New mast stepping

After more than a few months we have re stepped the eight year old alloy mast onto the boat she belongs to,given its still winter/spring here we were seriously lucky to get a nice clear,warm day with no wind,we used professionals to assist us being Stellval Cranes and Southern Spars/Sparcraft who collected our mast at the factory,fettled it a little,being leather spreader ends and a Windex re position,then a delivery to Hout Bay Harbour the following day,with the help of Rod,Alan and Charles,fellow members of the HBYC,it was a pleasure to do the refit.The decision to enlist pro,help was a sound idea,I have seen what can happen when untrained personel are used,check the picture of the fallen crane on top of the fishing boat.

Brookes and Gatehouse Linear hydraulic ram,12 volt wanted

Size 1 or 2 will suit our needs.

We have a full bandg (brookes and gatehouse) Network autopilot system,it came without the Linear Hydraulic 12volt ram,does anyone have one for sale? parts of similar B&G Network systems also considered.B&G is now Simrad,we are told their hydraulic rams will suit the B&G system too.

Tef-Gel paste used on alloy mast refit

Mast hardware refit,Antal 46 sta and Lewmar 30stc winches and Boom Gooseneck

We have just about refitted all the fittings to a large mast we are re painting and servicing,great care has been taken to ensure that all metal fastners and where stainless fastens to DK painted alloy parts are joined we coat both the stainless and the Monal Rivets with a 100% coating of Tef-Gel,we have only the Spinakker Track to refit and have just finished one 2oz tub of Tef-Gel,this makes using it even more economical than I thought,having fitted all the fittings on this sixteen meter mast,top to bottom,thats stainles T Ball tang plates,four alloy spreaders,mast head sheaves etc,not just the equipment in the picture.

Hillman Imp,Stilletto, performance and competition exhaust

With over forty years experiance of working with Imps of all types,including full race engines,this is a product that has been pending for some while,trials have prooven we can make the right product out of mild steel,stainless may be possible but we need to have the correct grade of pipe made up for this,we are working on that supply now.Orders are coming in and all from this blog site,we advertise only here,its nice to know that Google works so very well.This set of manifolds is due to be sent by air post to the UK next week,contact me for prices on the various options.We have Alloy water,dynamo and lower crank pulleys being made too,soon to be ex stock,Imp spares and cars are normaly available.

Regards

Roy

Flicka sailboat by Bruce Bingham in a kit form

Flight of Years




Wind Drifter in Puerto Plath DR, photo by Rod Bradley

This was my reply to a client asking about a Flicka 20 sailboat kit.

Thanks for your valued enquiry to the Flicka design,this is not one of the designs we have as a kit right now but there is no reason why we can not develop and supply it as a kit.The plans are still available,I think they were U$130 or so,not expensive,we can easily cut hull shape formers from the lofting lines and supply you with those in marine ply and MDF,the hull skin will need to be done in strip plank/epoxy ,we can supply that in various woods such as meranti or kiri,meranti will need less GRP reinforcing.The transom would be a lamination,probably three skins of 6mm ply,we would supply a former jig to make that on,plus the epoxies and the rest of the materials.Please advise what you would like supplied,the plans will be from the designers office,Bruce Bingham.

Regards

Roy

Manie B says

Baby Seal,a design by Manie


I very rarely check out forums,time says I am busy enough doing my daily orders and of course these bloger pages but by a total coincidence,I have just found this on a forum called www.boatdesign.net,its a shear fluke that I received an order from him and posted some more epoxy off to Manie today!

Manie wrote,

Last year when i was shopping around for plywood i was shocked at the prices of "normal" plywood sold at our local builders supply mega stores. One would assume that their prices would be cheap - WRONG.

I bought my marine grade plywood WBP from
http://www.ckdboats.com/plywood.asp cheaper than at ANY builders supply, and that was including shipping costs!

They supply kits worldwide, so check them out, you may be surprised at what prices they could supply - even to Mexico. Epoxy from ckdboats is easy to work with, incredibilly strong and you can build a damn fine boat.

One thing that i always advise is, dont design yourself - BUY A PLAN you will only understand when you have made the mistake of building your own design first time out. If you are a keen worker and have the time to experiment, and throw your experiments away, go ahead and draw your own plans.

Rufford Old Hall,North West England

Picture from the halls web site.



Photo taken by Charles Singleton (many thanks Charles)



picture by Graham Whitehead

Rufford Old Hall is really well named,it dates back to 1430 AD or thereabouts,there is a NEW hall too,constructed by one of the halls family,the Heskeths.The main part of the structure in this picture of the hall,is a single room,thats below the roof tower,to the back it is then double story and accessed via stairs,William Shakespeare is reputed to have performed in this lofty hall,not a single nail holds the structure together,its all Tree Nails,or wooden spikes.One of the treasures on display is a carving of a Briar Branch,done in Pear Wood and from a single piece,it was carved in 1830 by a local craftsman.Rufford Village is just north of Ormskirk and between the rivers Mersey and Ribble on Englands West Coast.

Tef-Gel anti seize metal paste,used on boom rebuild

The re assembly of an eight year old boom went well,it took slightly longer than normal,mind you even refiting the sail track has 96 monel rivets,so it was always going to take a while but with coating each rivet with Tef-Gel paste prior to fitting,we at least know that no metal to metal corrosion will ever take place now,cleaning is really simple,use white spirit,known also as Turpentine (turps) so it will not affect new paintworks as a strong solvent based cleaner will.

Cape Cutter 19 kit in build down in New Zealand

Ian Allen bought one of our kits back in november 2007,it shipped over the december period and in between running his successful B&B in Picton,South Island,New Zealand,he has finished the hull,this is it being turned by a group of his pals,party time!

On The Beach

early morning monday,the tide did not quite bring this lot in.



This is the timber our Ockume marine plys are made from!

This one has nothing to do with the Chris Rea song 'On The Beach' but its as good an intro as any,we had a ship loose 200 plus veneer logs recently,north of Cape Towns prison isle Robben Island,seven meter swells we hear,some were captured by local fishing boats and towed to Hout Bay for what I hope is a very decent financial consideration by the logs owners.

Currency bank rates for South Africa

Published at 2008/08/15 09:01:00 AM


Rand per foreign currency unit

Description Code Bank Selling rate Bank buying TT Bank buying TC's Bank buying notes
EURO CURRENCY EUR 11.9455 11.4690 11.4377 11.4572
BRITISH STERLING GBP 15.0435 14.4457 14.3949 14.4310
US DOLLARS USD 8.0651 7.8155 7.7595 7.8075

Lalizas Optimist range expands with a Deck Collar

Check us out for prices,we are agents for all of the Lalizas range now.

We have a new Optimist Deck Mast Ring,made by the Lalizas company,who started twenty five years ago with a range of race boat fittings,they are returning to their roots,so to speak,we expect them to expand their already well accepted range at
www.lalizas.com

Seabird sailing boat kit

We have been asked to do a kit to the Seabird,an ocean going cruising yacht with a classic style,its 25'7" long only but thats plenty on a boat like this.

Stepped Scarphs Joints on our kit bulkheads

with those two CNC cut location holes cut at the same time as we cut the scarphs,its just a simple job to tap home the beech hardwood fluted dowels we provide with our kit,tap the dowels home,and the joint lines up exactly!the joint above is on a bulkhead of a Cape Cutter 19 design we supplied by Dudley Dix at www.dixdesign.com the rest of the pictures are of various Didi Mini Transat kit we have supplied.






We use the scarph type joint when we want to save materials on the plywood sheets,normally on bulkheads,on the Didi Mini Transat by


Applying resorcinol adhesive to the scarphs when assembling a bulkhead. Note the holes for locating dowels used to align the components very accurately. The holes are formed by the CNC machine as part of the cutting operation.This bulkhead is at the aft end of the cockpit where it becomes the aft deck. The two scarph pieces shown are not from the same joint. The piece on the left is the cockpit beam and has a similar scarph at the other end that mates with the part on the right. Roy is assembling the two joints at the same time.
A completed scarph joint after final sanding. The two locating dowels can be clearly seen. This method produces neat and accurate scarph joints very quickly.

Sherpa kit is now cut and shipped to its owner

Trucked off to Johannesburg on friday,arrived on monday and now cut out tuesday!

This is what a kit will look like when built,you will also need the John Welsford plans,we sell them too.

Our base kit is the plywoods that have the bottom of the boat,transom,bulkheads,etc pre cut.

We can now offer this great dinghy,the first boat has been cut,packed and sent off by road to Dave in Randburg today,Dave supplied his own PDF file on this one,thanks a stack Dave! This is a service we can do for others,you supply the cut file and we cut your boat.We can of course use your plans and prepare our own cut file,our only request its that you have paid for the plans you supply.