(Or 'What to do when your dinghy dies in the middle of the South Pacific, you can't afford to get a new one shipped over and to fix it you'd need to spend hundreds on glue that isn't even sold in this country').
(This one was written by Garth)
4 sheets of plywood (the more voids and the wind lier the funner)
Some big wood (the size of four of Garth's fingers together)
A whole heap of screws
Glue, something strong and waterproof that you don't have to mix
Lots of epoxy
A few metres of fiberglass
Some lengths of square batten, about the size of Garth's ... thumb
Drill
Screwdriver
Saw
Note: If you're actually interested in making one of these, we've written up instructions on how we should have done it with measurements and plans and such. We'll post them soon as a link from our home page
"Our dinghy is broken. We can't afford a new one. Let's build one"
We had more wines and scribbled plans for three different boats. One of them was for a Waka Ama, which turned out to be too difficult. The other was for a cat, which would come apart at the middle to fit on deck. The third was a Puddle Duck Racer (all three designs would be sailboats).
We thought about it for a week. We redrew the plans a few times. Then we decided the Puddle Duck wouldn't be that hard...
"OK"
We went down to the local Bora Bora hardware store. There were three different sized battens that might have suited us. 14mm, 17mm and 23mm. We got a piece out of the 17mm slot and took it to the counter.
"How much for this?"
"5900 a length"
For finger jointed batten, that wasn't too bad, I guess. Upon enquiring if they had plywood, we just got a a blank look. After a bit of miming, and "non non non", we managed to weasel out of them that there was a store that sells wood: "It's a green building just past the informerie. You won't be able to walk - is very far. Other side of island."
We wandered off to talk to our friends at the Information Centre, to see if they knew where we could hire a ute. They hadn't proven very useful before then. The girl at the counter repeated what the guy at the hardware store had said, that it was too far to walk. But she also said it was a five minute drive from there and they might deliver if we asked nicely.
Fifteen minutes down the road, but definitely still on the same side of the island, we found a little green shop. It looked vaguely like a generic "things" store, and was stacked to the ceiling with food, hardware, home equipment etc. No wood though. No sign of any either. We asked the nice older Asian gentleman behind the counter about where we could buy plywood, then tapped the bench to show him we wanted wood. He pointed to a hammer and other tools hanging over the doorway. "No, wood!" We caressed the wooden counter lovingly. His daughters boyfriend (there for a while from Tahiti) worked it out - "go outside and round the corner".
He caught up with us as we were about to go out onto the road, and led us down the side of that building to a locked gate/door. There was the plywood! Just out of reach. "He'll come soon". Soon could have been any amount of time, but 5 minutes later the old Asian man appeared on the inside of the door and let us in. Now the instructions we'd been getting all day started to make sense. Someone had used the term "commercial store" to tell us the name of the green building, which we have since learnt is the generic term for a "things" store around here.
After they helped us choose the best ply for boat building and we had paid, we asked if they knew how we could hire someone to get our ply back to the marina. By then it was probably a 40 minute walk away. The consensus seemed to be that there wasn't a way to do this, so we resolved to walk down the road carrying our plywood until someone took pity on us. Some kind of miscommunication must have taken place, because as we went outside there was a truck waiting out front with some guys in the cab all ready to take us. We hopped in the back with our purchases, then off we went down the road. They dropped us off right outside the marina gate and wouldn't take any fuel money "It's the Bora Bora way!"
We set up on the dock - the marina manager had been nice enough to let us use it "as long as you want". While I started measuring, I sent Neke off to grab "twelve 17 by 17 battens, and some epoxy from the chandlery." She came back with lunch and tarps, but no battens and no epoxy. It turns out she had bought the battens just as it started raining, so she sat with them undercover outside for 10 minutes before she realized they were all 14mm except for one lone 17mm. That was the one she had checked the size on. There were no more 17mm battens in the store so she had to come back to find out whether to get 23mm or 14mm. I wasn't confident in hitting 14mm wide battens through ply and not splitting them, so we went with 23. The chandlery had run out of epoxy.
Back she went, but in the meantime it had started raining again so I covered our supplies with the tarps and started planning in greater detail. She arrived back without anything - "forgot my wallet". The grumpiness factor was increasing with every trip, and this time, due to the torrential downpour, she was covered in mud that the cars had splashed all over her. I couldn't go instead, because she'd been the one dealing with the store people. So off she went again. In the rain.
By the end of the day I had marked out a couple of pieces, and Neke had walked back and forth all day long. At least we had our supplies!
Day 2 was a day for cutting. The bottom of the puddle duck is curved, so this is the most involved bit to set up. There are four side panels, one inside and one outside each of the air boxes. To draw on the curve, we measured at particular places as specified on the plans and then bent our skinny batten around to go past all the marks. It broke. After several attempts we managed to do each half at once, and then clean up the curve at the bottom too. Clamp 4 pieces together, saw along the line, and hey, presto! Four equal side panels. Of course, our saw was rusty on the sides, so it kept binding. We had to borrow one from our friend Thierry, the dive shop guy. He lives on the boat at the end of the dock and was incredibly friendly and helpful the whole time we were there.
Marking up the curve
After cutting 4 jaggedy and uneven sides, a plane or even a belt sander would be very useful to tidy up the curve. No such luck, so we attached battens along the top, front and back of each panel and then tried to curve a batten along the curvy bottom edge. A couple of ominous creaks later and we decided to help it along with some "coffin cuts". These go on the inside of a curve of wood to allow some room for it to compress. We did one exactly every 100mm - so I wouldn't have to think when working out where to screw. Unfortunately this meant some were in the middle of finger joints, which promptly broke when bent. We screwed them on anyway - a bit of sanding and no one would ever know.
Coffin cuts
Oh. We also glued these on before screwing them. On the back of the glue it says "Wear gloves. May cause skin blackening." We didn't bother with the gloves...
Also, this was all done in between rain squalls.
This was the only day of consistently good weather until the end.
After doing a bit of a hack job trying to get each panel roughly even with the others, and getting rid of any overlapping ply, we stuck the front and back on. Same as before, lots of screws, measuring twice and cutting three times, trying to make it square, flipping it over and over again.
Then, while Neke was out to get lunch, I temporarily stuck the bottom on! Under the assumption that it was reasonably square, I used it as a guide to line up all the spacers etc. Turned out alright in the end. I'd screwed up screwing the bow and stern on though, so it was a little narrower than designed. Oh well, what's a little more sanding to straighten things out?
(This one was written by Garth)
Materials
4 sheets of plywood (the more voids and the wind lier the funner)
Some big wood (the size of four of Garth's fingers together)
A whole heap of screws
Glue, something strong and waterproof that you don't have to mix
Lots of epoxy
A few metres of fiberglass
Some lengths of square batten, about the size of Garth's ... thumb
Drill
Screwdriver
Saw
Note: If you're actually interested in making one of these, we've written up instructions on how we should have done it with measurements and plans and such. We'll post them soon as a link from our home page
Day 0
We went for some happy hour wines by the marina pool."Our dinghy is broken. We can't afford a new one. Let's build one"
We had more wines and scribbled plans for three different boats. One of them was for a Waka Ama, which turned out to be too difficult. The other was for a cat, which would come apart at the middle to fit on deck. The third was a Puddle Duck Racer (all three designs would be sailboats).
We thought about it for a week. We redrew the plans a few times. Then we decided the Puddle Duck wouldn't be that hard...
"OK"
Day 1
We went down to the local Bora Bora hardware store. There were three different sized battens that might have suited us. 14mm, 17mm and 23mm. We got a piece out of the 17mm slot and took it to the counter.
"How much for this?"
"5900 a length"
For finger jointed batten, that wasn't too bad, I guess. Upon enquiring if they had plywood, we just got a a blank look. After a bit of miming, and "non non non", we managed to weasel out of them that there was a store that sells wood: "It's a green building just past the informerie. You won't be able to walk - is very far. Other side of island."
We wandered off to talk to our friends at the Information Centre, to see if they knew where we could hire a ute. They hadn't proven very useful before then. The girl at the counter repeated what the guy at the hardware store had said, that it was too far to walk. But she also said it was a five minute drive from there and they might deliver if we asked nicely.
Fifteen minutes down the road, but definitely still on the same side of the island, we found a little green shop. It looked vaguely like a generic "things" store, and was stacked to the ceiling with food, hardware, home equipment etc. No wood though. No sign of any either. We asked the nice older Asian gentleman behind the counter about where we could buy plywood, then tapped the bench to show him we wanted wood. He pointed to a hammer and other tools hanging over the doorway. "No, wood!" We caressed the wooden counter lovingly. His daughters boyfriend (there for a while from Tahiti) worked it out - "go outside and round the corner".
He caught up with us as we were about to go out onto the road, and led us down the side of that building to a locked gate/door. There was the plywood! Just out of reach. "He'll come soon". Soon could have been any amount of time, but 5 minutes later the old Asian man appeared on the inside of the door and let us in. Now the instructions we'd been getting all day started to make sense. Someone had used the term "commercial store" to tell us the name of the green building, which we have since learnt is the generic term for a "things" store around here.
After they helped us choose the best ply for boat building and we had paid, we asked if they knew how we could hire someone to get our ply back to the marina. By then it was probably a 40 minute walk away. The consensus seemed to be that there wasn't a way to do this, so we resolved to walk down the road carrying our plywood until someone took pity on us. Some kind of miscommunication must have taken place, because as we went outside there was a truck waiting out front with some guys in the cab all ready to take us. We hopped in the back with our purchases, then off we went down the road. They dropped us off right outside the marina gate and wouldn't take any fuel money "It's the Bora Bora way!"
We set up on the dock - the marina manager had been nice enough to let us use it "as long as you want". While I started measuring, I sent Neke off to grab "twelve 17 by 17 battens, and some epoxy from the chandlery." She came back with lunch and tarps, but no battens and no epoxy. It turns out she had bought the battens just as it started raining, so she sat with them undercover outside for 10 minutes before she realized they were all 14mm except for one lone 17mm. That was the one she had checked the size on. There were no more 17mm battens in the store so she had to come back to find out whether to get 23mm or 14mm. I wasn't confident in hitting 14mm wide battens through ply and not splitting them, so we went with 23. The chandlery had run out of epoxy.
Back she went, but in the meantime it had started raining again so I covered our supplies with the tarps and started planning in greater detail. She arrived back without anything - "forgot my wallet". The grumpiness factor was increasing with every trip, and this time, due to the torrential downpour, she was covered in mud that the cars had splashed all over her. I couldn't go instead, because she'd been the one dealing with the store people. So off she went again. In the rain.
By the end of the day I had marked out a couple of pieces, and Neke had walked back and forth all day long. At least we had our supplies!
Day 2
Day 2 was a day for cutting. The bottom of the puddle duck is curved, so this is the most involved bit to set up. There are four side panels, one inside and one outside each of the air boxes. To draw on the curve, we measured at particular places as specified on the plans and then bent our skinny batten around to go past all the marks. It broke. After several attempts we managed to do each half at once, and then clean up the curve at the bottom too. Clamp 4 pieces together, saw along the line, and hey, presto! Four equal side panels. Of course, our saw was rusty on the sides, so it kept binding. We had to borrow one from our friend Thierry, the dive shop guy. He lives on the boat at the end of the dock and was incredibly friendly and helpful the whole time we were there.
After cutting 4 jaggedy and uneven sides, a plane or even a belt sander would be very useful to tidy up the curve. No such luck, so we attached battens along the top, front and back of each panel and then tried to curve a batten along the curvy bottom edge. A couple of ominous creaks later and we decided to help it along with some "coffin cuts". These go on the inside of a curve of wood to allow some room for it to compress. We did one exactly every 100mm - so I wouldn't have to think when working out where to screw. Unfortunately this meant some were in the middle of finger joints, which promptly broke when bent. We screwed them on anyway - a bit of sanding and no one would ever know.
Oh. We also glued these on before screwing them. On the back of the glue it says "Wear gloves. May cause skin blackening." We didn't bother with the gloves...
Also, this was all done in between rain squalls.
Day 3
This was the only day of consistently good weather until the end.
After doing a bit of a hack job trying to get each panel roughly even with the others, and getting rid of any overlapping ply, we stuck the front and back on. Same as before, lots of screws, measuring twice and cutting three times, trying to make it square, flipping it over and over again.
Then, while Neke was out to get lunch, I temporarily stuck the bottom on! Under the assumption that it was reasonably square, I used it as a guide to line up all the spacers etc. Turned out alright in the end. I'd screwed up screwing the bow and stern on though, so it was a little narrower than designed. Oh well, what's a little more sanding to straighten things out?
Neke went back uptown twice more that day - the chandlery was closed due to this dengue like fever going around and the hardware store didn't have very good options. We ended up getting a very expensive epoxy glue to do the surface of the inside. It's just epoxy with filler. Should be fine, right?
In between trips to town, Neke helped me do the screwing together of all the panels. By the end of the day, if we'd chucked it in the water, it would've been able to float! For about a minute.
Day 4
It was raining all morning. Did you know tarps leak with standing water? I didn't. After tipping out all the water that had accumulated inside the boat, it was time to wait for the wood to dry. While waiting, we designed and started building the centreboard case.
After realising that we should have epoxied the inside before gluing it together, we used an old toothbrush to try to coat the inside as much as possible.
It started raining again that evening, but we'd been clever and left the dinghy upside down so it wouldn't fill up again.
Day 5
After waiting for the bottom to dry a bit more, we started sanding away all of my previous mistakes. My outlook started getting more positive at this point - I know all about how to fill the gaps between things which were starting to appear - it was a solvable problem.
I think this was the day when I accidentally added a couple of unneeded holes to the bottom. Easy enough to fill later though. I also had a few unneeded holes in my fingers by this stage. In the tropics they take *ages* to fill themselves.
We added the centreboard case supports, which ended up requiring the most thinking of any part of the boat, but once they and the foredeck were on the whole thing went from being more flexible than a contortionist to being pretty damn solid!
We also started sanding things ready for glassing and started putting sealant coats of epoxy on the things we'd managed to keep dry.
Day 6
We put filler in all of the gaps near the top and inside the boat. Then, we glued and screwed the side decks. It started drizzling, so we put things away and started on the rudder and centerboard. Then it started pouring. Another day waiting for the end of the rain.
Day 7
We spent most of the day waiting for the wood to dry. During that time we worked on shaping the centerboard.
Finally we could do the final sanding of the bottom and start putting epoxy on the bottom. We then realised that we wouldn't have enough to finish the glassing, so we went just about to the waterline on the sides. When it got dark, the bottom had tacked enough to start laying glass on. There are disadvantages to laying fibreglass in the dark. One of the things you have to do is ensure that all the cloth is wet, and that there are no bubbles underneath. When you can't see, it's easy to miss some spots. It also means you can't see a giant centipede running along the ground past your foot until you happen to shine the light down half a second before standing on it. We decided not to work in the dark again.
Day 8
After it stopped raining, and when things were dry, it was time to put epoxy on the dry bits of glass and around the bottom edges one more time. I should have realised that wouldn't be the leaky bit.
When we launched that evening, we got a clap and cheer from the charterers tied to the dock. We got a small leak too - one of the screws hasn't got a good coat of epoxy yet.
Next time we find some epoxy, we'll glass the rest of the bottom and put some more layers on where appropriate, increasing the weight when dry, but decreasing it wet!
Garth
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