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Vivement les vacances..
still working, but looking forward to the holidays. Lots of small stuff:
Skeg in place (slotted in) and held with temporary profiles the time to add internal re-inforcements and then weld it.
Ah yes, I also have dug out on the workbook and am busy writing the second part, about deck, cabin and cockpit assembly.
I know, I already had a couple of reminders... but soon we'll be on holiday and I promise, after that you'll get the next part ;-)
By the way - you remember the tree full of cherryflowers??? Well, we DID NOT GET A SINGLE ONE, they were all shot in one night by a late frost attack :-((( |
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18th of July 2005 - welding |
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Finally started welding.
Welding always reminds me of the days when I was involved in archery. It's one of these things where it's not enough to know how to do it, and not enough to want to do it right, it needs most of all a state of mind where everything fits:
the inclination of your electrode, your breathing, your speed... and you need the ability to forget your aching knees while you cower in an uncomfortable cramped position and hold it calmly and in perfect harmony until the stick has burned out. The perfect moment, one with the steel and with your tool, and with yourself...
Does not always work though. Most of the time I get distracted, think about getting a new pair of glasses, or "will the drop of hot metal that just fell on my foot cool before it drops out the other side?", or try to calculate the number of cigarettes I smoked in the 20 years since the last time I welded a boat with much steadier hands.
The low hanging cables are not part of the boat, that's the phone lines on the road, that I have to get under, later, when moving the boat out. Well, one thing at a time ;-) |
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June 29th - back to normal |
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Once you have your hull and deck, things are no longer as spectacular as when you are pulling the big stuff together. You know, like:
Get up in the morning, work a couple of hours and then even the cars passing on the road will slow down because there is something in that garden that was not there yesterday...
Once you start working on the details, it is just as long on an Origami hull as on any other steel boat. Lots and lots of small things to find and buy and build and fix...
building the skeg...
adding the round steel to the bulwarks...
or being just plain happy... ;-)
Get out, Get your hands dirty. Go out and do SOMETHING, it'll all come together in the end!!! |
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Whitsun 2005 - one year already! |
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It's almost a year ago that we started working on the hull. Sounds long - but in reality we were stopped completely for about six months in winter, then many other weeks we did not do anything, rain, working other stuff, holidays or just plain lazy.
During the week we practically never did anything. This means that effectively we put about 15 weekends in by now, and easy ones at that, as we never worked more than 8 hours a day, most of the days it was more like 5 or 6...
No doubt we could have gone much faster, but as long as we finish the steel this season, progress is fine. What remains is a lot of small work. Thing to fix that we never go around to, the Skeg and rudder to build, the tabernacles for the masts, a lot of welding, the daggerboard cases, most of the structure. Looks like another hot and busy summer is coming.
Happy anniversary YAGO! ;-) |
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April 17th, - Mud & Rust & Cherryblossoms |
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Spring's here for good now, even if the ground is still quite wet. We spent most of the weekend grinding and cuttin: the bulwarks top, front and back of the cabintop, other corners and edges.
Ah yes, we also placed the last plate today, in the cockpit. That's it, from now on it's officially called "detailing" ;-)
With the bulwarks nicely trimmed, the simple clean lines of deck and cabin become visible.
(Can you imagine the tons of cherries that will be growing there for us soon? Sitting on the deck, and spitting stones in the pond...)
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April 10th, 2005 - - - WE ARE BACK!!! |
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The season of 2005 is finally opened ;-)
As you can see, the weather is not yet quite what we would like it to be, but at least we got some hours of work in, finished the cabin-sides and started the cockpit, dragged the tools out and dirtied our hands again. Good feeling...
I would like to thank you all for coming here so regularly, even throughtout the winter when nothing much happened. This winter was unusually long and wet. The weblogs show that not only did you not loose interest, but traffic actually increased!
Please keep coming, and we will see what this year brings.
Here is the plan:
We absolutely need to get the steelworks finished including all the bits and pieces, fittings, detailing etc, and paint this summer, then close the hull and isolate it.
After that, we will be able to work inside, nice dry and warm, all year round, so that next winter you will not have to wait so long for news! |
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January 23rd, 2005 - patience... |
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With a bit of luck, and another four weeks of patience, by the end of next month we will be able to start building again. I seriously begin to miss that, working and moving around on the building site, and seing the boat take shape.
In the meantime I keep working on the YAGO 36. I have refined hull and sheerline. also the coachroof is getting slimmer and lower, leaving just enough to have good standing headroom throughout. Now it looks almost like a flushdeck - there will have to be portholes in the hull as well - overall it's getting more powerful and at the same time more elegant than the first roughs, to my own taste at least ;-)
Displacement just under 8 tons
Wetted Surface Area (without boards and rudders) is 24.5 square meters
Waterline Length 9,80 meters, prismatic around 57, center of buoyancy 5.10...
It's coming together, the hull looks good now, and for a rough that will do - time to start the rig. |
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November 20th . That's it, it seems... |
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At least for this year. Big, wet snow flakes are covering it all.
There is a good side to it. Just relax, eat well, roll over and follow Poobear's example: Dream of better times to come.
No problem though, there is lots of work on the drawing board, completing YAGO's deck and sail plans, the new 36 footer is also coming along nicely, the website needs re-structuring, the second section of the workbook (for the deck) should be added and so on, all of it planned until end of december. There is also a pile of mail waiting to be answered since I had to travel quite a bit the last weeks, sorry for that, but will do this weekend, promised ;-) |
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November 7th, a couple of hours |
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At last no rain, a cold sunny day, some new steel and time at last to fill in a couple of hours again on the building site. The cabinsides have to come in at lest.
The long panel is difficult to place, due to the open angle and the 4 meter long curve at the bottom. Even smaller bumps will cause big trouble, so in the end we cut the panel into shorter lengths that are easier to adjust.
Otherwise it's not as if I would just lie down and scratch my back when it's raining ;-) Actually I am very busy drawing some other boats, right now I am into a 36 foot version of Yago, very much in the same concept and hull lines but obviously more space for comfort, and with a diferent deck layout. Hope to have some pics up soon.
Today the 20 skippers of the VENDEE GLOBE left Les Sables d'Olonne for a non-stop, single handed round the wolrd trip. It was getting a bit fresh in our garden as soon as the sun was down, but when I think where these guys are going... 93 days to beat.
Check out the boats on the official website. Also, have a look at the video section on the VENDEE site, they have a short clip for each boat sailing. Fantastic. Look at the way these things move over the waves, all in power, straight and fast. Tthere is no doubt that these boats are the best SAILING BOATS on the planet, build to be RACED in places where most of us would never want to take our steel-tanks even under storm trysail. I would not want to live on a boat like that, but then, I would not choose a formula one to drive to work each day, or a Paris Dakar Buggy to take the family on holiday.
They say that the carbon hulls are now so stiff and resonant that they seriously worry about permanently damaging their ears with the constant noise...
Did you notice that they now also have lateral daggerboards? I was always wondering where all the visitors on Yago's site were coming from, must be all these international racing designers copying from us... ;-) |
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October 9th, bad weather again. |
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So why not dream a little bit. Imagine:
- Order your steel pre-blasted and primed, NC cut to the millimeter.
- Have them delivered to a nice dry and warm hangar near your home.
- Have piles of disks, good electricity, gas and professional stick and Mig Mag welding machines and all the tools you would like ready at hand
- Have all the cash up front and never miss on any good opportunity
Building your hull would be so simple that it would become outright boring, worse than going to the office ;-)
Cutting holes again, under a grey autum sky before the rain.
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October 4th, 2004 - lots of small stuff |
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I am now approx. one month behind schedule - and I can live with that. Only thing is that the plans and drawings are also a bit late, I was hoping to have them finished end of September, now it's going to be some time this month. Sorry for that, but really, I'm working on it :
on the boat it's mostly small jobs while we wait for the last to sheets of 2 mm to be delivered. We closed the bow, and I started what I like a lot, cutting holes!
Olga says this picture reminds her of old movies, Russian tanks rolling into the Berlin subburbs... ATTACK AND FORWARD ALL! ;-)
26th of September - back |
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26th of September - back to the drawingboard |
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As the weather was a bit mixed, and anyway we ran out of steel and disks, all we did was to fix the forward bulwarks, adding another final line to the building.
I find myself more and more often stepping back, squinting my eyes and trying to see the complete shape. It fits. it looks like I imagined it. There is nothing else I know of that gives me a similar feeling of joy and deep creative pleasure as to see a boat-shape coming to life, any boat really, big or small. I could keep building forever, and regret that I stopped messing around in boats for so many years.
Otherwise there are lots of things still missing in the plans: The final position of the dagger boards, the final version of the Skeg as well as the entire lifting rudder, not to talk about a general clean-up in my files so that I can at least publish the plans for hull and deck..
Fiximg the bulwarks.
The forward deck, even with the space occupied by bowsprit, hatch, cleats and anchor winch is still plenty wide and comfortable for lounging and dreaming though the days at sea, and sitting with your back against the cabin in the protected corner of the bulwark feels just great.
I am also reviewing the rig. So far it's more of a rough sketch. There are two oher things that bug me from time to time:
For one thing I would like to simplify the rig, and maybe will do a version withou the topsail and go for higher main with short gaff.
The other is to see if there is a way to have the mizzen centered (maybe also with a short-gaff-sail) and then have either still a tiller from the cockpit bottom with links, or even wheel steering...??!
... well, you know how that is, too much thinking is not always good. Probably I will leave it as it is anyway, just.... but there sure is a lot of design work coming, and I just might have to take a couple of weeks off from building to finish it all. |
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The weather still holds, and we need it. Work is slowing down, as the things we do now will be very visible, the sheerline, the outside border of the roof, we spend a lot of time crawling around the boat just looking, making sure it will be smooth and fair.
There is a pile of mail in my inbox, waiting to be answered. Since YAGO was presented in Duckworks Magazine (http://www.duckworksmagazine.com) there is more mail than ever. Hope I will get around to answering this week.
adding a temporary profile to the sheerline, to give it more tension
sidepanels around cockpit in place
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September 12th, 2004 - Visitors |
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The summer is coming to the end, and every sunny weekend left is a needed to get the hull closed and covered before the bad season.
This should meant hat we work double - but thanks God there are visitors coming around to make us take long breaks, siting in the garden, smoking, talking and eating pankaces ;-)
The starboard panel of the roof is on, the port side ready with stringers tacked on, on the ground in front.
One advantage of having the roof on, is that we can now leave our tools inside, instead of carrying all the stuff to the workshop.
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September 5th - slowly slowly ... |
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I had a look at the time we really manage to work on the hull, and I guess we do not average more than 12 to 15 hours a week, usually over the weekend, since the beginning. That explains why it goes a bit slow - and origami explains why it goes so fast with so little work ;-)
Started the roof, one long straight central panel, 1,25m wide, complete with stringers tacked on.
having the ceiling fixed, even partial, gives a much better feeling for the volume we will be living in: There's lots of it, almost more space than I had in my last boat which was 10 m.
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August 24th, 2004 back on the job ;-) |
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Holidays are over, and we are back. Had a great time, lots of sun and fish and crickets and dozens of islands we couldn't get to without a boat. Good for the motivation...
Around noon it gets so hot, no way to stay outside - meaning I had lots of time to finish the first draft of the YAGO Workbook: It's ready for download! Please check out the download page. I also did some work on the plans, but that will take some more days.
The cockpit decks coming in, forward cabin panel in place
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July 25th - On Deck At Last |
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Guys, I know, I did not update the site for some time and there were complaints. Sorry for that, wont happen again, but I was down with a bout of summer flu.
But in the meantime, I am really back on deck ;-)
nice to be inside for a change...
...or to have a smoke on deck
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Building Diary - YAGO 31 
