Wow - my last post was quite a while ago. I didn't realised that it had been so long.
My tasks after my last post was to get some lead - or uranium :) I gave up on the uranium for various reasons and was waiting on a roofer friend to see if I could get some lead sheet. Unfortunately he took his wife off to Fiji for a week which delayed things a bit. In any case, I ended up ringing around a few places and got a 10Kg bag of lead shot. $79 from Reloaders Supplies, in case anyone is interested.
This also solved the ballast question I had with my Zwarte Zee, so I have made some progress on that too.
As a small diversion to the main subject of this thread, I managed to get the deck on the stern of the Zwarte Zee once it was all ballasted correctly, which will allow me to get on with other areas of that build too.
I also put the rest of the superstructure together. Rigging is rather fiddly...
But I got there eventually.
All this ballast available lead (no pun intended) me to progress with sorting out the big boat. I needed to get a 12V SLA to drive the boat, so I ended up with a 12V 9AH SLA that weighs in at 2.560Kg. With this in place I realised that I could probably have a larger dry compartment in the hull and then need to pump water into only two areas - having put three litres of water into a big resealable bag and seeing how it fitted in. The end result is this:
To the left in this image is the stern section with propshaft, motor, rudder etc. There is in this shot a bar-bell weight of 2.5Kg's in the same compartment. I reasoned that, if I needed an all-up weight of 18Kg's in the hull, then that would work out to be 6KG's in each of the three areas in the main rectangular hull. This all leaves me shy of that 6Kg's there by about 400 grams that I can easily make up with lead if I have to. This compartment I have also opened up into the stern section so that I can get access to the pulleys and belt that will drive the boat. By the way the battery and weight are located in place with 14mm thick ply blocks I have glued and screwed into place. The battery and the weight are also removable - meaning that with these two items present just on 5.5Kg's of static weight that I can remove to move the hull around.
Yes there is another bar-bell weight that I am using. Basically I wanted to make sure that I had some lead sitting around after the main static ballast had been put in place for trimming etc. Because I know that I can easily get three litres of water into the remaining compartments I took the opportunity to add some other weight at a cheaper price. This is in the forward section of the rectangular hull:
It is also removable, however, I suspect it will need to become permanently fixed in place as, with a water tank on top and possibly around it, getting to it might be hard!
Next steps:
- Finish sorting the static ballast
- Move onto dynamic (water) ballast
Whilst waiting for the roofer to come back from holiday I was busy looking at photos of the superstructure and started framing the opening in the stern section that superstructure will sit on.
I also came a cross a detail (I laugh at myself so much sometimes...) that I had previously missed and that is at the bow, the deck raises up at an angle. I noticed this two ways, firstly in a photo taken from the stern during lightering operations it is clear that the desk at the bow is on a angle and secondly the GA plan I have shows the coaming rising at an angle, but other photos show that the height of the coaming above the deck is a constant. Therefore I have added a section that raises up at the bow.
A view from directly above:
And from the side and slightly above:
Even now the coaming is not complete - it shouldn't extend as far as I have it currently. Partway around the curve of the bow as it comes back from the bow, the coaming disappears down to deck level. The raised section was build using two sections of 7mm ply, the idea being that someday I might want to tow this around and really wanted to be able to anchor some bollards down really well. These two bits of ply are glued and screwed in place.
Anyway, TTFN!