My six year-old son said that at school today the class members were asked what made them happy. I asked what his reply was - he said knowing that “we are going to build a boat.” I hope he maintains this enthusiasm!

…even if it is only cutting out two doors!

However I also did the usual walk around the shed (tarp) to confirm survivability for another 24hrs in the wet season “build up” storms.

Such hard work…cutting throught the tabs on balsa Duflex, but it is warm 35 degrees, humid 90% and it is 25mm!!

This 25mm has sure got some weight in it!

Yes, I’ll watch the glass edges!

Look see measuring and marking tools even on a very simple job, no wonder its taken a year!!

Stop taking pictures of my bald spot

I think I will put timber trim, latch and hinges on this, place it back and hopefully have a door into the head.

Has she been in there all this time?

I have just realised the port hull might be a little faster to build as I have:
* already cut out the ply for the keel protection and the large piece of double bias,
* marked out the trimming required on the forward bulkheads,
* have all the tools,
and know in a small way what I am doing.

Of late I have been a little introspective about every thing primarily because of loss of a parent, unemployment, illness in the family and environmental impact on our life and project. The impact of all this seems to have reached a plateau and with good news of winning new employment combined with physical rest, the family life is getting back to all our expectations. Part of this is building Scrumble, which recently has involved only research mainly on the internet and making some navigation changes to this weblog. Therefore there will soon be activity to write up here as I am buoyed by the following quote I found:

Houses are but badly built boats so firmly aground that you cannot think of moving them. They are definitely inferior things, belonging to the vegetable not the animal world, rooted and stationary, incapable of gay transition. I admit, doubtfully, as exceptions, snailshells and caravans. The desire to build a house is the tired wish of one content thenceforward with a single anchorage. The desire to build a boat is the desire of youth, unwilling yet to accept the idea of a final resting place.

It is for that reason perhaps, that when it comes, the desire to build a boat is one of those that cannot be resisted. It begins as a little cloud on a serene horizon. It ends by covering the whole sky, so that you can think of nothing else. You must build to regain your freedom. And always you comfort yourself with the thought that yours will be the perfect boat, the boat that you may search the harbors of the world for and not find.

Arthur Ransome “Racundra’s First Cruise” 1923

Lately I have been doing some serious thinking about the sort of rig we want on Scrumble.
I have become quite fixated on a system some would find a little odd, however we seem to take a fair bit of flak regarding the front cockpit so I thought I would just jump right in………

I call this a Dual Cat Rig and think maybe it is a natural for a catamaran.

My version of this came from the concept of two modern american catboat rigs, that is an unstayed mast with a wishbone boom, and a dagger board in each hull. An example of a modern american cat boat rig is at www.wyliecat.com and what it would be like on a catamaran is at www.cat2fold.com

My research indicates the following about how a Dual Cat Rig works:

1. Does one sail blanket the other? Yes, at 90 degrees apparent the leeward sail will die, then one can head up to fill that sail or open the other to feed it, so the two rigs are trimmed in an asymetric manner.
2. One could use this principle to reef one sail by steering into 90 degrees apparent and then easily reefing the leeward sail.
3. Downwind the two sails would be wing and wing.
4. The bending unstayed carbon mast and wishbone boom means that the rigs unload automatically with increasing wind as a consequence of design.
5. There would be quite a number of reefing options through to the windward sail fully reefed with the leeward sail furled.
6. There is the thought from some who have sailed some of the few existing catamarans with this rig or similar that it is a bit slow to tack. The boats with this problem seem also to have the rigs placed at the fore and aft position that one might step a single mast. The advice I have got from catboat builders in the US is that the masts need to be well forward, which also gives plenty of foot in the sails, with a shorter mast and a lower centre of effort. This would also have the benefit of moving the masts forward of the accommodation areas.
7. We will get rid of stays & spreaders, multiple halyards, headsails & spinnakers, headsail furler, headsail tracks & adjusters, mainsheet travellers & control lines etc. and we maintain or increase the sail area with two very simple rigs.
8. We can get rid of the forebeam support for the forestay, prodder etc and with the anchor stowed in the forward bridgedeck there would be a very simple forebeam.
9. There would be only two winches mounted on the deck, immediately forward of the front cockpit, to service one halyard on each mast, the mainsheets with light loads each, thanks to the wishbone and then forward to the front cockpit. The jiffy reefing lines would be led into the front cockpit and the snotter or choker from each wishbone boom likewise.

I expect some serious questions about this to further solidify the idea, as I have researched quite a bit in recent months and have become quite convinced it will work well and have some considerable advantages.
I have some hoops to jump through as for all of the following I will need considerable technical help:

• The masts would have to be carbon, who to build? I suspect I couldn’t do it here.
• Same for the wishbone booms, maybe alloy with carbon fore and aft.
• Where to mount the masts - In line with the forward structural bulk head which would have to be beefed up to at least 25mm with some Uni over and under.
• How to mount the masts - Maybe onto a keel step and supported in a reinforced deck or maybe a trunk?

In case you haven’t encountered the term before - an ohnosecond is the fraction of time in which you realise you have made a mistake that cannot be undone.

It wasn’t to do with the building of Scrumble. It is hard to imagine any mistake that cannot be fixed during a composite boat build.

It was to do with my management of spam messages and comments to this website. I have just hit the “Delete all spam now” button and in the same nanosecond glanced at what appears to have been a legitimate message from a reader of this site. One word I did see was “philosophy”, so I feel it wasn’t spam about enlarging my non-existent body parts! And now it is gone forever.

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