Hout Bay Yacht Club waters,South Africa.

Nandi,one of our Didi 34 kits,chasing Megafreight in a local race



A view along the main spine on the HBYC marina



Nandi,her first sailing in Hout Bay



Hout Bay Marina in the fishing Harbour,morning tranquility and at its best



Flying Cloud,a Dix 43 made in ply/epoxy,in Chapmans Bay and reaching into Hout Bay

Some may wonder what we are doing down here at the end of a continent,I wonder myself some days but there is nothing like a drive along our wonderfull coastal roads,on my way to work each morning,to remind me about just why I choose to live here in Hout Bay as I do.Hout Bay is near land locked,depending on where you look from,the open sea can not be seen,some say its like Venezuela and having spent many months there,cruising on our last Endurance 37 yacht with my family,I can only agree,the sunsets can be amazing,the sun lights up the mountains to a pink blush,then its dark for the night.If you want to find out more about Hout Bay and its environs,the yacht club and other places,check out these great sites.

www.hbyc.co.za or www.drumbeatcharters.co.za

Roy

Birds Mouth wooden masts and spars,revisited

Wood for boat masts? with global materials prices on any product made using energy for its production,this may be a good question to both ask and answer,plastics and any sort of alloy has reached dizzy prices world wide,so the cost to carbon and alloy spars must rise too.Wood,less so but for sure some will find ways of increasing its cost,shipping surcharges come to mind?

What kind of masts and spars can we build with wood? well anything from an Optimist to an eighty foot schooner,all have had wooden masts in the past,some still do of course.We can have solid masts,they will be too heavy for most applications,we can also have hollow ones which will sort out the weight issue to a large extent,they can be round or rectangular,it depends the end use and how the sails are bent on?

Round masts will normally see the sails attatched with rope or wood hoops,smaller designs may just have a luff tube sewn into the sail,that then slips over the round spar mast.Rectangular masts can either have an alloy extrusion bolt rope or sail slide track screwed on to the back of the mast,or we can pre machine the mast to have an internal groove to take either a bolt rope or slides.

We should be making one of these next week for an Argie 15 www.dixdesign.com the original round alloy pole and the alloy bolt rope track is no longer available,so we make a mast and boom kit to a special order,we have done quite a number so far.This set will be made from four pieces of clear oregon pine,in this case with a scarph to allow the sections to fit in an air plane flting cargo to Kenya,normally we use our stock 5.8mtr lengths to make in one go,no bothers with a scarph joint by the way,they can look quite good too.The picture shows some sections of an eight segment mast,in this case round but by making some of the staves a little wider,we can easily make the same spar into a rectangle.

For my full and published story on this subject,check out Duckworks Magazine,a great on line boating store we work with,try this link:

www.duckworksmagazine.com/06/howto/birdsmouth/index.htm


Roy

Packing of our kits for transport,what we do for you and why

We always insure our kits at the owners expense but at our net cost,this applies to all exports and most internal deliveries,which travel by road freight companies.
Once was we used as basic materials as we could,this was based on the premise that customers would not want to pay for packing? Then as our kits began to go further and further,we had some reports of damaged crates and so on,we were lucky that not one kit was affected in any large way.So a review of what we were using and what could be done to effect a better packing standard became the issue,for our crates we moved to steel band strapping,an expensive extra,the tools and two rolls of 16mm wide steel straps,cost over R3600 alone but since this has been used we have had good reports.

We have always tripple wrapped our machined and twice selected timbers,this starts with a basic taped bundle,then a plastic sleeve tube is slipped over the entire bundle,we then add protection with a cover of corrogated cardboard,tape that,then add a second plastic tube cover for good measure,so each pack is safe and probably quite water proof too? Sawn Pine for building stocks is always tanalith treated,this is a copper solution based in water,then vacumed into the pine in an enclave,so the wood is quite damp when we receive it,this is why we never wrap our rough sawn pine,we just bundle and steel strap it as our picture shows.So when you note our packing fee with our kit offer prices,you will understand what we do for the charge you are asked for.

Roy

Kayak cutting and deluxe light plys

We had an order to cut ten off of a kayak designed by Dudley Dix www.dixdsign.com,the kayak is a super light one man boat and is skinned in a light fabric,rather than plywood,so to save weight even further, we used our special Deluxe Light Plys,in a 6mm thickness,its the back bone and bulkheads in this case,our cut bulkhead and frame kit pictured, weighed in at a remarkable 1.75 kgs per boat only,with the stringers in a light wood and supplied by the buyer.

Exporting of Boat Kits continues to expand

Romania



Zambia



Hawaii



Washington



Virginia


Pennysvania


North Carolina



Florida



California



Arizona


England

Wales
South Africa (none export)







United States of America



Kenya



Venezuela




Trinidad & Tobago








We have sent our boat kits country wide but also world wide,some days I think it is as easy to send to Honolulu as sending localy,with a recent export order to Kenya,we have now got orders to many different regions of the world,many of which we have sent kits to a number of times.The idea is to grow this blog with a list of flags to the various countries,lets see if we can add yours to our growing list! Remember we can also supply materials only,it does not have to be one of our boat kits. Around the corner,around the world,comes to mind,we have sent five orders to the general Pacific Ocean area to date,this came about via our kits but soon led on to orders for others who were doing boat refits,we supplied the materials required at a lower price than could be found locally .

Roy

Thin Plywood for Model Making

Or for any other use you can think of? those of you who are modelers,scale boat and plane builders may be interested to know we can supply thin plywoods.

We have irregular requests to supply decent thin three ply,normally its made from Ockume and is about 1.6mm thick,not bad for a sheet of plywood is it.We have stocked this when it became available,which is not at all often,this suits our requests to supply it,which again,is not very often! The last four sheets we sold came from Bruynzeel Plywoods in Holland,made to a BS1088 marine ply standard and faced with african mahogany of the Khaya (which means house) species it was a really nice ply.

The phone just rang,the caller asks about 1.5mm modelers ply,he was too late by a month I informed him,he tells me he can actually buy it in from another source but a sheet thats as large as a telephone book's cover will cost him all of R300,thats U$39 by the way,now I have heard of expensive but thats way out by my way of thought.

We can supply at much better prices ex factory,which will take about six weeks,better six weeks than not at all? they make what they call a two and a three ply,each lamination having an insert of a super thin strong paper to stabize the construction,the paper is so thin,its not actually visible at all.There is also the option of an exotic species on one face,with eighty species to choose from,I assume one will suit you.We have samples if you can call by to our factory.Ex stock we can offer the 3mm Superform plys,plus range of 1mm thick Flexiveneers that may do what your after?

Roy

Tef-Gel anti seize paste for metal

Some products arrive with us by recomendation,one such product
being Tef-Gel,a paste given to us in a tube applicator,by one of the owners of the two Didi mini transats we were building at the time,this was about five years back? The customer is a proffesional ships captain,he had sourced the anti seize paste in the USA and requested that all of his boats deck fittings were installed
using Tef-Gel,which we duly did.

The packaging says 'Ultra Tef-Gel',the corrosion eliminator and anti-seize lubricant,great but does it work? time as ever will tell on this one,well thats five years back and since then I have used some of what was left of the Tef-Gel on fittings on my own boats mast,thats a 16mtr alloy mast, which will weigh about 180 kgs stripped bare of all its fittings.

The fittings on the mast are either similar alloys or 316 stainless steel,either attatched with monel rivets (good) or stainless steel machine screws or self tappers,which may be made from 304 grade steel? (not so good) as disimilar metals do not get on at all well,the more 'noble' basically eats the less noble up!

Five years back I installed a new Lewmar 46 self tailing halyard winch on the same mast,that was fitted to a 316 stainless metal winch pad,fabricated to fit the shape of the alloy section,it was fastened on with 6mm stainless machine screws,around the same time, a full length spinnaker pole mast track too,all screw fastners were installed using the Tef-Gel paste,as much in hope as anything else,who knows if this stuff will work,thought I at the time.

Now that same mast is in the factory for a complete strip down and twin pack repaint,so all fittings we had to remove,it was very noticable that those fastened with an application of Tef-Gel were really easy to remove and no sign of corrosion was to be found,this was a test that was not pre planed,it just worked out this way.

The refit of the same mast will happen in the next week or so,new stocks of Tef-Gel have been ordered from the suppliers and each and every fastening will be replaced using Tef-Gel,the cost of which is tiny,when you consider a mast may be valued at R200,000 or about U$2600 or so?

New Fastners? I would say this mast
has 120 x 4mm and 50 x 6mm fastner holes in it,this time no stainless fastners will be used at all,only monel rivets,the spaces between all stainless to alloy surfaces will be coated with Tef-Gel and if we can find suitable very thin 1mm flexible plastic sheet,that will be used as an insulator too.

You can also use Tef-Gel as I have,on auto engine rebuilds,noticably my alloy engines from circa 1963 Hillman Imps,spark plugs are very easy to remove and
the Tef-Gel paste becomes a good sealer,cylinder head bolts,which are mild steel in the alloy block,which is not a good mix of metals,have been found to be easy to remove,with no sign of any damage to either the alloy block or the head bolts.

Tef-Gel stock should soon be in our Cape Town store,various size packs will be aavailable,contact me for your requirements.

Roy

Spurs propellor shaft rope cutters

We all take out insurance on our boats and expect the payout to cover the damage should this happen,we also carry a spare wheel in our cars,which is sort of an insurance policy of course.Ropes around a propeller shaft need an insurance all of itself,one such policy is made by Spurs in the USA,a top quality and once off purchase of one of their shaft rope cutters will cover you.They are easy to install,normally at such time as you haul your boat for a bottom paint job,otherwise on a travel lift or even between tides against a wall or drying poles.They are servicable too,a simple instruction guide shows you when to replace thrust bearings.Sizes vary depending on the boats shaft diameter,contact me for information and prices.

Roy

PSS Shaft Dripless Seals

We try and introduce and stock products we know something about,either as we have used it ourselves or know of others who have done so,this then forms a part of what can be offered,especialy on our larger boat kits when we supply the boats fittings,sails and engine.The PPS dripless shaft seal is our new offering,we have an order to fill on the Didi 38 full boat kit shipped out recently,having used a similar type shaft seal on my own boat for eight years,I can assure you the idea works,mine has not dripped a drop since its installation,gone are those days of repacking the old type stuffing box,which needs a drip or two for lubrication anyway.