should end up with a pleasingly distinctive pattern (at the end of the day).
Fingers crossed!
Slow, but steady winter progress stripping the SUP Orca hull
Mid winter distractions - A mid week sail across to "the Sounds" and back
It is a tough life for some - a mid week across to 'the Sounds' on Tom Love's luxury Cruising Ketch. Heading South down the Queen Charlotte Sound, Marlborough, New Zealand
A weather window presented an opportunity to sail over to the Marlborough Queen Charlotte Sounds with Tom Love and his Bro, Damien on his luxury Laurent Giles cruising ketch. We had a great sail back across Cook Strait and while we were over there a dive for a few scallops rounded out a most pleasant adventure.
"We Knocked the bastard off"
The immortal words of Kiwi Hero, Sir Edmund Hillary after getting to the top of Mt Everest. Probably that statement is laconic Kiwi in a nutshell because I imagine the feat would have been "a bit of a mission" to say the least.
9 September 2012 and I finished the last strip on the hull after a weekend of ferocious "Roaring Forties" weather. In Wellington, we lie at 41 S which puts us officially within the "Roaring forties" trade wind route. This weekend, felt like the "Furious Fifties" [50 S plus] might have shifted north a bit. No great drama, our houses are built to withstand earthquakes and hurricanes. The only 'downer' was the 50 km Balfour-Pennington cycle race (that I was totally prepared for - yeah right) was postponed in the face of 40 kt plus storm force driving Northerly winds and rain. The postponed race and the generally warmer weather over the weekend had a bonus side, because I was able to lay down 3 sets of strips on Saturday and finish off with a little trimming on Sunday. That means I have now completed the milestone of completely stripping the deck AND the hull - pretty much, a good 2/3 of the project is now done.
The hull and deck are starting to get a bit of a heft (weight behind them) ... but its alright, its alright (I keep telling myself) my SUP ORCA won't weigh too much.
Talking to the wifes' cousin I discovered he has TWO production SUPs. When I asked him why he needed two, he explained that the first one was a bit heavy and was hard to get on and off the car and, to the water. So, he bought a lighter carbon fibre one. Now, a good boat (or any floaty thing for that matter) build is light and strong. Sure, you can make anything strong and heavy ... the trick is to build strong and light. To that end, I have tried my best using as much paulownia (the lightest and strongest wood that I could find) as possible to keep weight down. The niggling worry at the back of my mind is that my SUP will be a veritable and inevitable log of wood once it is fibreglassed and finished. Only time will tell.
"We knocked the bastard off" the last hull strips down and trimmed = progress
Taking time out - spring time and a bit of a break
Well, Spring 2012 in New Zealand has pretty much been a series of days with four seasons. We are still getting lots of SE winds, but they aren't especially strong, and we have warm days and we have cold days. A week of dive surveying Port Lyttelton for invasive underwater species brought into the country on foreign ships started out warm and ended cold. Snow down to sea level is way!!! cold and outside our Kiwi comfort levels. But, but, but ... the week before, they were experiencing 22 c temperatures - we should have been there then!!
Fortunately for me, I took my full battle ready drysuit just in case. The suit has been repaired at enormous cost, after its catastrophic flooding during the memorable Poor Knights diving adventure early in the year. Naturally I am happy to report that my drysuit was dry and, I was a well happy chappy before, during and after our dive surveys of the harbour.
Part of the cunning SUP building plan is thinking and working towards the final stages which requiring epoxy sheathing. Since I am an ambient temperature builder, a clean epoxy sheathing is more likely to happen when the weather gets a bit warmer and drier. I reckon by October/November, things should have warmed up comfortably enough for me to execute a good epoxy sheathing. Subsequently, building has been on the back burner for a while and I am more relaxed about progress. Instead I have been making the most of the good weather with a bit of 'ME' time: kayak racing, revisiting my road cycle racing roots (with limited success as I get older and have to confess being quite out of condition) and doing a bit of kayak fishing and snorkeling.
Spring, days of every season: You should have been here last week [22 c] - This weeks Lyttelton port survey: 0 C brrrrrrrr!
Off to a good start, Kayak racing on the Manawatu River. The water was brown, but not quite as cow-poo redolent as it has been in the past
Kayak racing with the Waka ama, surf ski and SUP crew Welly paddlers blog spot
In the photo above, the dude second from the right in the white singlet is Howie. Howie is a stalwart SUP ambassador and was one of our original local SUP racers. A few years ago, Howie was pretty much the only SUP racer. Now, reflecting the growing popularity of SUP, race numbers are expanding exponentially. Howie went on to win that SUP race.
My SUP ORCA will be a surf orientated machine and absolutely nothing like the thoroughbred carbon-fibre SUPs pictured above. I am picturing something more of a ceremonial, layed - back luxury, silver (haired) surver look ;)
The days are getting longer and I burn't a cracker day, kayak fishing on Wellington Harbour
Last weekend was sensational by Wellington standards. Relatively calm, sunny and mild. I should have started on the rails for my SUP ORCA, but I blew the weekend away kayak fishing. I didn't do very well. Indeed, you could say I went (not) kayak fishing since I didn't catch any fish. Plenty of other people around me were catching elephant fish, trevally, kahawai, red cod etc. I am starting to fear that my legendary status of "Lucky Pete, the fish whisperer" is fading rapidly.
But it was good being out there and a good shake-down for sorting out all my gear ready for what is hopefully going to be a long and productive summer of kayaking and fishing and SUP-ping.
Back into SUP ORCA building mode sometime soon and progress photos are bound to be imminent.
Dive Buddy, James Sturman looking for New Zealand paua (abalone) in clear Wellington West coast waters ... a most pleasant distraction
We have had a good run of weather these last few weekends and I have continued to whittle away my weekend time kayaking, diving and fishing (simultaneously), reveling in the good weather. Pictured above is my dive buddy looking for paua (New Zealand abalone) in pretty clear water. We paddled to a secluded spot and beached our kayaks, donned wetties and went snorkeling in the crystal clear waters. Getting a feed of paua, snaking a lobster and seeing an octopus made for a pretty excellent adventure. However, all these distractions mean that there is still very little progress on the SUP project.
Ironically, this last weekend [start of October] , it was the weather that brought me back from my wayward paths and onto re-starting the SUP ORCA project. Saturday was howling windy in Wellington, so I spent part of the day sealing the inside of the recently stripped hull. I rolled a thin 2-part epoxy sealant called 'Everdure' squeezing the roller in-between the ribs to seal the inside of my board. This is just in case some water makes its way inside at some point. The ultra dry paulownia could potentially act like a sponge and it would theoretically take forever to get the inside to dry out. So I figure it is going to be good insurance.
Sunday was reserved for kayak fishing in the morning and then surfing all afternoon. But, you know how it is: the best laid plans of mice and men etc., etc., etc., got in the way. First thing in the morning, a persisting strong southerly stirred up a gnarly looking sea where I wanted to paddle, so we took a rain check on the mornings kayaking (eventually getting out in the afternoon when conditions moderated to a stunning day).
Instead, I spent the morning productively routing the fin slot for my SUP. I used a router [I call it a 'rooter' because the potential destruction of the router bit whirling around at about a billion r.p.m can wreck instant havoc with the mere blink of an eye and a tweak of the wrist]. To help keep things under a semblance of control, I clamped one end of a baton, to act as a guide (I got an assistant - son Josh, to hold the other end of the baton in place) which kept my ferocious router machine more or less on line and pretty much saved the day.
The routing went fairly smoothly except for when I started with a totally misguided attempt to route the hole from the bottom upwards. My primary mission and focus at the time was on getting the depth right ... and I wasn't thinking about the sequence of how I might achieve that goal.
To cut a long story short, for a brief period I had the router bit too deep and the exposed shaft screaming around at about a billion r.p.m. , with a bit of force behind it (from me) managed to burn its way along the surface planking ... for a short distance, producing clouds of smoke. Baffled thoughts of "what is wrong with this story??" brought a temporary halt and a re-evaluation of what was going on there????: The fiendish router had actually managed to simultaneously cut a key hole slot for about 2 inches .... and almost set the board on fire.
Ironically, there will be a router bit that could execute that sort of 'key hole' cut ... but it was way beyond the reasonable expectations and router brief of the one I was using at the time.
Instead, I had inadvertently provided an hilarious demonstration on how to start a fire by rubbing two sticks together ... 21st Century style - using a piece of metal whizzing around at ... billion r.p.m. Proving that the concept does work, at least in principal.
Fortunately, the only scars to show for this lunacy are a couple of scorch marks at the bottom of the board ... and they will be discretely hidden by the fin box when it is eventually glassed in. And, we will never speak of this again.
So = progress and arguably, the most tricky bit sorted!
Not really clear in the picture, but the fin box hole has been neatly routed. The clamped baton (pushed aside for the photo) was used as a temporary guide. Note the scorch marks from router lunacy!
After a little more discreet tidying up, the mocked up fin and fin box (temporarily) in place, help make the board "look the part"
Despite sound advice, I have mounted my fin box a little more forward than what is probably standard. My thinking is that I want my SUP to turn on a wave and I am not too fussed about how straight it will paddle in the flat. Also, the bottom of the board, at the tail end, really ramps up and it just seemed intuitive to push the fin forward. Besides, I surfed a New Zealand-shaped name brand 'Quane' board, which went really well .... and it's fin was mounted forward to the extreme.
Either way, happy with that and looking forward to the day I can put it to the test.
20 October 2012 - Days, weeks and months are ticking by with lots of distractions and no building. It is not like I don't want to get on the water ASAP, but work and life in general just seem to be keep getting in the way.
Yesterdays distraction was to get off my ass and go surfing. Nice 4 foot waves with a moderate offshore wind at my local break at Lyall Bay Wellington - 5 minutes walk down the road where I live. It was simply too hard to resist. So off I went with the old boogie board and got a ripper of a ride right from the start. The old dog still has it!
Speaking of old dogs, I was by far the oldest surfer out there ... probably by about 2 decades! Not sure what the significance of that is? Maybe the wife is right: "you are too old ... .just give up" - AS IF. At least one of us old farts needs to be out there putting the young-uns in their place.
We are not alone!
Apart from all the good rides and reassurance that I still got my 'mojo', there were a couple of wooden surfboards out in the lineup. One was a wooden fishtail with glassed in wooden fins. I was interested to meet up with a fellow builder, so I paddled after him and eventually caught up. The guy reckoned he had bought the board from a dude in Te Kuiti (a land locked hell hole - not actually a bad place, but a long way from the water, hence landlocked and subsequently by definition, an unimaginable place of purgatory for a waterperson like myself) in the King Country, south of Hamilton. Being so far from the sea, makes Te Kuiti a curious place to be finding any sort of surf board builder. Te Kuiti is a gateway to legendary Taranaki surf to the south and a close enough drive to Raglan (my personal favorite surf mecca) in the north to be plausible. I was particularly interested in how he approached the niggling issue of your feet sticking to the board. The board had a waxed deck, and while the wax did distracted from the finish, the effect wasn't too bad. That is probably what I will end up doing to my SUP ORCA.
However, I am thinking of glassing an oval of 6oz glass weave on the deck using a single epoxy wet out and no skim coats. A good wet out is uniform and leaves a coarse weave which would be a great non skid finish. The only possible problem might be a bit of epoxy 'ponding' with little slippery pools here or there. I optimistically reckon I could sponge any pools up and end up with a even, coarse finish that would only need a very light application of wax.
There will be time to cross that bridge.
Hopefully soon.
..... "Watch this space"
In the meantime I better get onto those building those pesky rails.
Distractions by the dozen - and the difference between Boat builders and Boat sailors
Notman and Notman 1st and 2nd open mens sea kayak class, Foxton Loop race October 27 2012 - a rare double
Distractions are bad for building SUP ORCA projects, but they aren't all bad. Son Sam and I went up for the Annual Foxton River Loop race. Neither of us had done much training, but Sam has been doing a bit more than me. In order to give myself the best possible chance, I generously let Sam use the 17ft hand crafted ply Nick Schade Guillemot s&g, while I reserved the 19ft hand crafted strip planked Guillemot expedition single for myself [what was that they say about water line length = speed].To my credit, I did manage to keep up with Sam for almost half the race, but at about then the old muscle memory started to fail. Muscle memory? (= remembering when you were young and fit and not many recent memories of actually getting out on the water and putting in the hard honest paddle training yards). At one stage my fingers cramped up and the strong winds and currents and chop made for a pretty hard race. In the end Sam had sneaked out to finish 11 minutes ahead of his old man. However, I managed to secure a second place finish in the sea kakay class.
That is a pretty good double, considering we were paddling home made kayaks and I am an old fart.
Bit of a proud moment really.
And, Yet another distraction:
Out-fitting a carbon kevlar racing kayak hull - now that ate up a bit of time
The long story is that Brian Sanders generously supervised and help me to build a 6.3 m long carbon kevlar racing kayak hull about two years ago. When we pulled the shell from the mould, we discovered that for whatever reason, we had a bit of a gel coat issue. One of the reasons that Brian let my build the kayak was so that I could retire my ratty Apteryx kayak [Apteryx is the latin genus name for our native New Zealand Kiwi]. My old Apteryx had a chequered history starting with modifications to the hull to make it a functioning British Seagull outboard motor racing trimaran. Then I modified the hull again and matched it to another Apteryx hull to make a very successful world champion racing powerboat catamaran. When I started campaigning my planning Minimax hull, I stripped the modifications from the now battered Apteryx hull and restored it more or less back to an original racing kayak. The restoration wasn't great and the old apteryx was pretty ratty. I could admit that the kayak looked like it had been mauled by a shark or a circular saw at some stage ... or maybe the hull had snapped in half and been glued back together. On top of all that, I have raced the apteryx as a kayak for a number of years and it was starting to leak badly and was gaining weight from multiple repair attempts.
Building a new hull seemed like a good idea. The plan was to go over to Masterton (where the new hull was built) to fit it out. But I never got there because of field work commitments, the weather being too cold etc. etc. etc. So Brian delivered the new shell to me in Wellington for me to finally get a round tuit and finish off that project.
Now, a lot of work had gone into the shell and it was a bit of a priority to finish off that task before carrying on with the SUP ORCA project. I thought it would only take a few days, but let me tell you, fitting out a kayak shell is fairly involved. The picture above gives an indication of some of the carryings on. Starting from the stern: carbon fibre rudder fitted to a carbon fibre tiller on a fitted bolt at the stern. Rigging runs along the deck, through plastic piping directing the spectra lines through holes that I drilled in the aft deck; past the reinforced coaming; to adjustable webbing with sewed ends and onto a foot brace; fitted to carbon fibre rails (so the foot brace is adjustable). Then a set of carbon kevlar, snow foam padded cradles were made to protect the hull when it is carted too and from races.
It was satisfying to splosh polyester around and wet out cloth - skills that will be handy when it comes time to sheathe my SUP ORCA (except of course I will be using epoxy for the SUP ORCA). And at the end of the day I now have a fully operational racing kayak. That means that there will be one less excuse for getting out and doing some paddling exercise. That has to be a good thing, but it sure came at the cost of no progress on SUP ORCA project for longer than I wanted to.
So instead of writing about SUP ORCA progress, the least I can do is wax philosophically about 'boat builders' and 'boat sailors'.
They reckon there are two types of boat builders. BOAT BUILDERS - Start a boat (read floaty thing) building project. They work on the project with an eerie focus and do little else. BOAT BUILDERS generally make a breathtaking beautiful job of their project and always finish it in good time. In contrast BOAT SAILORS like the idea of building a boat (read floaty object) and will often start a building project. However, BOAT SAILORS are most likely to be out and about doing stuff, like boat sailing and generally the distractions get the better of them. BOAT SAILORS often start a project, but seldom finish them.
I confess to being mostly in the boat sailor camp and, looking back on this blog, the amount of runny around distractions to my SUP ORCA project have been enough to conspire to make a pretty straight forward build into something of an epic. I console myself that I will get there, but maybe not as soon as I had dreamed.
The next distraction is 3 weeks at sea on a deep sea fishing trawler, surveying Smooth Oreo Dory off the Chatham Rise in 300-800 m of water. The joys of being a Marine Biologist are that you sometimes have to put in the hard yards. On paper it might sound romantic, but in reality we work 12 hour shifts (from 3am - 3 pm for me) and life is very much ground hog day: get up from sleeping in your bunk, walk 5 steps to the canteen and eat something, then 5 more steps down to the fish factory to measure, record and sample fish for 12 hours, 5 steps back to the canteen on the way back to your bunk to get to sleep before repeating. We will be so far from land that it will pretty much be water, water everywhere with little to see other than a herd of optimistic Albatross and cape pigeons looking for a free feed. Definitely something of a penance for a runny-around BOAT SAILOR type like myself. But The work won't be without interest. The deep sea species are fascinating and the logistics of fishing in 800 m of water are always impressive.
So not much SUP Building or adding to the blog is likely to happen until the start of December. Hopefully I can get my SUP ORCA into the water before Christmas. At least, in contrast to my carbon kevlar racing kayak .... there won't be a lot of fitting out to do once I finish the build!
6 February 2013 LANGUISHING
Post the November sea voyage on the Chatham Rise, I have been making up for lost outside activity time. There has been an adventure to Kaikoura for a boys rum, snorkeling, fishing and lobsters week, Summer, Christmas ... you name them, the distractions have been coming thick and fast. They were fun and good for my health and well being, but not very conducive to progress on the SUP building project.
In no particular order:
Incarcerated inside the San Waitaki - this was as close to 'outside' as I got for 2 weeks
The weeks on the San Waitaki in the middle of the Chatham Rise East of Christchurch to and beyond the Chatham Islands was hard but interesting work. It was always going to be a bit of a trial for me, being a runny around outside sort of person. A deeps sea factory ship doesn't cater for outside runny around people. There are no promenade decks, indeed the decks are a hazardous place with huge machinery and steel cables under enormous pressure from trawl gear being towed and hauled in 1000 m (and some times deeper) water. So being stuck inside for that long was enough to make youme go .... "grrrrrr".
Don't get me wrong, it was interesting as hell and some of the by-catch was fascinating (a couple of the deep sea denizens caught during the voyage are pictured below).
The 'time-out' set the stage for a runny around Renaissance when I finally got back to shore. No building on the SUP project, but lots of cycling, snorkeling, surfing and fishing to make up for lost time. The carbon/kevlar race kayak ended up requiring a lot more fine tuning than I expected. Then I decided it was high time to re-commission the Trailer sailer that has been languishing away in the back yard. That project just required a paint job to make it look more like the 'private yacht' that it is. But it took the best part of a month of scratching, scritching and sanding before I was comfortable enough to start sploshing expensive paint around.
So, I was so distracted by my distractions and it wasn't until February that I finally got back to the SUP ORCA project.
Being incarcerated on the San Waitaki wasn't without interest - hermit crab/ascidian symbiosis by-catch critter
Incarcerated on the San Waitaki 2 - a genuine deep sea dragon fish sea monster (who'd wanna be a little fish)
A boys fishing, snorkeling, rum drinking and lobsters in Kaikoura (what a grand tonic)
A week with the lads in Kaikoura was a most pleasant distraction. After being mistaken for not just a seal .... but a 'Killer WHALE' when I was snorkeling for flounder the week before, meant that maybe it was time for a little more introspective assessment and maybe a whole pile more runny around outside activity.
I guess I have been swimming for a long, long time now and must be a fairly natural swimmer. With a black wetsuit, black flippers and sinusoidal movements, I am about the right sort of size to be legitimately mistaken for a New Zealand fur seal. .... But a Killer WHALE?????
Killer WHALES are bloody big and maybe it was time for me to go on a diet!!! - 'Sticks and stones' wasn't all bad and depressing, because after all, the project is to build an ORCA SUP paddle board. Being mistaken for a killer WHALE/ORCA is entirely appropriate and kinda qualifies my board design choice.
Up a creek without a paddle - well, I finally got a carbon fiber SUP blade = now I am almost ready to go!
All that fancy stripping on the hull is looking a bit lame, but should begin to 'shine' and justify itself when the fiberglass goes down
UP A CREEK WITHOUT A PADDLE
Earlier in the build I almost got a u-beaut 2 piece carbon fiber werner SUP paddle from OUTDOOR PLAY. But the cunning plan was ruined by outrageous freight charges. Over christmas they had carbon fiber paddles on sale at TORPEDO7. The first blade came after a week (disrupted by holiday breaks). I opened up the package and the paddle looked sensational ..... except during transport it looked like that at some stage a really heavy loaded pallet of goods had been dumped on the blade tip. The blade was severly dinged and cracked. If the damage had happened at the other end, It wouldn't have mattered because the shaft needs to be trimmed to your custom size Cutting a SUP paddle to length. In the end TORPEDO7 were really good about it and sent out a replacement straight away, which arrived a week later (delayed by nobody being at home for the delivery guy to make the exchange for a couple of days).
So happiness filled and ready to hit the water as soon as I finish my SUP building.
Moral of the story ... go to the shop and fork over the money - that way you avoid shipping dramas, delays and you know exactly what you are getting.
Up a creek without a paddle?
Well I confess to having an affair with internet buying. It is cheaper: initial research was a SUP paddle was going to cost me $80 for a piece of aluminium and pastic (icky and not at all appropriate for a hand crafted custom wood board); $300 would get me a carbon fibre shaft and a polycarbon blade; $500-$600 would get me a state of the art carbon fiber beauty. The TORPEDO7 all carbon fiber blade cost me $200 in the end. So it was a good deal in anybodies books.
Being a guy, shopping isn't one of the most fun things I am ever likely to do. With the exhorbitant cost of parking ($6 an hour) and clogged traffic, going into town is about as appealing to me as having all my teeth pulled. And at the end of the day any internet shopping freight charges are probably going to be cheaper than the time and petrol it would cost me to go visit a shop in town. So I remain an unrepentant internet shopper - besides the whole project has been a child of internet shopping, so why change a good thing?
Up a creek without a paddle?
The flip side is from the point of view of the poor old retailer. They have to ramp up the price of their goods. They have to pay rent, they have to pay staff salaries, they have to buy stock, they have to pay GST, ACC and multiple taxes. They also have to pay for freight disasters like I experienced. To cope with that they have to whap on a fair mark-up just to enable them to tread water. Maybe the future for being a retailer is not looking great????
Just incase you were wondering, I bought the 'Pith helmet' from the 'ENGLISH SPORTS outfitting SHOP' 49 Front Street, Hamilton, Bermuda when I was wandering around Front Street in Bermuda 2011 (as one does). That is as close to shopping as this boy ever goes.
Putting the rails on was going to be hard without some stands to get the board upright so I could see what I was doing
The ORCA SUP is really wide and my little upright stands work fine with a bit of foam packing
After a 4 month Hiatus of distractions and languishing, I am back on track, gluing on strips so I can shape the rails.
There is no plan for stripping the rails. Nick Schade says "don't sweat the details" and like I said, a fancy wood stripped SUP will look much like any other wood SUP from anything of a distance. Because I am short of wood, I have cut 3/4" x 1/4" strips which I will glue more in less steps to make the rails which I can then shape and glass.
Sort of like a cross between hollow rails and semi-solid rails.
The main body of the board is straight forward, but the ends bend upwards and I have shaped them into a compound curve. Wooden Surfboard Supply advocate trimming the ends almost square, gluing and then shaping a block of wood to cope with the curved ends. That is a great solution, but being 'pig headed' I want to have a contrasting rail bordering the entire board.
The sketchy plan is to maybe do a picket fence of upright strips edge around the tricky compound curved ends. I can cap them later with some thin strips torture-bent on top of 'the wall'. Since the rails are pretty skinny around those areas, shaping them by sanding only should be do-able.
Worst case scenario would be to paint the rails ... but I am sure they will turn out fine.
Almost the end of February and naff all happening.
Distracted by work, a get my private yacht back to fully operational side project [little trailer sailer that needs painting and a little TLC Tender Love and Care] and a spectacular summer (this is the one we never had last year) and generally being too hot to do much of anything. has left the SUP project hanging.
But I have made some progress on the rails with my composite horizontal and combined upright stripping approach.
I am secretly sure that fairing could be a bit of a mission, but surely nothing that can't be overcome with a long sanding board, a belt sander, a random orbital sander and verious other impliments.
One round of rail stripping done with staples, cunning stripping and a fair bit of blind faith in the concept of: "she'll be right"
Fine print: Ahhhh - Don't do this at home folks. It is intuitive to try and resolve the thick compound curves of the bow section by using vertical strips like I did in this photo. Down the line when it comes time to shape this area with electric planers and such ... the end grain gets torn. You could get away with it if you were to only fair by sanding. But from my experience I would recommend giving the problematic area "the very thin laminated strip treatment".
Sure we are looking at a curious combo of stripping, but I argue at the end of the day the task is to cover the frame with wood and ... anything goes. Paulownia, western red and even fast grown NZ redwood are going to be easy enough just to sand. So what could possibly go wrong??? Being the edge and most of the joins are going to be covered by other bits of wood, I figured it was fair game to employ the old stapler to help facilitate and speed up construction on the rails. Worst case you might see a few snake bites here and there, but they will be pretty small and hard enough to see.
The next thing to do is to fair my rail strips, so the next layer can be precision laid to form the rail shape that I have in my mind ... sort of very hard (almost flat) rails on the bottom with a compound soft blending in from the top. The old Dunlop Dunga has thick round rails and works really well in big surf, but slips off the face of little waves. My hard rails ought to have my SUP Orca stick to barrells like glue ... well that is what I am hoping for. To bad I can't get to test my theory until after everything has been set in epoxy.
Where did all that time go?
A year down the track from the auspicious start to the project and the half finished project is lying fallow in the rafters of the garage. Pretty 'pour' behaviour considering that we just had the best and longest summer ever for swanning around in a completed fully operational Stand up Paddle board. I am blaming the long hot summer rather than my lack of application. It was too hot and too many other things to do. But the project isn't going backwards (despite a wooden SUPs worst nightmare, I am sure that even the borer beetles haven't had a chance) and I just have to get a bit of focus and discipline to get the project going again. Even I am at a loss to explain the hiatus especially when it is all but completed (except for a bit of fairing and fiberglassing).
Lots of Languishing - my abandoned SUP project hanging in the rafters ... waiting, waiting, waiting
Seagull racing down the Waikato River
Easter 2013 rolled around with perfect calm, warm weather. A whole year pretty much since I started, I can't believe a whole year has gone by. This year, the Waikato River was probably the lowest I have ever seen it and, there was grass growing on the sand bars. Like a moth to the flame, I managed to run aground on the first day leg just before Rangiriri. Not a biggie. The minimax (pictured below) becomes the greatest skim board ever when running aground. No sudden stops, but an unbelievable skim and torturously slow and gentle halt after skimming over the greatest imaginable distance. All I have to do is shut off the motor down to stop any damage to the prop and wait till everything stops. On day two, despite all odds and expectations I I managed to negotiate the perilous Rangiriri - Meremere leg, peppered with numerous sand bars .... without running aground. With the very low river flow, blind luck, years of practice and going with the flow (even when that meant going down routes that I have never been before) did the trick on the day. No SUP building, but I can chalk up yet another 80 odd miles of motor boating down the Waikato River in a tiny speed boat powered by an ancient outboard motor.
A Year down the track, a long hot summer and another perfect run down the Waikato River for the annual Easter British Seagull outboard motor boat race ...
preparing to set up camp at Rangiriri
Distractions - finishing off a few other: ' I should have got around to projects"
The SUP build is vying for time from a few other unfinished projects that I haven't quite got around to finishing. My Aleutian Island baidarka look-alike is also close to completion. A rudder system that I had fitted to it, looked good and sort of worked. But race trials soon showed that it wasn't up to the rigors of big seas and worst of all the rudder fittings leaked. So I removed the original rudder and did an 'end pour' to seal off the leaks.
Principally, an end pour requires a few cups of thickened epoxy be lowered into an upright kayak. The epoxy gravitates to the ends and both seals and ties-in the end strips in the stern. Now that I have done the end pour, all I have to do is get around to fitting a rudder system similar to what my multisport boats have (infact I will be using the actual rudder system that I salvaged off the retired Apteryx multisport boat). All I have to do is drill and epoxy in, an upright bolt and attach the rudder to it.
End pours are always exciting and spectacular because it requires wrestling a 5.7 m kayak upright, lashing it temporarily to a handy fence. In Wellington's notorious winds that is no easy feat. Fortunately the winds blowing at the time, soon eased off after I had wrestled the Baidairka into a NASA rocket launching position. Then it was only a matter of carefully dangling a cup full (or two) of thickened epoxy controlled by a number of cunningly placed strings (bit like a marionette) and lower it to the bottom of the stern and pull the right string at the right time to tip the epoxy out.
Apart from loosing a bit of nerve-wracked sweat, the end pour went well and that project is a little closer to being completed.
He with the most toys wins ... not really, you can only use one toy at a time. Distractions: end pour on the MAE593-76 means progress towards completing that build
Distraction two, my private yacht languishing in the back yard - time for a paint of coat spruce up and get that back into the water
Photo credit: Mark Fenwick - over 2500 logged scuba dives and the breath hold capacity of an asthmatic newt = Time to revisit my snorkelling roots.
New Blue psycho spearo cammo wettie wetsuit - Pirate going extreme terrorist 'doomsday prepper' - nah, my 2/3 steamer is past its use by date,
the beauty blue wettie was on sale and I wanted to see if cammo helped me get closer to fish for photos
Can I get closer to fish with the new blue cammo wettie ... maybe (but a bit of stealth technique and patience helps too)
Chazz Marriott with an average sized NZ trout caught on a fly fish when we were 'Not' Hunting in the Tararuas
All work and not enough play or building the SUP project - loading dry ice into the corer on Lake Tutira
Last core of the trip and the sad tale of what was really going on revealed - the corer was going too deep all along -
we gave it our best shot and came up short
More work distractions - a fish survey of Porirua and Pauatahanui Inlet. An Eagle ray, measured and ready to be released back into the water
A detour to Ohau water fall at Kaikoura = the closest encounter with seals that you are ever likely to experience
Little by little. Back into building ... closing down the strip on the stern. Cut on an angle ... and force. Eventually the extreme bend will be rendered almost straight.
All the joins should sand out and who is getting hung out on the details?
Sunday kayak racing with Welly Paddlers Blog spot. No training and being older than the hills, I shouldn't have been surprised to finish second to last. But hey, I was out there doing it and I wasn't 'actually' last. I feel the need to keep on racing to provide an example to 'Old people' to get out there and do it while you can. Bit I digress, I met up with Graham who is a fellow builder. He had built himself a strip plank racing surf ski. It looked good and went very well. Speaking with Graham and seeing his boat on the water was enough to get me back in the shed and back on track with the SUP building. Pictured above is me trying to close out the stern of the board. The plan? Cut little strips at an angle and eventually the bend won't be so acute. It looks dodgy, but I am pretty sure I can sand most of the joins out and really, at the end of the day .. who is going to go around with a fine tooth comb looking at the finest of details. I think I should get away with it.
Good to be back on board with building .. lots of little steps and I will get there.
Slowly closing the stern ... ugly boat building and torturous-slow stuff but I am getting there and sure it will sand out nicely.
Distracted by work and all manner of other excuses, progress is slow, but happening in between some cold and wintry weather. The stern is coming together nicely enough. The picture above portrays not the best ever craftsmanship, but does illustrate some initiative clamping. Note clamps to hold clamps in place, bits of strings and tie-downs to get pressure onto the glued bits.
A change of tack for the bow treatment - split the strips really thin and laminate them together
The last stern strip is coming together too slow for my liking, and even lashings of the heat gun isn't persuading the thick strips to bend much at all. Plan B is to change the approach for the bow. I got Steve Dorrington to split a couple of strip off-cuts lengthways so instead of the original 7mm (1/4") they are now about 3mm (1/8th") thick. The thinner strips bend much easier and I could lay a strip (starting on the starboard side next to the lower of the two clamps) right to the bow tip in one go (and with only a little bit of heat gun persuasion). Laminating another thin strip on top will have that bit sorted in no time. Of the two approaches, Plan B was the easier by far. So that all equals some progress.
A yacht race, a white water run with the Kupe Kanoe club and snorkelling with a conger eel took up precious SUP building time over our Queens Birthday long weekend holiday. And here's me wondering why the build is taking so long?
Progressing, ends done (apart from a tonne of shaping) the little steps work as great clamp stoppers
Slow but steady progrss
Winter has finally arrived, cold and damp in Wellington. I had forgotten how cold moist conditions really protract glue times. Work has been hectic, so no lunchtime SUP building sessions and evenings haven't been inspiring either. Any progress has been a few moments in the garage during the weekends. Today's building spurt came after a kayak race with the waka ama and surfski dudes. This time a surf of truely Hawaiian proportions (not really it was only about 4ft) was running. It made for some great sea paddling and those that completed the race got some good surf runs in. I was in my Guillemot Expedition Single and comfortable as. A waka ama capsized behind me, right in the surf zone. They weren't happy and when I turned to render assistance I caught a wave, broached and pretty much rammed the waka ama mid-ships ... pretty bad form Peter. There was very little that I could do other than provide moral support and pick up a hat and a bailer. But the damage was done - to a $5000 waka ama - wood is stronger than carbon fibre by a long shot.
Perhaps it is little wonder that the surfboard line up are starting to get edgy about the 12ft wooden SUP ORCA 'board sweeper' being constructed just up the road?
Once I got home and the excitement and guilt from all the bumper boats action had subsided, I was inspired to get back onto the SUP project - paddling conditions were not great for the inexperienced out at Plimmerton ... BUT HAD BEEN ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS FOR STANDUP PADDLE BOARDS. Another place to explore with my project once it is completed.
Half an hour in the garage and I can happily report that I have capped the ends to my satisfaction. All I have to do now is cap the rather large (the sup is very deep) gap along the sides and then it is nothing but fairing and glassing. I promise the next photo will be the ends sanded back to reveal that my shonky joinery was close enough.
POSSIBLY THE WORST BLOGGER EVER
Never one to leave something half finished. I appologize for being pretty slack for not updating the blog, I guess there hasn't been much to report:
Not a lot of progress on the board.
Well, maybe a little progress. laminations faired and all that remains before shaping is to cap the sides with those two boards - but it won't be easy: that is a big wide compounding gap
A stern end shot with the two troublesome capping planks ready to go. I think I might be able to do it with much cunning, brute force and heat - wish me luck
I fancy that with a bit of creative 'smoke and mirrors' filling, my laminated ends should 'pass muster'
But a lot of stuff has been happening with work and maybe too much good weather. You see, much of winter 2013 in Wellington has been pretty calm and mild so the extra-curricular activities have been a major distraction. I confess that most of my weekends have been spent either kayaking and/or free diving and/or sailing.
Same old, same old. A year has passed and Son Sam and I were back out in the Foxton Loop race defending last years title. Sam missed out on first place, sea kayak open mens by 2 minutes - an heroic effort!
The Foxton Loop race turned out well for me: I got a spot prize and swapped it for this two our standup paddle board lesson. Never having paddled a SUP ... that must surely be worth its weight in gold
An amazing 'old school' meets 'new school' moment when I exited the water the other day: I had been sea trialling an iphone in an underwater housing (ultra modern) when I met up with two dudes from Park Road (movie studios) playing with a replica glass plate 'box' camera (old, old school). I posed standing stock still for 4 seconds to get this shot. I reckon it is a timeless image and, feeling the ravages of age (starting to need spectacles and all) it sort of personifies where I am at in life.
Wellington Hurricanes and earthquakes
Contrasting the protracted periods of mild calm weather, Wellington did experience a decent storm. Well, actually more than a storm: it was an offical Beaufort scale name brand 'Hurricane' and later on in the year: a series of moderate earthquakes.
No damage to the private Estate - Wellington houses are built to withstand earthquakes and hurricanes .... and mostly did. However, I guess we were lucky to dodge some bullets. Across the road a house lost a 1/4 of its roof, the house 'one over' from that, lost its whole roof and, a garage up the road blew its roller door off its hinges.
When the first winds hit, I was out securing the cover on the private yacht (little trailer sailer actually) and my efforts were interrupted because my rubbish bins started racing each other around the backyard. Now, that doesn't happen during your average run of the mill gale force winds. The rubbish bins managed to spew much of their contents during their cavorting across the backyard and I was able to retrieve much of the trash. But every now and then I would stoop to pick up a bag of rubbish and it would just simply vanish (in a flash), scampering up the drive way and into oblivion at what I would swear was a rate of "100 mph". [Talking to my colleagues after the event, they reasoned that the winds were blowing at 100 mph so it stood to reason the little bags of trash were flying off at "100 mph" apparent).
After eventually coralling the trash can racers and the deck furniture that kept trying to escape up the drive way, by jamming them all between the shed and the barbeque pit, I surveyed the scene and experienced the full force of the hurricane from the shelter of the neighbours fence. It was at that point that I noticed the garage door starting to flap itself to pieces up the road and mobilized the Sons (still living at home. sigh) and we went to secure the door. But by the time we got there, the door had ripped itself 98% completely off at the top. The only thing stopping it hurtling up the road like a 100 mph sailing guillotine was a repair patch that was refusing to tear. The rescue job was turned into a salvage and secure job. Then with the realisation that there probably was quite a bit of deadly rubbish bags, garage doors and sheets of corrugated iron upwind of us, possibly flying around at 100 mph in our general direction, we collectively decided to hunker down and let the storm do its thing.
Exciting times.
The scene of the wildly flapping garage door that was threatening a murderous path of destruction had it been left to its own devices in hurricane force winds
The neighbour across the roads roof. Wellington houses are built to withstand hurricanes and earthquakes - but sometimes even that is not enough for mother nature on the warpath
Worst Blogger in the universe
I have to apologise to my fans for not doing anything (on my SUP project) or the blog for the best part of 6 months. I was doing stuff (see below in where did that year go?). I was finally shamed into getting back into my project over the Christmas break. There were numerous occasions when it would have been great to be on the water swishing along on a SUP. Seeing herds of other people swanning around on SUPs was another inspiration. So once we got back from holidays, I girdled my loins and got back into the build. Surprising progress was made for relatively minimum effort. Now I am left wondering why I hadn't got my act together sooner.
Inspired by progress and anticipating having issues getting my board to the water (there will be no hand slot) I bought the biggest board bag in the world.
Here's me getting a bit of virtual Stand up Paddle board practice ... it is easy as!!
So, Where did that year go?
Being rather distractable, I was ... distracted.
I guess quite a bit of time was spent re-covering my lost free diving skills.
Being a classic and hand built wooden boat 'snob' I was distracted by opportunities to go sailing on a 100+ year old gaff cutter sailing boat, Rona. Man that was an experience. No winches, Gaff sails, ropes 'for Africa' and the most glorious sailing - far above and beyond 'Champagne Sailing'. 'Rona' moves through the water like a well aged, single malt whiskey - smooth as smooth.
The foredeck of 100+ year old 'Rona' sailing on Wellington Harbour
Among other things, I up-skilled and have started making iphone movies: piratepetester sails on Rona (10 mins) practically as good as being there!!!
Going to Antarctica for a month to dive under the sea ice (twice a day) whilst living in a tent took up quite a bit of time. The diving and living in a tent took ... a month, but there was a heap of time devoted to preparing to go diving twice a day and living in a tent. Mostly getting a mountain of gear together, checked and then double checked and finally shipped to Antarctica, as well as a very full week doing pre-trip training at Lake Alta in the Remarkable ski field.
The take home message of an Antarctic veteran (this was my third tour) is that the whole exercise is something of almost overwhelming logistics and co-operation with Antarctica NZ and McMurdo (National Science Foundation, Antarctica). Lot of spectacular fun though.
You can't argue that the scenery, even just outside Scott Base was SPECTACULAR
Pete, just about to board a C17 home bound for New Zealand and back to normality (and eventually SUP building)
Fear and loathing over the SUP ORCA sides
Things weren't going particularly well with the sides. The plan was to step the sides and then cap the end with a couple of strips of NZ grown red wood. However the depth and rocker of the SUP Orca are wondrous, great things to behold. To cover both sides properly, I would need two chunks of wood about 2 inches thick, about 8-10 inches wide, at least 13 ft long and supple-bendy to boot.
I didn't have such a piece of wood and so I dithered and pondered my options and plans. Should I try and buy such a piece? or would I have to cut a whole pile of little slices and then laminate them bit by bit? The left over wood that I had certainly wasn't going to do the job in one go.
In the end, I reverted to the wise words of Nick Schade: "Don't sweat the small points". After all and, at the end of the day, the objective was: to cover the frame with bits of wood. Sure, my SUP Orca will have its sides filled with a mosaic of bits of wood, but it would be covered. Worst case scenario would be to paint the 'rails'. Best case scenario would be me on the water in a hand crafted wooden SUP with interesting (serendipity) patterned rails. I secretly plan to stain the rails and achieve the classic pattern that I am aiming for - watch this space.
I have a blank
Getting the sides done was a battle of smoke and mirrors wood work. The slabs that Steve Dorrington cut for me covered most of the centre sections. But the wood was never going to bend around and upwards for the ends. So, I split my off cuts on a bandsaw and got Steve D. to run them through his thicknesser. That enabled me to laminate the tricky up-turned bendy bow and stern ends. There were a few gaps here and there at the joins and near the top and bottom. I filled them with left over strips cut in half and staple-glued and then faired into place. The deed didn't actually take that long and before I really knew it, I had a blank.
Apart from the epoxying ... which really doesn't count, this marked the end of the building phase. I just have to learn the dark art of shaping without whittling my project to a pile of miss-shaped sawdust. "What could possibly go wrong???".
Pete's SUP ORCA blank (top to the left, bottom to the right) profile before shaping.
Pete's SUP Orca bottom (left) and topsides (right)
The attack of the electric planer
Always being one to shirk hard work, the first step for shaping my board was to explore as many modernday power tools as I could. For starters, I was going to have to move quite a bit of wood to fair in the sides which were effectively "stepped" in some places. I figured my son's (who is a builder) electric planer would be worth looking at. Of course, a soft touch was always going to be required ... and "what could possibly go wrong???" with a high revving electric planer in the hands of a lunatic? .
Son, Sam said, "Ah ... you probably want to sharpen the blades or something before you start".
I wanted to launch straight into action and attending to the planer blades wasn't a sprinting into action. Reluctantly pulling the blades out and inspecting them, revealed that one blade was badly nicked with chunks missing here and there. The second blade had pretty much snapped in half. Geee .. I dodged a bullet there. Imagine the mess of groves and chunks that would have taken out of my precious wood blank. Cutting a long story short, half a day was lost searching all the local stores for replacement blades for the son's planer. In the end, at the cost of a set of replacement planer blades (which weren't available for love nor money) ... I could buy a brand new XU1 - made in CHINA (and proud of it!!!) electric planer. Now, how does that work?? For the cost of a set of blades you could get a whole machine manufactured half a world away and shipped to New Zealand ... what is the world coming to? and what is the mark up on spare blades??
Fortunately for me the XU1 'out of the box' worked and made a fairly reasonable job of fairing in the sides. I think I will resort to the XU1 for rough-shaping my rails. Sure it chews up wood at a fierce rate and the possibility of taking great chunks out of my project in the blink of an eye and subsequent calamity are high ... but the XU1 electric planer is quite good for taking consistent, long bites out of wood, where I reckon my little hand plane might take a series of chunks.
Rails 101 - fair your bottom first
After spending the whole week pondering how I might shape the rails, I eventually saw "the shape within" in my minds eye: Very flat bottom with sharp rails particularly towards the back and a downward sloping deck meeting the rails "wherever".
To achieve this, I would have to fair the bottom first, then the bottom rails. Then finish up working from the deck down. I spent most of the weekend producing a veritable cloud of sawdust, alternately using the long sanding board and, then the random orbital electric sander. The "wax on - wax off" when using the long board was hard work and should help boost my fitness for the time when I get to paddle my creation. The long sanding board was also the best and safest way of fairing in those odd strips here and there that were a bit 'low'.
But all in all the board is in good shape and all I was really doing was removing the glue lines.
Bottom mostly faired in and ready to start making progress on rail shaping. With all the glue lines gone, it is looking pretty clean.
The golden colours and hopefully all the highlight strips should really stand out when I start glassing.
Rails roughed out. The sharp rails on the bottom and the thick section of a sup have resulted in rather slab-side rails. But I can live with that
Shaping the rails - first cuts
I launched into shaping with the XU1 electric planer and significantly reduced the overall weight and dimensions of my project and produced a serious pile of sawdust and, just plain dust.
I had a plan, I followed it and have a result.
Maybe a bit clunky and a bit slab sided, and maybe not as sexy as I had hoped. But at the end of the day, the SUP Orca is a 12 foot long 4 3/4" deep stand up paddle board and you can only do so much without making the board about another 4 inches wider than specification.
On the plus side I know that my SUP Orca will look good in the water when it is laden down to its' 'marks' with a 100 kg pirate. My SUP project looks good from above (where I will be standing and looking down). I guess my board will also spend alot of the time hiding in it's board bag too. So at the end of the day, I can probably live with the shape I have, but I will mull it over, think about what my options are and work on from there.
It was a good thing my SUP Orca is a hollow WOOD blank, and thankfully things were very forgiving for a rail shaping virgin armed with an electric planer and subsequent to taking that photo, an electric sander and finally back to the old long sanding board to pull things back into shape. I think if I had been working with a foam blank, it would have been whittled to a shark chew toy shaped banana in the first five micro-seconds.
Locking in the rails
Little progress was made during the week. All I really did was touch up the deck and my rails on several occasions with the long sanding board to true things up. I could shape the rails more traditionally by rounding the bottom rails more, but my super dunga surfboard that has very rounded rails. While it does perform very well on big surf, it has a tendency to slip off the face of smaller waves and not track across them like modern "mini-mals". So I wanted sharp bottom rails and damn the consequences. I did round my bottom rails a little more than I would like, as a concession for looks. The shape is now pretty much set in concrete and locked in.
It is a pity I can't try the board out at this stage to see how it performs. Changing rail shape after glassing will be possible, but quite a bit of work. And, at the back of my mind is the question, how much surfing will I do on the board as opposed to flat water paddling? And, will my rail shape make that much difference to performance. After all the SUP ORCA is a big, long thick board and expecting it to 'rail turn' might be a bit ambitious. There is quite a bit of lift at the stern and stomping to the back of the board and pivot turning with the help of a 'Whack-a-mole' steering paddle should be fine.
After a week of testing, I bit the bullet with a self tinted combination of Wattyl brand timber stain for my rails
Dye-ing to do some staining
The original plan was to have dark rails. I had hoped to have enough New Zealand grown redwood to achieve this naturally. But there simply wasn't enough to go around and my rails ended up being made up of Paulownia. Ian reckoned that Paulownia takes up a stain well. So during a week of particularly bad weather (flooding in Canterbury and, the end of our Wellington summer as we knew it) I bought some stain and did a test. Testing was important to check colour matching and to ensure that the stain wasn't going to react badly with epoxy.
Murphy, must have been smiling. My first choice of stain was Wattyl 'kauri' colour. Kauri is an iconic New Zealand boat building wood and, staining my board with 'kauri' was a very Kiwi thing to be doing. Alas, 'Kauri' was too dark and too chocolatey when matched to epoxied NZ redwood. Off back to the shop and look for something with more red in it. Wattyl 'Totara' looked to be a better match. Tests indicated it to be a perfect match to NZ redwood before epoxy-ing, but a tad too light for epoxied NZ redwood.
DOH!!!!
On reflection, I should have gone with straight 'Totara', because that would have preserved the visual impact of the outer NZ red wood strips. But, since I am a risk taker and the colour match lay somewhere between 'Kauri' and 'Totara' stains, I couldn't help myself and made a brew of about 95% 'Totara' and 5% 'Kauri'. In the end, this concoction was a pretty, jolly close match. But staining is fraught with potential issues. For example, if I ran out of stain, the chances of re-creating the mixed by eyeball brew ever again, were very slim. I couldn't find my masking tape, so free hand painted on the stain with a cheapo disposable brush. That was nerve wracking and risky with the chance of wavy brush lines and splats. Additionally, my testing had been done by rubbing the stain on with a cloth. When I actually applied the stain to my creation, it was by brush and that technique resulted in a much darker stain than expected.
Never mind, the deed is done and I think I got away with it. I personally think the rails (and the board) look infinitely better and the darker colour hides my amateur rail shaping attempts. Happy with that
True colours wetout
The SUP Orca hull is at a pretty fragile stage and a bit prone to getting dinged every time I move it some where. One of the theories for glassing wood projects is to seal the wood with epoxy before wetting out the glass cloth. This is because the wood could sponge epoxy away from underneath the cloth when the cloth is wet out with epoxy from above. My board took quite a quantity of brushed on epoxy just to wet the board out. The epoxy wet out also satisfies my ego because it brings out the woods 'true colours' giving an idea of what the final board will look like.
Also there are a few gaps here and there. Inspired by Nick Schade "The strip built kayak" and dookie schmooze - a concoction of epoxy mixed with sawdust from the actual project provides a pretty good colour matched filler. Dookie schmooze works best on an epoxy sealed finish resolves a number of possible sanding and staining issues. Truth was, that the epoxy coating filled many of the gaps in the project and saved what could have been a gap witch hunt and a whole pile of unnecessary work.
After the deck and hull were epoxies, I was generally happy with what I was seeing. The job is not perfect, but that is ok, and at the end of the day, it wouldn't look like it was hand crafted if the finish was too good. The contrasts with the NZ grown Redwood and the western red cedar work quite well with the paulownia. And the project looks suitably woody.
Happy with that.
The true colours of the bottom are revealed with a 'sealing' coat of epoxy
Bottom wet out, stained rails mostly colour matched and looking suitably 'woody'
More fear and loathing - can I paddle this thing????
With my project nearing completion, I can start to seriously think about actually getting it out on the water. Word on the street is that: "if you don't paddle properly you can end up with a sore back". There is a bit of an "uh oh" because after years of abuse (lifting and twisting whilst using my back like a crane) my back can be a bit tweaky. More fear and angst set in when a colleague at work went on a snorkel dive charter to the Poor Knights. In between dives, the charter boat had a pile of kayaks and standup paddle boards. His young daughter leapt on a SUP and roared around like a duckling, so he had a go .... and fell off repeatedly.
Maybe it isn't so easy after all?
I guess I have given myself the best chance with the choice of an SUP ORCA. It is big and relatively wide. And while I may move with the grace and speed of a man twice my size (mis quoted from an ancient "Goons" radio script) I am a longboard surfer and reasonably quick on my feet. Also hitting youtube for "SUP paddle board technique" netted enough 'how to' tips to get pretty excited about getting onto the water. If I start off easy and build up - "what could possibly go wrong????"
Besides, I can always redeem that 2 hour paddle board lesson voucher if things aren't going well.
PAUA Shell Inlay
I didn't really need it for this project, where after all, you should just let the wood do the talking. But a friend at work had a scrap of paua shell on a plastic backing sheet lying around [Apparently NZ paua shell is shipped to the Philippines where it is cut into micro-tome thin layers and pressed onto a plastic backing]. There was enough for me to cut ten 20mm x 20mm squares and inlay them on edge (like diamonds) into the deck. Paua shell inlays add a bit of bling to the project and give the board a 'Made in New Zealand' signature. The highlights should show through the glassing but I don't know how much you will ever see them, especially if I have to wax the deck.
But I could, so I did!!!
The technique is pretty simple and actually works better for bits of wood. Because you inlay the wood, then sand it flush and it looks really good. The paua shell is a bit harder because it is a thin inlay and there is no subsequent sanding. You have to get the inlay depth right first time.
Because each square/diamond was hand cut, they were effectively unique. So I marked out the outline of each paua shell 'diamond' with a pencil. Then I cut the outline with a craft knife held and a low angle (to reduce tear out) followed by a series of criss cross cuts over the area to be chiselled out. Note, it is intuitive to hold the craft knife vertically to make neat finishes at the ends, but this results in jerky movements and disaster - the key is to hold the low angles and stop sooner than later.
Then it is a matter of carefully chiselling out a low inset for the inlay, glue the diamond of paua shell in and move onto the next one.
Paua shell inlay - not really necessary but oh so made in "Noo Zelond" - mark the outline with a pencil, criss-cross cuts with a craft knife [held at a low angle]
then carefully chisel out with a fresh sharpened chisel. Then glue the inlay
Deck Wet out with paua shell inlay 'bling'
The project is well on the way towards being completed. I am in the last throes of the build and effectively dealing with the 'detailing' - paua shell inlays, glue in the skeg, leash plug and breathing vents [before?] and then glassing. That water isn't too far away.
Glassing in the skeg
There was a bit of an oh uh with the skeg. Being a real kiwi joker, I hadn't read the instructions and figured those little knobbly bits on the side of the skeg box were little anchors to help keep it in place. However, it is clearly written in the Wooden Surfboard Supply instructions that they are to rest on the surface of the board and you sand most of the lip away - because of course, the back of the board is curved and the top of the skeg box is straight. That makes perfect sense. When I routed out the hole for my skeg box, I went out of my way to route in 4 little channels to enable those little knobbly bits to sit below the surface.
There was no going back now. I put in a layer of shredded glass on the bottom of the slot as a bed for the skeg box to sit in and raise it back up a touch. The finished job, once it has been sanded will result with the fin box sitting generally a little lower than it should, but not by much.
I had hoped to glass in the skeg box in one hit, but the fin fits into the box slots very snuggly and there was no easy way to remove the fin until the glass had set. That meant it would be too tricky to fill the gaps without the very real possibility of glassing the fin permanently into the box. So I finished the glassing in the skeg box, the next day. Even though I say so myself, the board looks really good with the fin in place and I am thoroughly happy with the back end of the board. On surf, that is area of the board most important for turning and if it looks good ... it probably is!
Working through the details - skeg box fibreglassed in
1 layer of 4oz glass wet out on the deck. Bit of a mission, but a significant step towards that first launching
Finally laying some glass down
It would have been good to have started glassing last weekend. But a cool southerly was blowing at the time and it wasn't an auspicious occasion. Plus I had a busy work week ahead and that was not going to be conducive for post glassing which requires some post supervision and attention.
This weekend, I did the glassing anyway .. well at least started it. I glassed the deck with the 4oz cloth and had intended to put an oval of 6oz glass on top simultaneously. But it was so much hard work getting the stiff glass cloth to lay around the rails that I stopped to catch my breath after just laying down the single 4 oz layer. Tomorrow is another day and glassing the oval on will work in with my 'weave filling' coat, leaving the top 6oz oval with a coarse finish and a natural built in foot grip finish. All going well the last leg - laying down the bottom glass, will be 'walk in the park easy'.
The deck glassing job went down pretty much incident free. I am an old hand at wetting out epoxy glass now. And while I say I didn't do the glassing last weekend, there was a fair amount of filling, sanding and fairing going on then and during the week in preparation for todays task. Just before a wet out, there are always worries niggling at the back of your mind that the pre-glassing finish won't be smooth enough. There is a bit of a gamble as to how much you can get away with the glass cloth being able to cover things and fill holes. After todays wetout - I think I got the mix just right.
The photo isn't much different from what the board looked like in the wet out pictures above. That is a good thing, because it means the glassing has gone well and is pretty much transparent, like it should be. What could have gone wrong ... not all glass cloths wet out clear, some are old and haven't been stored properly; the weave can be damaged etc. etc. If conditions at wet out time are too moist or you are too quick with your movements, you can get tiny bubbles into your cloth and it goes milky. Other disasters are not getting your mixes right, or not mixed thoroughly = eternally tacky epoxy and a 're-do'.
I am quietly confident at this point, that my board is good! And getting ever closer to that first launch!!!!
Progress slow as a wet week
"You should have been here last week!". The week before was a Wellington 'Indian summer' out of the box. But as soon as I started glassing, the rains came and the temperatures dropped. I was lucky not to have my epoxy go milky on me ... it was trying. I managed to get the 6oz oval onto the deck and then feather the edges while it was green (about 12 - 24 hours after wetting out, the glass is relatively soft, but hard enough to scrape the edges smooth with a paint scraper which saves a lot of sanding). Then I put a weave filling coat over the feathered edges and the transition is more or less seamless [at a distance].
I had intended to do some 'Marquetry' - you can 'tattoo' the board by painting images or words onto tissue paper and placing it under the glass cloth prior to applying the epoxy. The tissue paper goes clear with the wet out. The technique is a great way to personalise your board and it would have been nice to have a killer whale orca emblem (on my Wooden Surfboard supply ORCA SUP). I also fancied words to the effect of "WOODEN SURFBOARD SUPPLY, SUP ORCA, Handcrafted by Pete Notman 2014" - but I didn't get around to it.
Something, something, something about letting the wood do the talking.
Also the little slip of tissue paper always leaves a tiny high spot and since I was using thin 4oz cloth on my project, it would have stood out a bit too much for my liking.
All care was taken to make the 'oval' oval - but something must have gone a bit asymmetric during the cutting.
The 6oz deck grip cloth feathered on the left, then with the edge 'weave filled' on the right.
= I might have gotten away with that one
Nose Vents
It is recommended that the hollow framed SUP Orca is vented. Heat changes can subject sealed plastic petrol cans to spectacular pressure with the container blowing up like a puffer fish in the sun, then contracting to a wrinkled prune-like thing in the cool of the evening. Now I don't want that to happen to my board which will be certainly be left out in the hot sun at times. I bought the vents from Wooden Surfboard supply and just had to fit them using the instructions provided. The vents went in without too much drama. But there was a moment of fear and angst when I screwed the base through into the inside of the board. Fortunately I managed to pull it back into place. Moral of the story, don't use too much force when you are screwing the base into the board.
Two vent plugs fitted at the bow of the board to enable it to 'Breathe' and cope with temperature fluctuations
Leash plug
Apart from sanding and varnishing, the last job to do on the deck was to fit the leash plug. A leash plug is a little fitting epoxied into the stern deck where you attach a ankle or thigh leash. A leash keeps the board attached to you when you fall off. It is important as two bad things can happen if you don't have one. For example, if you are surfing and, you fall off the board can continue to shore like a misguided missile taking out innocent swimmers and other boarders (the veritable 12ft 'board sweeper' ... and one of the things that won't endear SUP boarders to surfers). You get left behind in the washing machine and a bit vulnerable, especially if rips are running. At the very least you are looking at a long swim back to shore chasing your board [which could end up on a hostile shore with rocks].
On a personal note, if you fall off your board in windy conditions there is a good chance the board will quickly blow away out of reach = not a great survival situation to find yourself in.
On paper, fitting the leash plug should be a simple job. Drill a hole, mix up some stained epoxy and plonk in. Sounds, simple enough, but I had a bit of a nerve wracking battle chasing around great ink blot splodges of stained epoxy (that had seeped under the white duct tape), gouging out the hole saw plug with chisels, having to do a top up fill the next day and so on. Initially the brass leash plug bar was orientated cross-board. But that was well and truly 'randomised' when I pulled the plug out, topped up the hole with epoxy and replaced the plug several times first time around.
Leash plug - Picking the place
I looked at fitting my leash plug into the meat of the fin box reinforcing either immediately in front of the fin or just behind it. There were some merits for fitting the leash plug in front of the fin box, because the depth of the board there would mean that there was less chance of drilling right through the board. But on reflection, having the leash in that position would tend to turn the board into a water parachute putting serious strain on the fitting. You see, when you fall off into the water on a wave, you become a sea anchor and the board carries on. Then when the pressure comes on, particularly if the leash plug is forward on the board, the board will lie slightly perpendicular to where all the force is focusing on. Not a good thing. By having the leash plug further back, the board would be more prone to 'wind vane' with less pressure going onto the plug. That feature could become important when I gain skill and start going out into bigger and bigger surf.
Hole Saw
The instructions said hole saw. I had some high speed blade bits but shied away from them at the nightmare thought of my had crafted wooden deck being mauled to pieces. I bought a hole saw and because I was drilling close to the tail of the board where it is getting pretty thin, I packed out the bit with a piece of wood - to shorten the drill part of the hole saw. That was easier than sawing off the drill and re-sharpening it. The hole saw made a very neat hole. Problem was getting the plug out, which required brutal use of a chisel which resulted me in garking up the edges of the otherwise perfect hole. I think if I was to do it again, I would go 'old school' and use a brace and bit - that would save the hassle of the drill bit going through to the other side of the board AND the 'bit' would remove the core - at the same time.
The leash plug, leash plug hole drilled and the hole saw packed out with a piece of wood to stop the drill going through the otherside of the board
Duct Tape
With black stained epoxy just about to be glooped about, I was very keen to use as much duct tape as possible. First time around I used this white stuff, which should have worked fine. But the duct tape didn't stick too well, possibly as a consequence of the waxy surface residue left over by the recent epoxy coat reaction. Fortunately I cleared away the duct tape 3 hours after fitting the plug and I was able to remove the disturbing large inkblot of stained epoxy that had insidiously seeped under all my creative duct taping. The next day, when I had to top up the sides with thickened, stained epoxy, I used some blue coloured duct tape that seemed to work much better. And there is a moral in there, clean your deck with warm soapy water before you fit your leash plug. AND. First time I used un-thinned stained epoxy. I finished off with thickened and stained epoxy which was much easier to handle.
Leash hole plug removed, duct taped up and ready for epoxying into place. Note the duct tape over the leash plug hole
Cunning pressure application.
The instructions recommended a lugnut weight on top of the leash plug, to stop it floating in the pool of epoxy. I didn't have a lug nut, but a handy pair of pliers balanced on some staples and a spare plug of plastic did the trick on the day. The big blob of stained epoxy came from me pulling the leash plug out and putting it down while I topped up the pond - the instructions said don't overfill. However, each time I did that quite a bit of epoxy adhering to the plug came out of the hole and leached onto the tape. When I put more in, the quantity didn't really replace what had come out. If I was to do it again, I would always look at a two part fitting. Stage one, get it glued in place and not worry too much about getting the right level. Phase two would be to top up the epoxy the be flush with the deck ... and this is what I did.
Leash plug being epoxied in first time around. The ink blot was a result of me pulling the plug out several times and topping up the epoxy
That was - a fruitless chasing my tail task.
Phase II - Leash plug top up
Here is day two. Blue duct tape adhering to the board much better and hopefully doing a much more efficient job. And a nice blob of thickened, stained epoxy. The plan is that any excess can be sanded away and the duct tape covering the leash plug hole can be removed. Apart from a jolly good round of sanding and varnishing, thus concludes the deck.
Phase two, fill the gaps around the leash plug the next day. This time using u-beaut blue duct tape
28 April Hull glassed building complete
Another Easter and another British Seagull outboard motor boat race down the Waikato River more or less completed. My SUP Orca build started with the kit coming to NZ from California and me getting the paulownia and NZ grown Redwood during the Easter Seagull race. So it is an auspicious enough occasion to see the end of the build two years, on after the completion of another race.
This year, my little British Seagull 5R outboard motor hummed through day one and won the day. I had a faultless run and the victory was all the more sweeter because they were running the Team New Zealand racer (complete with a 5R motor just like mine) and, pretty much as it was configured when I did my first Seagull race back in 1999. Then, I was running a stock standard Silver Century Seagull motor, bolted to a homemade trimaran, based on an Apteryx multisport kayak hull with plastic drain pipe amas (and just between you and me inspired by the Team NZ cup racer) - Way back then, my efforts fell about 10 knots short in boat speed.
So, after all these years, to find that my fine tuning and modifications to the Minimax hull were justified when I discovered that I had a good 2 knots boat speed over my rivals.
Baffling my fellow competitors, I then headed back up river to Hamilton and retired from day 2 - DNS. The forecast for day two of Easter Seagull race 2014 was for 30 knots Westerly winds with thunderstorms. The final legs of the Waikato race open up with some wide stretches facing due West and the fetch can result in some uncomfortably choppy conditions. Duck-bill drains on the Minimax means that it can withstand almost any seas thrown at it = water goes in, water goes out. But the forecast meant day 2 was going to be a battle and since I was only doing it for fun, the better part of valour involved drinking rum with the folks at my Brothers place in Raglan and not battling the elements.
As it turned out, the two competitors from my class either capsized or fried their motors, so there were no winners [unless you count sipping rum in the comfort of Raglan].
Shadowing the Team New Zealand boat - it was last run back in 1999 when I did my very first Easter Seagull race
When I got back home from my travels across the countryside, I eventually got around to trimming the deck glass and gave the SUP Orca hull a quick sand. Then with little fanfare I wet out the glass cloth on the SUP Orca hull. A weave filling coat the next day and then a second brushed weave filling coat of epoxy today and it is all pretty much a 'done deal'. In the immortal mis-quoted words of some dude from 'Star Wars' - My pretty's, you are now looking at a fully operational death star [death star read SUP Orca].
Building complete on this day of 28 April 2014. Pretty much after 2 years of being distracted and not actually diligently building. I got there! and it is looking good even though I say so myself. Happy with that.
The immediate plan is to hoist the board back in the rafters and leave it well alone, to cure until the weekend. By then I reckon it will be ready enough for a sea trial and the moments of truth - how will it go??
Actually, the building is not complete. After a month the epoxy will have cured to the point where it will be hard enough to be sanded and I will varnish it. The varnish acts like suntan lotion protection for the epoxy. Using the board in the meantime will help condition the epoxy and wash off the waxy residue that forms as the epoxy cures. Thus the board will be a bit rough around the edges, but it will be presentable enough for me to become acquainted with how it performs and show off just a little.
My test pilot regime should start in the flat calm sheltered waters off Hataitai Beach and, then progress to Lyall Bay surf. But I bet if there is a hint of surf on Saturday, I will probably just go straight into it ... what could possibly go wrong?.
Well, my pretty's, you are now looking at a fully operational death star (death star read SUP ORCA).
The next photos will be of it on the water .... and eventually a movie!!!
3 May 2014 - We have a launch Houston!!!!
It was a long week of cold, rotten weather waiting for the last of my hull weave coats to cure. I would have been happy with a bit of heat and sunshine, but it was not to be. Weather prognoses indicated that there might be a lull in the foul weather on Saturday and a chance of a first launch.
So it was a matter of waiting for Saturday to roll around. When the day came, it was windy (but not too windy) and overcast with showers threatening, not the most auspicious of occasions for a launching.
I could have waited (indefinitely) for a sunny day to get great launching photos ... or ['Plan B']I could just go ahead and find out how my new floaty water toy went.
Hmmmm ..... Plan B won the day hands down.
Happy to report that the launching went well. Living in the middle of the Southern Ocean, one would have thought there might have been at least a bit of surf somewhere ... but no. My corner of the Southern Ocean was flat as a pan cake, so surf trials will have to come later. The launch pad was going to be the traditional launch grounds where most of my creations have been tested for the very first time: in the relative shelter (there was a 15 knot wind blowing) of Hataitai Beach.
Considering that it was my very first time ever on a SUP, a sheltered corner of the globe was probably going to be a good place to start.
I have to admit that I was a bit trepid and wobbly to start with (probably not helped by the board still sporting its newly formed slippery waxy post-curing skin), but I soon 'found my feet' and was comfortable enough and enjoying my new SUP Orca.... and I didn't fall in during the entire session = the SUP Orca is definitely 'user-friendly'.
The board itself has little windage, but fat Pete on the board does = progress up wind was not great, but I flew downwind, and the SUP Orca is sensational in the calm offering great views of the shallows.
[Note to self, be a bit wary of offshore conditions on your SUP at least to start with]
To make good progress and speed, you need to do short sharp strokes with the paddle. As a learner, your paddle strokes are long and tentative, so your up wind capabilities aren't too good to start with. I had gained confidence the next day and the short sharp strokes had me accelerating onto waves like a pro.
I think I will have to retro-fit a carry handle in the middle of the board. It is big and a bit un-wieldly particulary when it is wet and a wind is blowing and you factor in the paddle.
I almost managed to catch a few wind chop waves from the get go and I reckon my SUP Orca will be really good in the surf (when I can find some)
Happy with that!
Trick photography: Fat Pete on the left showing off the Deck, Skinny Pete on the right showing off the Hull with skeg fitted and ready to go
Ceremonial pouring of the New Zealand Brown Champagne (Beer) - I don't traditionally name my surfboards, so this known as my 'SUP Orca'
A moment of reflection: "I hope, I hope, I hope it will work"
We have a launch Houston - the new floaty water toy is great!!! May there be many more adventures
And, of course .... "THERE IS A MOVIE":
Post launching note. The weather hadn't improved much the next day (Sunday) but there was a tiny mouse surf [would be good for surfing if you were the size of a mouse] at my local Lyall Bay Break. Just enough lift to test whether I really had found my footing [it was, after all, going to be the second time ever that I had been on a SUP] and, maybe if I was lucky a set, or a passing ferry wake might provide enough of a wave to catch a ride and surf test my new SUP Orca.
I had the whole beach to myself to start with and, caught .... a whole pile of 1 foot waves. Not really much of a test but conclusive enough to know that my SUP Orca is 'Surf Capable' and my curious attempts at rail shaping have been good enough to track nicely across the face of little waves. My new SUP Orca definitely surfs better than what my old Dunlop Dunga surfboard could possibly have done in similar conditions ... so there is a step forward.
The waves really weren't big enough to see if the board would rail turn ... which, considering the length of the SUP Orca = 12 ft might be just a little optimistic. But I could initiate a turn with a little help from "Mr Paddle" and, with a bit more confidence, wax and commitment to weighting the back foot, I reckon my SUP Orca will turn handily enough.
The school report is: the SUP Orca surfs and surfs well.
Only downside was that I dropped the board on the ground several times ... my SUP Orca is just a little too wide and unwieldly in the wind when it is wet and slippery. Compounding the problem is that you have to get the board AND paddle into and out of the water at the same time. The lure/trap was that I was getting away with handling my board during the build - without out a paddle. Once your paddle gets into the picture, everything goes 'south' quickly.
So I will be retro-fitting a hand hold slot in the middle of my pristine deck. I can cope with that.
A retro-fitted hand hold
Dropping your handcrafted wood SUP Orca on the ground, repeatedly is not good form. So retro-fitting a hand hold was a no brainer. There was a little remorse in that I had thought that I could have got away without one and that clean deck looked "a million dollars". On reflection building a hand hold into the board (a lot like what I did for the fin box) would have solved a lot of issues and made a neater job. By retro fitting, at least I could put my hand hold in exactly the centre of balance [which is slightly aft of where you think it would be, on account of the weight of the skeg and the leg rope]. Also I could 'mill' the slot, before fitting it, which would take away some of the fear and angst of having to use a router and 'jerry-rigged' guides.
If I wasn't in such a hurry to get back on the water, I could have inlayed strips to match the pattern on the deck. But I was on a mission and in some ways the hand hold is something of a feature and a clear lesson for any other builders that you really need one. Besides, trying to hide the hand hold with clever inlays might have looked a little tacky.
One positive that I took out of the exercise was that when I made the unkindest cuts, I could see that the inside of the board was bone dry. I never like putting unnecessary holes in a good hull and I was a bit sceptical about how well the breather vents would work (at keeping water out). The Wood Surfboard Supply breather vents worked really well .... when I was out surf trialing, the nose of the board got buried a couple of times punching waves and got buried with a couple of late take offs. By the way, the lift in the nose was enough to save my ass during those late take off nose rooters and popped up. The SUP Orca 'Rocks'. The old Dunlop Dunga surfboard would have needled its nose deep and flicked me off everytime in the same situations.
Step 1: Find a bit of wood to make the handhold. I chose a spare scrap of paulownia that was lying around, left over from cutting the strips. Then I whittled it roughly into shape and 'milled' the finger slot.
I whittled my hand-hold insert back some more (and eventually trimmed half an inch off the bottom (as pictured above) - my router could only cut so deep which meant that either the finger slot would be shallower ... or by cutting the bottom of the insert block back, I would retain as much 'meat' in the lateral stringer as I could. I went for the latter option.
You have to love the router - this was a way of cutting the stringer and ribs to depth without snapping anything after I made the jigsaw cuts. But cutting that lovely deck did bring a tear to the eye. That will teach me to be so stubborn and naïve to think that I didn't need a hand hold ... .even though every other SUP seems to have them. It is looking a little like a rabid rat has attacked the project though!
Not pictured (I was on a mission) is that after the heart breaking hole had been cut and I had trimmed the insert to size. I reinforced the longitudinal strut that had been cut down (and can be seen in the above photo) with a strip of paulownia off cuts either side. These reinforcing pieces also served to make a firm base to glue the bottom of the insert.
The inset hand hold deed is mostly done. I just have to feather in the edges of the 'patch' with the paint scraper when the glass becomes sufficiently green.
So, the deed is done. Aesthetics ruined, but at least I won't be throwing my precious handcrafted wood board on the ground. I might even be able to jamb a piece of wood in the slot, which could be a base for a camera mount. I will think about that next time I am on the water.
Shake down cruises
I am starting to clock a few miles on my SUP Orca now and I do like it a lot. My deck grip system works, but really does need a bit of extra gecko grip in the form of the old traditional wax. In the ideal world, I would have waited until I had finished the board (including varnishing and strategic waxing) before I started serious sea trialling, But I couldn't help myself. The small price for not waiting is that I dinged my board.
I DINGED MY BOARD
I was out in more Lyall Bay mouse surf but on slightly bigger waves this time. I got enough rides to start to get a feel of how my SUP Orca moves .... and for a big board, I reckon my SUP Orca will rock, once I get my act together and a bit of a firmer wax assisted footing. Anyhow, I was goofing around and sort of went for a wave and sort of didn't and ended up falling onto my deck knee first - and dinged my board. In future, I will make a bigger effort to fling myself into the ocean rather than repeat that performance. The point impact from my knee drop on my to board (on the foredeck in front of the hand hold) cracked the glass (on the double glassed - reinforced deck grip pad area too) and cracked a strip underneath.
So, my board is pretty strong, but not bullet proof and .... Alas and Woe, my beautiful new toy was ruined.
I built it I can fix it
In the old days with a foam core board, you could get away with just filling the ding up with extra wax and I could have just done that. These days you could can get your board repaired but usually at great cost. But since I built my SUP Orca, I ought to be able to fix it and a repair will be more likely to ensure the boards longevity and be the right thing to do.
So, after the Capital paddlers race at Plimmerton (below), I cut out and removed the damaged glass which revealed that one strip had cracked - hence the 'ding'. The initial fix plan was to just fill the dent with chopped strands of glass, capped with cloth. But, I figured I could make a lighter and tidier repair by inlaying a strip patch, fairing it and then glassing.
The plan worked pretty well, except in my haste, I made a hash job of cutting the inlay borders with my craft knife ... which seems to have a blade-backing-depth-adjusting thingy. Not noticing that it was fully extended, my inlay border cuts were a bit thicker and cruder than they should have been. Also, the scrap strip that I grabbed wasn't a great colour match, but once it was glassed and cured a bit, the match ended up pretty close. If I had made cleaner border cuts, I would have gotten away with a near invisible repair. But the repair is sound and I have a battle scar blot on my once pristine deck ... and a reminder to fling myself into the water next time.
I cut the damaged glass out and inlaid a patch over the cracked strip
Then I glassed over the patch .. the coarsely cut inlay perimeter ruins what would have otherwise been a near invisible repair.
Doh! I could have another go at the repair or just leave it as a reminder not to crash onto my board next time I fall
Racing my SUP Orca
My 5th ever time on a SUP of any kind was a mission to go SUP racing on my SUP Orca. The grand event was the first race of the Capital Paddlers Plimmerton beach series. Doing the race series was just an excuse and motivation to get out on the water. I had no idea how my SUP Orca would go and had no great expectations since I would be far from paddling fit (being my 5th ever time on a SUP board and all). There was the long course (about 3 km) and the short course (1 km). I figured I would comfortably fit in the short course division and rocked up and gave it a go.
The people were friendly. The conditions were windy and testing. The racing was close. And, it turns out my SUP Orca has a respectable turn of speed. I did surprisingly well for most of the race but lost a couple of places through an evil wind gust coming at the wrong moment and a few rookie mistakes. But it was fun and I will be doing it again. = My SUP Orca is multi functional.
On the day and in a spur of the moment thought, I invented 'parrot cam' which seems entirely appropriate for a Pirate ... [parrot on the shoulder =- camera lashed to the shoulder strap of my PFD]. With no pre-trials of the new camera mounting system, my horizon was all wonky, but I figure the footage I got was useable enough to make episode 2 Racing my SUP Orca:
DINGED MY DECK AGAIN!!!!!
I am not sure how it happened this time. There was a wipe out involving my jury rigged 'helmet cam' where contact must have been made, because my Contour Roam2 in a housing was knocked off my helmet mount. I learnt many things from this semi-disaster: Contour Roam2 in housings: float! and the puke, yum yum-bite-me shark yellow is high viz. Because those two traits enabled me to find and retrieve the camera in the middle of white wash surf and prevented what would have otherwise been an expensive and disastrous loss.
My movie aspirations were hampered by some technical issues that meant that all (including several good rides AND, the ride of the day) but the first tentative ride were ever captured on video. Subsequently this movie is very short and very lame. But does give an indication that the SUP Orca is a doddle to get out the back and can catch waves. I can do better, so watch this space.
Heads up, the sound track is random and reminiscent of retired James Bond does mid-life crisis SUP surfing and other technical issues mean that the sound track can be unexpectedly loud.
Enjoy.
Paddling the board last night I realised that the ding was pretty bad and I would have to do something about it. Also the ding is reminiscent and about in the exact place of the transition to surf stance heel plant and turn (which is pretty much a stomp). The placement of the ding and size incriminating in that it was where I was putting my heel when I was catching waves.
Doh!
Thus the deck as built (glassed on the outside - and, incidentally reinforced with the 6oz glass oval over the top of 4oz base cloth) ... is simply not strong enough for heavy (me) foot traffic. Long board surfing requires quite a bit of trimming (running up and down the board when you are surfing). If I had known that this was going to be an issue, I would have glassed the inside under deck sections with cloth, particularly around the aft deck area where one tends to gravitate once you catch a wave.
That fix is way too late in the piece to be achievable. My plan is to repair the broken strips and then reinforce the outside deck with more cloth with a touch of carbon to stiffen/strengthen the area ... rather like two foot pads ... the centre of the board will be strong enough with the longitudinal stringer underneath it ... and I don't want to ruin my what is left of my 'GT Stripe'.
so here goes:
The ding - just a bit of crazed glass, a soft spot and a depression (in both senses of the word)
I lifted the glass by cutting with my craft knife and heating the area with a heat gun. Then I poked around to see where the nearest rib was ... too far away to help with this repair
Damaged area cut out - I trimmed it a bit subsequent to this photo
Strips glued in place to fill the hole. The next thing to do is sand flush, fill the square with 4oz and 6oz cloth patch then a layer of carbon fibre then more 6oz cloth over the general area
My carbon footprint
Well, that screwed up a good deck. Pretty much the Pirate black spot kiss of death to my once pristine deck. However, providing the fix can survive further surf testing, a couple of strategically placed deck pads should smoke and mirrors cover up the disaster and bring some dignity back to the build.
In the ideal world, I would have ballanced the carbon patch on the other side, but I didn't have enough carbon lying around to do both sides. Besides if it ain't broke, don't fix it" ... and so far touch wood, that side has been fine.
So, in the mean time the patch is formally known as "my Carbon footprint" and certainly survived a short and sharp paddle board race with Capital Paddlers at Plimmerton last weekend.
"The Catcher" - Surfing at Raglan Beach
I finally got around to doing a few finishing touches to the board. Number one priority was to retro-reinforce the deck where I stand with carbon fibre and an extra layer of glass. Then a jolly good deck sanding and a couple of coats of varnish. Sometime during Christmas 2016 I glued on some deck tread. Ongoing surf trials were most satisfactory and I made the short video during a surf session at Raglan.
I didn't put all the sections of the deck tread on initially, trying to preserve my wood deck, but after making that movie I put the aft sections of the padding on. You spend time at the back stalling the board and turning, so you need padding there.
Later in the year I sanded and varnished the bottom. That gave me more speed and hence the name "the Catcher". I seem to be able to catch any and every wave.
So, I am loving my Orca SUP and starting to work on my nose riding skills = generally having a hoot!
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