Building a skiff

[Maple Syrup Actual]

Well, I have a pretty small update.

I took a week off to go to my cabin, and then another week off because, to my enormous surprise, I got sick. Don't get your hopes up: it was nothing serious. I had been speculating that with things starting to open up and my kid going to these mommy-hook-ups/sort-of-semi-daycare-hangouts that we might actually have an avenue by which we could get sick and that turned out to be shockingly prophetic. I work from home, my wife doesn't work, and covid is really rare where I am so until very recently I felt like the odds of catching anything at all were exceptionally remote...and the only real change to that was the local mom meet-up, so I had processed this kind of theoretical change to our family's risk of infection, which in a normal year wouldn't be a thing I'd think about but you know, covid etc, so this was just a thing I was thinking about.

Anyway then my kid got his first cold, which I also got. I was so surprised that there was anything circulating at all that initially I just assumed it must be covid, but I got tested, and apparently not. But I was super beat for about a week, and also had lingering concerns about a false negative so I didn't want to go grind fiberglass, even in a dust mask, and just give my lungs some whole other problem to deal with on the off chance it was indeed covid. Which, as far as I know, it wasn't, and it's been a week and I feel pretty much fine, so I got back to work on the boat on Saturday for the first time in a while.


In rough chronological order here...I started by bailing out to the cabin, so I'll cover that first.

That Costco Lifetime cooler I bought for the boat, I used for the first time because there was yet another heatwave on, so I wanted all the coolers I could get for a week at the cabin. When I bought that thing I had slight misgivings, because at whatever, I think around $160 CAD, I thought there's some obvious downsides: you're supporting junk chinese manufacturing etc. But I'm pretty tapped out at the moment, and bought it, anyway.

So then I open the thing before we head to the cabin and check this out:



It's made in the freaking USA. If I knew this, I definitely forgot. I was totally stoked. I'm not American, so I'm not patriotic for made-in-the-USA stuff per se, but would I rather support manufacturing in an ally country instead of a country I won't comment on further because not everyone wants to drink my personal brand of political kool-aid? Hell yes, I would rather my money go to America and American workers. Very happy about this.

The cooler appropriately packed, we headed off to the cabin where this familiar beach continued to enthrall my kid:





I thought this might be kind of interesting, too. This is the sound of a beach here at low tide. If you turn it up you'll hear all the tiny little animals making their weird little squeaks and creaks and clicks as they open and close shells and filter mud and crawl around. It struck me that a sand beach is really nice to walk on, but often a bit of a desert, but our beaches are the opposite: murder on the feet, but teeming with life. And our little island is so quiet, you can hear it all happening. Anyway I just thought it was kind of cool.

https://youtu.be/afMqEtV5Fq8

There are other beaches there, though. We got the kid a little floaty thing, like an inner tube but with a center floor with leg holes, so he could float around in the ocean. He's really into beaches and the ocean in general. I have to say I think he's pretty lucky to get this constant exposure to these marine environments. I'm really happy about the general experience of life he's getting so far. He has just suddenly grasped the significance of berry bushes and we have been gorging him on wild salal, blueberries, and blackberries. He's crazy about it all. It's pretty neat.

Okay, last non-boat pic:

Five days, >30c (~90f) all day every day, still 5 lbs of ice in there. That's yeti performance for coleman money.


Okay, back to work:


Just throwing a bit of light cloth on the side supports here to prevent checking etc; that's marine fir so it needs a bit of extra help in that department:



Cleaning up a little slab of maple for the outboard pad on the bracket:



Filleting in side supports:



Test fitting the...I don't even know what to call these. Full-length coaming cleats. If this was german, maybe inwalesheerclampcoamingcleat. I honestly don't know. They're going to give me a gluing surface to connect the side decks to what I would call coaming but could be considered an inwale? I have them for the top and bottom of the coaming surface, the top to give gluing surface and the bottom just to stiffen the bottom of the coaming edge.

Then I ripped a 2x3 into quarters. This will go under the side decks, in the middle, as a longitudinal stiffener. I only have 1/4" ply on hand and I think it'd be floppy between the side supports without a bit of help. I scarfed these together last night.



And finally, I went around the side supports where they interface with the sole to make really fat fillets, and stuck cleats all over the relevant surfaces of the side supports where the decks and coaming need gluing surface.

I'm going to pull a really thin coat of fairing compound over the interior, I think. I spent about an hour Saturday afternoon running over it with a sander and it's decent, but I think a skim coat could make it look noticeably better under paint, so I guess I'll do that.

Really looking forward to getting paint on the interior: once the surfaces are protected from UV I can be less careful about keeping it indoors, so I can use it more easily when I want as I finish up.

[WDR]

Lifetime Products are (all?) Made here in my state (Utah). They started out making plastic folding tables and chairs, have expanded into other markets like kayaks, coolers, and even 4'x4' plastic enclosures for raised garden beds (which we bought a few of last year).

Their main manufacturing facility is located in a former naval/military depot... alongside an ATK/Northrup Grumman composites factory/shop, and some other interesting companies.

It's good to hear their cooler works well... im in the market for something like that soon.

[Maple Syrup Actual]

Progress is continuing at typical summer pace: lots of time off to go play at the beach etc. But I continue to chip away here and there.

Here's the current state of things:

Back when I cut the side panels, I also cut the outwales or rubrails or however you want to look at that, because of course I could easily follow the curve of the hull panel that way. But I also cut 4 extra 1 1/2" strips following that curve, then split them longitudinally, and now I have 8x 3/4" strips that mirror the sheerline. I glued them to the inside of the hull stiffeners, to give me bands to attach the coaming to. Once I'd laminated them in place, they were pretty stiff and pretty hard to push out of their lam'd-in curvature. You can see here I've already glued on the first round, and now I'm laminating on the second one.



Then I was roughing in side decks and coaming and stuff...



Kind of a nice look but the wood isn't in good enough shape to do bright...thank god, or I would end up doing that.



Then it was coats of epoxy on everything to seal it up:



Coaming going on:



This is total paranoia but after two coats of epoxy I still paint surfaces if I won't be able to see them easily. Extra moisture protection.



And finally, I have the coaming in, and I'm placing foam blocks in the gunwales now. The gunwales alone should give about 240lb of positive floatation so this thing should be hard to flip when swamped. Under the breasthook there'll be a little more, although I haven't done the math on exactly how much - not enough to have a huge impact though.

At the transom, right below the decking on the side boxes and under the splash well, there'll be about another 240lb. The boat itself floats, of course, but I wanted enough lift in there to keep it level if swamped, and hold the motor up, even if I put a 4-stroke 40 on it one day or something. Basically I have a ring around the top edge of the boat, about 6"x6" of 2lb/cu.ft. foam, plus bonus space at the transom. I like the idea of keeping the foam high up on this thing because although my area is full of logs in the water, this boat won't be a speed demon and I'm not worried about staving in the hull on a big hemlock, really, so I can keep the foam up where water will naturally want to drain away from it instead of collect, plus it'll resist turtling on the off chance I ever need it to.

Other important news: soap bubbles are AMAZING



Also pictured in kitchen: emergency curtain because there was yet another heatwave and we don't usually have a curtain there but it was like a convection oven at the sink otherwise; general messiness because only one parent does a damn thing to keep the house organized while the other builds boats; my wife's window-ledge avocado tree nursery.

[Maple Syrup Actual]

Decks are on all the way around. I put a bit of simple framing into the tops of the transom boxes just so I could use the leftover 1/4" meranti plywood without it flexing all over the place once there's downriggers mounted there. And also there's a bit of camber to the tops, so I needed some structure to support the curve. It's subtle but I think necessary to fit with the rest of the boat's lines.





So that led to this picture, which was the most satisfying one in quite a while:



But glory is fleeting. I went around and marked all the spots that needed a bit of fill between the decking and the rubrail. I did this by using a bit of masking tape so I could see everything really easily and pull the tape as I finished each spot, which is a handy way to keep track of stuff, think.



Having fixed the decking gaps, it was time to do a bit of routering:



That ought to hold a bit of rope.

Running out of stuff to build at this point, but might as well get some glass on the decks and coaming:










I guess today I'll go trim that all up, fix anything that needs to be fixed, and get the second set of outboard mount holes filled in and drilled.

What's left? I haven't put in the motorwell deck, I guess I could get that organized. That's probably the last item of any significant size. I'll do that this week and get her back on the water for more testing; I haven't gotten her wet since I did the outboard bracket and I'm looking forward to playing with motor height.

[Maple Syrup Actual]

I apologize for the lack of updates and poor quality ones when they happen - been extremely busy here. And most of what I've been doing doesn't photograph well: finishing the parts for the motorwell and transom boxes, for example. "Here's another coat of epoxy on this plywood square" isn't very captivating.

I've also been playing with the boat a little, and spending more time with the kid, which slows the build down. But I'm just about finished the actual construction, I expect to be screwing around with cosmetics for a long time.

Anyway here's the latest.

Hasn't given up much in the way of stability, at least.



Finally got around to finishing the coaming at the bow



And prepped for non-skid



and laid on the non-skid



at both ends



and ran a 5' 1/3 strand of 1" manila through the stem, wrapping it back on itself as I went, to give me something to hook onto



and spent more time running around. Getting the motor dialed in but so far everyone who's sent me a prop, sent the wrong one, which has been really annoying. Two different companies, both sent the one for the through-prop exhaust. Anyway I'm getting pretty close.




No cheating, anyone who knows me from outside a build thread...soon I will be asking for bets on the following question:

How much does she weigh, and how fast does she go?

[Maple Syrup Actual]

Spent most of yesterday weighing and running her .. here's the numbers so far.

Pics whenever I get on a laptop again.

I don't have final numbers on speed yet - but that will probably be close to what I saw today. I think I can get another knot or two over the current max - I'm still using the original prop which is 40 years old and looks it. And I think I can raise the engine one hole, although that may not help. But at present, it's good for 22.8 knots, or 26.2 mph. I bet I can hit 25 knots before I'm done, though. That's insane performance out of an old motor that puts out maybe 30hp. A factory fiberglass boat about the same size would for sure need a 60, maybe a 75 to get those numbers.

More useful: at 4500 RPM, it has a nice relaxed 18 knot cruise, only 3/4 of the way to redline.

My personal guess on weight which I didn't post because I didn't want to influence anyone inclined to offer a guess was 300kg for the boat and motor. I don't usually think in kilos but that's what the local scale reads in and for whatever reason it just made me think, whatever I see with the empty trailer, I'll probably see 300 more with the boat on.

Yesterday I weighed my 4runner, me, my empty trailer and whatever junk in addition to me is in the 4runner at 2245 kilos,

Then I went home, loaded the boat, and motor, and at the last minute tossed in a 6gal/25l fast tank up and went back. I hadn't planned to include fuel but then thought... someone's going to complain it doesn't run without a gas tank so it's not complete. The tank was a little over half full so it's a pretty traditional crib weight component anyway. Anyway say 3/5 a 6 gallon tank so figure I've got around 30lb of fuel, tank, fuel line, straps holding the boat down, and so on. Probably within a couple of pounds, I'd guess 30 is reasonable for fuel and ancillaries.

Reading on the scale: 2560.

315kg difference or 695 lb wet.

I'd guessed 300kg/661lb dry and think I was pretty dead on but I built it so that's cheating.

Those motors weigh about 105lb so hull alone, 556.

No complaints here!

[Maple Syrup Actual]

I think I owe everyone a pretty good update here so let me start by giving this post a title:

“And Then This Happened”

I booked a week and a day off of my job – September 30 which was Thursday was the first annual memorial day of a new type in Canada, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation between indigenous people and, I guess, everyone else. Yesterday was Thanksgiving here, so I took Friday and the intervening week off and resolved not to touch a laptop until they paid me to do so again so the only updates anyone has gotten would be if they follow me on some platform that’s really easy to update by mobile. That’s the reason for the lengthy silence, anyway.

And now…on with our story.

First some build detail stuff:
How did I guess the hull weight as accurately as I did? Simple: cheating. Here I am weighing it by hand a couple of weeks ago:

So I had a pretty idea what half of it weighed, anyway. I knew it was light.

Here was a good “I’m not a rocket scientist” move: I’ve never had a motor with hand cranks before, to snug it down. So I didn’t think about that when I made the little bracket.

How did I think they were going to turn and flop and turn? There’s not enough room! Duhhhokay, well, we mount the motor to the plate, then mount the assembly to the boat, I guess. Unless there’s another solution, which I immediately discovered:


Just tighten it down really hard, and you can shear the handles right off and punch your hand into the aluminum bracket and now a 3/8” wrench lets you turn them with ease. Another problem solved with brute force.

Here’s a quick bit of detail for you on my weird personal take on open spaces under decks…I wanted the ability to prevent water from getting in and weighing me down in the improbable event of taking a ton of water on board. I bought a pack of kayak bungs for about $20 and employed two on the actual kayak where I needed them, and 5 on this boat.


Here’s three stopping water from leaving the bilge and moving forward. Easily removed, no chance of excess air pressure like sealed bilges, but almost impossible for water to gain entry except by catastrophic hull failure. Very simple. That picture is a few weeks old, the bilge is a bit cleaner since then. But that’s the only pic I have that shows the bungs.
I also use them like this:


If the hatch lid isn’t jammed at all, they make good handles. If it is, they just pop out and you can get a finger in there and give it a yank. But it keeps most of the rain and spray out.


I can’t remember if I mentioned this but the boat fits in the garage with the motor on, which is great!
Well, it mostly fits.

Close enough!

Then it was just some little detail stuff like the motorwell (which now has a drain and is fully glassed but didn’t/isn’t in this pic)


Get the grab rail all fancy


Kid all excited…


And onto the water!
October 1: burning fuel, having fun, hunting lingcod in the reefs around my place.




October 2, same basic plan…


“And Then This Happened”

Heck.

Submerged log, maybe 6” down below the surface. Hit it around 15 knots, I think. Was just moving between reefs fishing them and had left the lock on, which is flimsy…looking. But apparently very sturdy. I highly recommend the old OMC locking system, it’s apparently very, very strong.

I also recommend the motors, though, because apparently they’re unkillable.
I roped it back onto the transom by running the fender lines through those rod holder holes, got the engine running, and drove it home six miles like this.


I had dinner and possibly some kind of beverage to improve my state of mind, and got to work in the alley behind my house.


Probably need a new one of these:


And some other bits


Hmm…what to do. The same guy who got me the intake and carb offered to send anything I needed but he took months to send that stuff. He told me to send him a list of parts, so I did, but then he said he’d been sick and hadn’t been into the shop in a few days and I could immediately see that turning into weeks of chasing him around so I hit up a couple of local contacts as well as FB marketplace.
Well, that turned up paydirt pretty quick…I blew a whopping 150 ice pesos and some gas money and launched my latest charity: the Maple Syrup Actual Home for Wayward Outboards.

Note the inverted Evinrude 25 just visible through the doorway. It was probably the best of the three but came with a driveshaft which was seized in the cam, so cost very little. I picked up the ’76-ish Evinrude 20 Tuesday morning and began stripping it down, and the ’84 Tuesday evening. I yanked the lower off the ’84, tipped up upside down started soaking the driveshaft in penetrant that night.
Wednesday morning it was still plenty stuck. I was a little worried and began thinking about whether I could assemble an entire waterpump etc back on from underneath. I also noticed when I slid the driveshaft out of the lower that there was a little needle bearing that had popped loose down in the gearcase. Okay, that’s coming apart. Heck and double heck. I continued disassembling motors until about noon. I didn’t even stop long enough to turn on a podcast or something, I just went at max speed, heating nuts, pouring penetrant, whacking stuff with hammers, drilling out frozen studs, dremeling broken-off screw extractors (2) and also engaged in periodic fits of swearing but not as much as you’d guess. I just felt like I had zero time to waste because I wanted a running motor and each frustrating thing that happened, like shearing off a stud, was more time, and getting angry was just going to slow me down more.

I really wanted that driveshaft out on the Evinrude but HATE the idea of putting vice grips on and hammering them. I just hate it. But I couldn’t come up with a better solution, so I just kept working on the other two motors to see if I could make headway there instead.
I wasn’t sure which was going to be the fastest route, repairing the Johnson, or starting the ’84 Evinrude. There were a lot of frozen bolts and screws (seriously OMC WHY SCREWS ON A MACHINE THAT WILL SIT IN SALT WATER – you have to see the problems coming, it’s two different metals and anyway, screws, f’ing screws, god damn it) on everything and every inch was a battle. I worked on the midsection of the old Evinrude to try to get all the parts I could, and at the same time, thought about the stuck driveshaft on the ’84.

Around noon I remembered this really old flaring tool I had that I got at a garage sale for a couple of bucks at least 20 years ago. It’s very sturdily built because it’s decades old, big blocks of steel that bolt together and has all different sizes of holes with chamfers that I thought might interface well with the driveshaft bosses. That was the moment I thought I would start to win the battle.

I put the flaring tool over the driveshaft and it did indeed fit nicely against the step on the shaft. Dimensional lumber spacers, old bunk hardware bridges, and C-clamps against the flaring tool. I’d work on the Johnson and the old Evinrude for half an hour, come out, give the C-clamps a couple of whacks with a ball pein hammer, crank the clamps a quarter turn, then go back to drilling out bolts, tapping new threads, hitting stuff with a torch, soaking things in penetrant…it was a hard day. I started around 8 am and promised my wife I wouldn’t overdo it. I came in bruised, burned, and dirty around 10pm. The driveshaft was still seized. The other two motors were mostly apart but I hadn’t quite gotten far enough to start building anything. Wednesday was a hard day. It rained all day and was miserable in the garage and out. I wasn’t sure if I could get a working motor without ordering parts from somewhere. If the driveshaft didn’t come loose, I figured it’d be another two weeks before I could realistically get anywhere. The old motors just needed too much persuasion.
Thursday I woke up and went back to it. It was a sunny day again, which always improves the experience. The first thing I did was give the driveshaft a few whacks, and a couple of good hard cranks on the clamps.


BY THE POWER OF SHADETREE…
I HAVE THE POWER!!!!


Now I kicked into high gear. I already had enough of the other two apart to get the upgraded intake side of the Johnson, and the lower which was surprisingly intact after the log strike. Tthe hull was totally untouched. I had actually forgotten to remove the protective film from the PVC wear strip on the keel which is dumb because it could have blocked the water intake but anyway, even that was clearly untouched and that was the lowest point on the boat so I can’t have hit the log at all. And the tiller was already off, so I used that. The carb linkage took a bit of messing around and of course I had to put in a new water pump because it was wrecked when the lower was pulled off the seized shaft, but things rapidly started to improve.


Note water shooting out of the running engine! Victory!
Getting the engine built took until late Thursday, and tuning the thing to run well enough to trust and then mounted back on the boat took a big part of Friday, plus by that point I had barely left the garage in two days so I spent some time with my kid, and didn’t really get things wrapped up until Friday night.

Saturday morning it was a bit stormy, not much above freezing with a light rain and blowing a cold steady 15 knots after a windy night, and still gusting up to around 25 from our least-protected southeast tack.

So rough water testing it is!

Looked decent at the ramp


Pushed me out through a bit of chop in the harbour


And off I went!


It was really only about a 1-2 bay chop with some big wakes off the timber tugs around here but the boat feels great in the chop; much better than I felt I had any right to expect. I could run 15-16 knots straight into the waves in complete comfort – that deep bow really softens the impact if you keep the nose down a bit, and there’s so much freeboard up there you really lose nothing by staying pretty flat on the water. Downwind 20 knots on the chop was no problem at all. Felt great, to be honest. I was really surprised by how smooth it rode because I’m used to a big heavy deep V and honestly…I thought this would be a huge step down in comfort but it’s really not. I think it’s the ability to keep the hull in the water; it never really has the space to come down and slam. There’s no transition to plane really at all; maybe around 6 knots you get a bit of it but it’s so minor, it’s barely noticeable so then you can cruise at 12 if it’s quite rough (by small open boat standards) and it just skims along. The big Double Eagle has, like any deep V, two speeds: slug and fly. But I find that it’s often rough enough on plane that unless I’m alone, I don’t really like going full tilt. Everyone is tossed everywhere and you’re constantly airborne.
In this boat, I have the full range of speeds on tap from zero to max, and it works fine the whole way. So in waters like that dark choppy mess Saturday morning, I could actually make better time than I often would in the big boat, because I could do 14-15 knots in comfort, whereas in the Double Eagle, I’d do 20 knots if alone…but with the wife and kid, no way. I’d be chugging along at 8-10.
Sunday I had agreed to drive down to Victoria for Thanksgiving lunch…so I had to get up early. Much nicer weather.



And it was great…except I was launching her off some big wakes from a big tug…and spun the prop.

But that’s okay because the prop was due for replacement already and was 40 years old and it was bound to happen. I’ll order a new one today to a local dealer and be back on the water very soon.

So there you go – sorry if the update is at times confusing or repetitive, it’s so long I can’t remember what information was already known and to whom so I just hammered the whole thing out.

Oh also those motors seem to like running lower than I would have guessed. New engine is a long leg mounted higher on the jack plate but still lower than what I would have thought. Current top speed: 23.8 knots, or 27.4mph. Pretty good IMO!

[Coyotesfan97]

By the power of Shadetree nice work! It’s been great following this build.

[MickAK]

Excellent update. It's really been a joy following this thread.

I like the use of kayak bungs.

[Robinson]

Cool update!