If it were all fun, all the time, everybody’d be doing it.

But a lot of the work of building a boat is slow, painstaking, rife with potential for ugly mistakes, and likely to keep you awake at 3 a.m.

Most of October’s work falls into that lumpy category. I built the berth flat, flotation compartments, and battery hold in the bilge. I perched on my shop stool for hours staring at the blue beast, trying to figure out a (a) cheap (b) strong (c) decent-looking, and (d) buildable compression post. I spent another Big Gulp of cash on goop, literally: another gallon of epoxy and several tubes of 3M’s 5200 adhesive/sealant, the modern boatbuilder’s salvation unguent.

The Devlin Winter Wren plans call for a raised, ½-inch plywood floor from the anchor locker to the daggerboard case. Eventually outfitted with a custom-made, form-fitted foam cushion (whir of money taking wing), this will form the berth flat, or bed.

I complicated the matter by turning the various spaces under the flat into several of the watertight compartments that will keep Nil Desperandum* afloat despite her 700 pounds of ballast if the worst happens, a capsize and total swamping.

Designer Sam Devlin heard about my idea and strongly suggested I not permanently seal the compartments, but preserve access through watertight screw-in deck plates. I bitched and moaned about the extra cost and work, but seeing as how Sam has built about 350 more boats than I have, I figured I should follow his advice.

Now that I’ve done it, I’m glad. The deck plates, recessed into the plywood with router and chisel and sealed with 5200, actually look cool. And besides providing a way to peer in and check for water penetration, they turn the chambers into storage crannies for items like spare rope and tools.

The biggest chamber won’t be sealed. It’s to hold 240 pounds of lead ballast plus two beefy 100 amp-hour deep-cycle batteries (each weighing another 65 pounds).

Why so much juice for a small boat? I detest gasoline outboards—honestly, not as much for environmental reasons as for their noise, vibration and general crankiness—so I’m planning a Torqueedo electric motor for auxiliary drive. Clean, quiet, and more insane extra expense. But one of the few defensible reasons for building your own boat is to be able to build exactly what you want.

The compression post literally led to several October mornings awake at 3 a.m., staring at the predawn ceiling and gnawing at the problem. Devlin’s plans are not rich in detail and do not explain what the compression post is supposed to look like or how it’s to be built, only that there must be one. The post obviously has to be strong, since it has to carry some of the mast’s load off the deck beam and into the bottom of the hull. Since the post bursts up through the middle of the berth to the deck, it should be compact and nicely finished, a piece of the cabin furniture.

A friend helpfully donated a beefy piece of stainless steel pipe. But it was an unusual size and I couldn’t find fittings that would help attach it to the berth flat and beam.

I talked to a bronze supply company in Colorado. They had beautiful bronze pipe, of which they would sell me a six-foot length for $240. But I needed only two feet.

A neighbor was walking his dogs past my garage—a Boeing engineer neighbor—and I invited him in for a consultation. Very helpfully and adeptly, he studied the plans, then  picked up a spare wooden stick and demonstrated how the loads would act on the post. For the first time, it made complete sense. A big thanks, Ian.

The solution I’m now making is one of the two he recommended, and it’s the simplest, cheapest and prettiest: A $7.95 galvanized steel pipe from the neighborhood hardware store, to be cocooned in epoxy inside a mahogany post. Here’s a section

I cobbled up from scraps as a trial, then the complete post ready for bonding together. It’s fairly easy to make and appears as though it will work perfectly.

As I related in my book The Year of the Boat, there

are endless lessons with wider life   applications to be learned in building a small sailboat. Here was one: So often we burden our lives with systems of excessive cost and complexity. Sometimes we can’t help it—the burdens are forced onto us—but when we have a choice, the simplest solution is also likely to be the most elegant.

And the most conducive to a good night’s sleep.

* Not to Worry

Tags: boatbuilding, devlin, sailboat, winter wren, wooden boat

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 1:57 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.