The daggerboard case



Today I sorted out the daggerboard case.  It is the focus of quite a lot of stress during sailing, not a component to be underbuilt.  It wasn't clear to me how best to integrate it with the midships thwart and the floors at stations 2 and 3.  My MO is to work through it a a component at a time, and see if they all work together.  I just don't have the experience to lay it all out on paper and do it.

At a late moment, I decided to make the dagger board only 9 inches fore-and-aft (the plans specify 12), and the slot in the bottom is 12 1/4 inches long.  My reasoning was that I've seen lots of daggerboards for small boats closer to 9 than 12, and on Ripple, storage is an issue, and a 9 inch board would be easier to stow.  Oh, and I had a suitable piece of sitka spruce 9 inches by 4 quarters.  And straight and true.

This meant re-engineering the case verticals to fill in the 3+ extra inches.  Doing so has the additional benefit of strengthening the whole assemblage, both by increasing the gluing area of the case verticals and the case cheeks, and by extending these verticals down into the 12 inch slot to the bottom of the keel.  The first image shows these verticals.  Note that they are notched to bear on the floors at stations 2 and 3.

From that point, it was a matter of working out the dimensions of the case logs (the pieces that meet the keelson and the cheeks), the forward end cap, the upper rails (that also help support the thwart), and the top cap.  It all fell into place, though it is not entirely clear to me at this time what the sequence of assembly should be.  

I am very pleased that the case and the floors and thwart will all be integrated both structurally and visually.  I think it should work well and long.


Below is a picture of my benchtop at the end of 5 satisfying hours of work on these components.  Uncharacteristically, I cleaned it up before I left for the day.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Connecting a Chart Plotter, VHF, AIS Receiver and Tiller Pilot using the NMEA 0183 protocol

Image
NOTE: An updated version of this posting that includes an AIS transceiver is now available here. Ripple's complement of communication and navigational electronics now includes: Standard Horizon CP390i chart plotter  Digital Yacht AIS receiver   Raymarine ST2000  tiller pilot  Standard Horizon VHF/DSC radio These devices can all be networked, so installing them includes making decisions about whether and how to connect them.  As with most everything on a boat, there are tradeoffs.  The benefits of additional functionality are always at war with the unanticipated dangers of creeping elegance and the instability that arises from proliferating connections (natural failure points). My four devices, like most modern electronics, can talk to one another using the well-established NMEA 0183 protocol.  NMEA 0183 falls short of a full-blown network, but it meets the need for point-to-point connections such as are appropriate to my configuration.. ...
Read more

Re-powering s/v Ripple

Image
My Summer, 2017 Adventure An irregular sound, a vibration untuned to the sum of your experience: this one was a momentary drop in RPM... 25, maybe 50 rpm. I bumped the throttle, right? Then it happened again, and denial shades into anxiety. The opening hours of a 6 week cruise: Seattle, up the inside passage, over the top of Vancouver Island and a leisurely meandering through the inlets that indent the west side. But this journey ended just as it began. A series of intricate diagnostic rationalizations, fuel filter and impeller changes availed us not at all. Lots of oil gone missing! Limping into Kingston Harbor, Ripple’s Yanmar 1GM10 turned the last of some 300,000,000 revolutions in my service. Broken-hearted 1GM10 Only slowly did I surrender the hope of rebuilding my faithful one-lunger.  As it happens, Yanmar does not make an oversized piston for the engine, as they enlarged the size of the cylinder when the 1GM transitioned to the 1GM10, and given that...
Read more

Installing and Networking a Class B AIS Transceiver with a Chart Plotter and VHF Radio using NMEA 0183

Image
In 2015 I purchased an AIS receiver for a trip up the Inside Passage.  This posting is largely an upgrade of the  posting for that installation . I suspected at the time I might look back on purchasing only a receiver as a false economy, and that turned out to be the case. I want to be SEEN as well as to see others. This year  I purchased a Vesper XB 8000 AIS transceiver to replace the perfectly functional Digital Yacht AIS receiver that I had benefitted from over the previous three seasons.   My decision to go with Vesper was based on the reputation of their product and their customer service,  and also because the device makes the data on my network visible via a WiFi gateway.  This should make it easier to pull off tracking and route data, and to display AIS targets on tablet or phone as well as the chart plotter. The XB-8000 also provides an easily managed anchor alarm, accessible by tablet or smart phone.  I won't have to sit in the cockpit ...
Read more