The 4th of July is now behind us and our August event schedule is fast approaching so it was time for us to pick up where we left off with building the PVC frame. Alex and I set our sights high during today’s build with a goal to complete both the bow and stern sections of the frame (at least dry fit). However, with Brett out of town and a few curve balls thrown into the mix we only managed to finish the bow before hunger set in and drove us to find dinner. It was solid progress, none-the-less, and we’re very happy with how the bow turned out and with the lessons that we learned.
Over the weekend we discussed the shape of our hull cross-section (at mid-ship) and were slightly concerned that the chine was set too hard and that the freeboard was too vertical. This would translate into a poor-performance hull with moderate primary stability and a sketchy transition to near zero secondary stability. It goes without saying that this was the first thing we addressed during today’s build by shortening up the lower cross supports to create more flare to the freeboard. This worked out great and made for a hull cross section that we were much more comfortable with!
Next it was on to the bow section. Constructing the bow turned out to be much trickier than we initially anticipated. One of the best parts of our design is the plug-and-play nature of the standard PVC fittings that we had been using as our joints. They worked great in the middle section because all of the angles were fairly shallow. This is not the case in the bow (or stern) where the lines of the hull meet at very drastic angles that are not easily achievable with standard fittings. Getting past this hurdle required a leap of ingenuity but we were able to come up with a reasonable method of coupling everything together to form a smart-looking and sturdy bow!
We ended the evening with a steak dinner and a quick trip to Home Depot (The Deeps) to pick up a few more lengths of pipe and some miscellaneous fittings. Tomorrow we’ll be back at it and hope to dry fit the stern and have the frame ready for glue! Check back soon for more updates!
-Kayak Dave
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