I really haven’t, as accused, waited to write an America’s Cup prediction column until all my colleagues of the Fourth Estate wrote theirs, and then cued off their predictions. Yes, I have read most of them. Almost all predict New Zealand will win this thing over Italy, if not with ease, at least decidedly.

The other day, the camps opened their gates and let the public witness “the dropping of the skirts,” a curious sort of pre-Cup holiday now institutionalized – in sailing only of course.

What it means is the secretive shrouds keeping the underside and appendages of the IACC racing yachts hidden from view are finally dropped away in a show of frankness aimed at suppressing the espionage that in past Cups has proceeded at a feverish and undignified pace.

What we saw at “Declaration Day” is just what we expected. The camps are using variations of the same narrow boat with bulb wings placed in somewhat different positions: New Zealand has winglets placed amidships on the bulb while Luna Rossa has chosen the more conventional aft positioning.

Can anything be gathered from a half-hour look at the two undersides? Of course not. However long the “experts” looked and debated the boats this week, there is only one way of knowing which is faster: put them in the water next to each other. That will happen tomorrow.

It might be worth mentioning that after sailing 15 races against each other, Luna Rossa and America One still have no clear answer as to whether boat speed was the major factor in Prada’s comeback 5-4 win over AmericaOne in the challenger finals.

In some conditions, on some points of wind, Luna Rossa looked quicker, but in other situations Paul Cayard and company had the legs they needed to run away from Italy’s red-trimmed silver bullet.

So we just might find that boat speed is not a factor in the coming best-of-nine Cup match. Like the finals match, picking the correct windshifts and crew work may easily trump the speed card.

Before predicting the winner, let me bare my heart and say that New Zealand is perhaps the sweetest place I have ever visited. The lifestyle is gentle, intelligent, cultured. Kiwis are sports-minded but prefer rational, thoughtful conversation to the kind of mindless brawling that passes for discourse in our country. (No, I will never listen to Howie Carr or Rush Limbaugh again.)

From the country’s stunning physical beauty to the South Pacific climate, to the wonderful seafood and home-grown wines, New Zealand should be the very next destination of anyone planning a vacation.

So that’s what my heart says: Let the Kiwis have at least one successful defense of the Cup. The fabulous venue they have built here will be the America’s Cup standard from now on. They are marvelous hosts, and the sailing waters here are challenging and infinitely interesting.

But rationality intrudes. I’m afraid the Kiwis will be slightly off the pace for this America’s Cup.

Five years ago in San Diego there was absolutely no question about how the script would play out. New Zealand had come to town with boats from a different speed zone and everyone knew it. The only question was: Could the US defender skippered by Cayard win a single race in nine? Answer: No. Never, said Cayard, had he felt so hopelessly unable to affect the outcome of a regatta in which he sailed.

It came to me while watching Race 8 of the finals. Prada was down, 4-3, to AmericaOne and a loss would send them home. Never since January 1998 had the Italians felt this kind of pressure. Syndicate boss Patrizio Bertelli had thoroughly scolded his team. Tactician Torben Grael looked demoralized for having made the losing call in Race 7. How could the Prada team come back, relying on boat speed only?

But rather than play it safe, Grael and Prada skipper Francesco de Angelis came out superaggressive and tried to tag out Cayard in the prestart. Then, catching AmericaOne too close to windward on the second leg, they luffed Cayard into a penalty that won Luna Rossa that critical race. They sailed with the kind of risky, roughneck bravado that they learned from none other than Cayard himself.

Meanwhile, all those days, in fact every day for over two years, Team New Zealand has had only mock races. With no other defender to spar with, the kind of battle toughness that the Prada team brings into this match has simply been unavailable to the Kiwis.

Luna Rossa designer Doug Peterson also designed Black Magic, New Zealand’s runaway Cup winner in 1995. He knows both boats intimately, and though he is obviously not unbiased, he said, “New Zealand have a problem. They’re on a completely different page. They’re going to look very bad, very soon.”

Without wishing any such harsh judgment on Team New Zealand, my pick is Prada’s Luna Rossa, 5-2.

“Oh Luna Rossa [red moon], are you waiting for me?” goes the maudlin Italian folk song.

Get used to it. We’re going to hear “Luna Rossa” plenty in the days ahead.

The molds have to be removed to get in this keelson and the other long fore-and-aft stringers, but as you knock them out after unscrewing the fastenings into the battens put up temporary braces to the ceiling to replace those that held the molds, and nail cross braces to hold the frame apart to its proper width at each mold space.

Measure carefully just where the top edge of the 6 x 1 1/2-inch yellow pine clamp is to come, which is the thickness of the deck 7/8-inch and the depth of the frame 1-inch below the deck edge; 2 3/8 inches in all. This clamp is the binder that holds the top ends of all the frames true into line. Although it is 6 inches deep in the middle, it should be tapered to about 4 inches in depth at the ends, and if you have a power planer handy, its thickness might be reduced to 1 1/4 or 1 1/8 inch at the ends to help it bend, for it makes a pretty stubborn piece to handle. Steam it well before you try to bend it in place and you can then edge set it up or down, as you will find you have to, due to the tumble-home of the topsides, which point the ends down. It takes two pieces 32 feet long to get out these clamps, or one piece of 4 x 6-inch stuff ripped in two.

There are two bilge clamps on each side of 3 x6-inch yellow pine, and though they may be a foot or so shorter, it would pay to order them all the same length, 32 feet, as the saw-mill would probably have to rip them all out of one big piece of yellow pine to get the length.

Use 3/8-inch galvanized carriage bolts to pull the clamp and bilge stringers snug to the frames at every other frame and then, when you bend the shelf in against the clamp, put a through bolt at every other frame clean through the whole lot, frame, clamp and shelf. This will give a stiff, rigid deck edge that will resist any bangs she may get alongside a dock.

Cut the forward ends of these clamps and stringers so that they butt flat up against the stern and transom.

Frame the deck before you start in to plank her up and it will be easier to work. The deck beams are all cut rounding with a “crown” or curve of 5 inches in 7 feet. Saw the deck beams out. Don’t bend them. Bent ones have a way of flattening down again and there are not very many of them. Cut a wide thin board so that it forms a “she” pattern of this curve, and by trying this pattern at intervals along her deck you can make sure of getting all the short beams along the cabin space set true to the curve.

Interior of 32-Foot Cabin Cruiser Sunfish

Go carefully over the frames with a batten before you start to plank and see that all the frames are true. Shave off a little here and there wherever a frame presents a hard edge, and when you are sure the frame is all true, start and plank her up.

It will take about 500 square feet of 3/4-inch cedar boards to do this. Buy “dressed” — as planed-up lumber is called — and insist on good, clear lumber. You can’t expect to get cedar without knots, but shun all sap, which is the bluish cast found near the edges inside the bark. Knots are solid but the sap turns to a soft punk that is apt to produce leaks. All small knots that show a black ring around them should be reamed out after the boat is planked and wooden plugs dipped in shellac driven in and sawed off flush.

There is no royal road to planking up a boat. I have had many people ask me if they can’t make one pattern, and get a mill to saw them all out for them, that will plank up the whole boat. You cannot do this. Every plank requires a different shape, though the one pattern will, of course, do for both sides.

Take a “spilling,” as boat builders call it, for the top strake. For this you want some very thin planks — about six in all — 14 to 16 feet long, say 6 to 8 inches wide, and about 3/8-inch thick. Tack this spilling board lightly to the frame as nearly as it will go without being forced sideways and into the place where the topstrake is to fit. If it touches the sheer line at about mold number three it will be several inches too low at the ends. This board will give you the curve as far as amidships, aft tack another one the same way, and where the two lap amidships tack them together. Then, get a pair of carpenter’s dividers. Set them to span the greatest space between the sheer line and this spilling board — screw the dividers so as to hold their legs apart — and front the sheer line at about every other frame prick off on this spilling board this distance; then by carefully removing these boards and laying them out flat on the plank, you are going to cut the top strake out, if you can prick this distance back onto it and get the curve to cut the top edge so that when bent around the frames it will fit true along the sheer line. The lower edge of this plank is then marked out by bending a long thin batten so that it makes a fair curve, leaving the plank about 4 inches wide amidships and tapered to about 2 1/2 inches forward and 2 inches aft.

In putting this top strake on, have two braces. In one have a bitt to bore for the wooden plug, about a 3/8-inch auger bitt if your 2 1/2-inch copper wire nail heads will go into that sized hole without tearing the wood; if not use a 7/16 inch, or even a 1/2-inch bitt. In, the other brace I have a gimlet bitt — a breast drill with a small bitt works faster and easier and is more generally used by boat builders — some shops having an electric drill that goes through the wood as if it were cheese, and is a great time-saver. Follow through with this smaller bitt, boring a hole into which the copper nail squeezes tightly.

Have the plank squeezed up good and hard to the frames with screw clamps, putting a chip under the foot of it so that it will not bruise the surface of the plank and rivet the plank on. Where the clamps will not permit riveting use flat-head brass screws 1 3/4 or 2 inch, No. 10. Scrape a little coarse brown washing soap onto the threads and the screws will turn in easier. Or if you can’t afford screws use galvanized iron boat nails.

Use your spilling board again to find the shape of the top edge of the next two boards and in this way put on about three strakes of top planking.
As the top plank is a sort of binder, many prefer to make that board of quartered oak or of yellow pine. Yellow pine is good and you easily can get that kind of wood in lengths-long enough to make it all in one piece.

Then spile in the same manner for the shape of the garboard where it fits along the keel. Cut your thin spilling boards so that they fit roughly to the shape at the ends and get out the garboards. They, too, should be of oak or yellow pine, but instead of being wider in the middle than at the ends, they are just the reverse. The idea is to fill up the surface with the top strakes and the garboards so that the remaining space to plank up will be more like a barrel and take boards more of an even shape and size. If you cannot do this with the garboard alone, put one or two more strakes above it, the first and second broad strakes as they are called, making them about 6 inches wide and tapered so that the rest of the space can be divided equally both at middle and ends.

Section mold of 32-Foot Cabin Cruiser Sunfish

We knocked off work last issue with the molds and ribbands all in place ready for framing up 32-Foot Cabin Cruiser “Sunfish”. Before you proceed to frame her, see that all the seams that cross the rabbet line are fitted with what are called “stop-waters.” With a half inch bitt bore so that it cuts halfout of each side of the scam and drive in a white pine dowel so that any water attempting to flow up this seam and cause a leak will swell up this pine dowel and prevent the water from going through.

You need steam and a steam box to bend the frames, of which there are forty pairs, each frame being about 7 feet long and 1 1/2 by 1 1/4 inches, though there is an advantage in having them square, say 1 1/2 inches, in that as you grab the hot frame from the steam box you can bend it on either of the four faces, whichever shows the most likely way to stand the strain. I have specified them deeper than they are wide for this reason The grain of the frame should be bent so that the plank fastenings go through the layers of wood and not through between the layers of the grain wedging apart, as it were, the layers of wood. If they are sawed out so that the grain would be across when cut on the narrow face you could never make a mistake in getting the grain right whichever one of the two narrow faces you bent against the ribbands.

Many people like to bend the frames “on the flat” because they are easier to bend that way but for the good of the boat they should be bent on edge, as that is the way they have to resist the strains An odd pair of gloves will be found very useful in handling the hot frames You need a number of 6 or 8-inch screw clamps and someone to hand you the frames from the steam-box Put the heel or lower end of the frame on the keel, your knee in the middle of the frame, and bend it just as if you were bending a bow to string it — bend it gently but steadily into place, and if you have a helper, which would be advisable, let him start to clamp the frame to the lower ribbands as you bend it down against them and follow on up to the turn of the bilge. If the frames are not steamed enough they will break, and if they are of poor quality they’ll break anyway Rock elm makes a line frame as it bends with very little breakage and is strong besides.

Space off along on the keel and ribbands where the frames are to go and mark with chalk so when you are working fast with a hot frame you can sec just where each should go to have, them evenly spaced. Hold the heads of the frames well in to give the round, tumble-home curve at the deck. They are liable to straighten back, anyway, as they cool off.

When they have cooled you can nail them to the ribbands and remove the screw clamp to use elsewhere. Put the nails in slanting through the edge of the ribband into the face of the frame. Don’t nail through the side of the frame from the inside of the boat into the ribband, for you will scar the sides of the frames.

By bending frames in hot this way you twist them with a monkey wrench so they lay flat ready to receive the planking without beveling them.
The heels of the frames should be cut so that they butt flat together at the centre of the keel and have a slice taken off the under corner so that instead of the square corner of the frame touching the top of the keel they will fit flat on top of it out to the edge where the rabbet is bevelled off to receive the edge of the garboard.

Drill a hole down through the frame and drive a 2-inch galvanized boat nail through into the keel at the heel of each frame. Then take some 1 1/4-inch oak boards 4 inches wide. Lay them on edge over the top of the keel and mark out the shape by running a pencil along the outside of the frames, marking this angle on the board. Then saw out this shape, or, clamping the board in a vise, rip it off with a draw knife and true it up with a plane. Fit the floors forward of amidships forward of the frames, and those aft aft of the frames. You can then bevel this floor off so that it gives an additional surface to which to nail the planking.

Rivet each floor to its frame with three round wire copper nails riveted over burrs on each side. Keep the upper edges of all these floors in a true line so that the keelson will not require much cutting and fitting when you run it fore and aft over them.
Away up in the ends where the frames make a sharp V, use wider boards to cut the floors out of and shape them down on the top or take an oak knee slabbed up into 1 1/4-inch thickness, and get floors with a natural crook to them.

The keelson, a 3-inch square yellow pine stick, 24 feet long, is then bent down on top of these cross floors and held securely in place exactly over the keel until you bore holes with a long 1/2-inch auger bitt through keelson, floor and about 3 inches into the keel. Measure the exact lengths with a sliver of wood and cut corresponding lengths of 1/2-inch galvanized iron rod for drift bolts. Tap a slight head on one end by clamping it in a vise and using 3 ball pene hammer — a machinist’s riveting hammer — to spread the metal. Then put a galvanized riveting ring over the end of it and drive the bolt home. One of these at each floor will hold her backbone solid as a rock, and if the keelson ends lap onto the deadwoods forward and aft and are bolted fast there the whole forms a very rigid truss.

Construction Plan of 32-Foot Cabin Cruiser Sunfish

Set all the shores to a chalk line snapped down on the hoard floor if you are building her in a shed; if out in the weather, first where each shore is to come shovel away the loose top soil and sink a “deadman” just as a railroad tie is begged in the ground, tamp it down solid and then set your shores up on these. It is a great handicap to have to build out of doors. In a shed or shop you can run the braces to hold the head of the stem plumb up out of the way to the rafters overhead, which you can’t do on the ground. It prevents a lot of stumbling and dodging around the shores. Give the keel a coat of lead coloured paint to preserve it where it is securely braced up plumb and true.

Then get out your molds and as these are only temporary a cheap grade of pine about an inch, or better yet, an inch, and a quarter thick can be used. To shape all these by hand with a drawknife and saw is a tedious operation; if there is any place where you can get access to a band saw for an hour or so you could easily saw out the various pieces and put them together at home. Where you have to join two pieces together butt one against the other and then nail or screw with iron screws a cleat across the two to hold them. Keep all cleats and braces on the same side. Let the top end of each mold extend up four to six inches above the true sheer line so that you can run a batten up above this line and can leave it there until after you have the topstrake on to keep her deck edge fair and true. It is not necessary to bevel the molds; you do that by setting each of the molds forward of the centre, 4, 3, 2 and 1, so the smooth side of the mold faces aft and is just flush with the mold marks on the keel, and the after ones 6, 7 and 8, the reverse way; by this the smooth edge represents the true shape required and when you put the battens on chisel away and bevel the mold’s edge until it fits flat against the mold.

Molds of 32-Foot Cabin Cruiser Sunfish

Be very careful to set each mold exactly to its mark and to set it and brace it perfectly plumb. If the underside of the cross-spall — the wooden brace across the top of the mold — be planed up true before it is fastened to the mold it will he found of great assistance in setting the mold level. You can hold a spirit level up under this edge and tap the mold to one side or another until the bubble sights true in the centre of the level, and the plumb bob, hanging from the centre marks on the cross-spall, is plumb over the centre scratch line along the top of the keel.

Keep all the braces you can up overhead so that they will not interfere with your working around the boat, and cross them X shaped, as they go up to the rafters; by this arrangement you can get a more rigid brace than if they simply go straight up from the head of the mold. The whole business could swing like a parallel ruler that way, but the X brace is firm.

Before you can run the ribbands around you need the transom, the shape of the face of which is given along with the mold shapes. Do not cut it out to this shape however, as, due to the bevels, it needs to be an inch and a quarter wider on the bottom edge but no larger across the top where it bevels under from the line, and around the edge it may even take more. With sufficient wood left outside the line you can, after bending the curvature in the face of the transom, clamp-screw it to the small knee and by bending battens around the molds cut and fit it accurately. All these bevels could, be laid out on the floor in the full-sized drawing, but it goes into a lot of projection and drawing, too difficult to attempt to explain here. The amateur over a number of difficulties, as there are special articles in these books on laying, down a set of lines, how to project a transom, an explanation of the meaning of a Table of Offsets, an article on how to cut the rabbet line, etc.

The transom is shown drawn to the outside of the planking. If you are going: to let the plank fit flat against the edge of it you will have to take off the thickness of the plank from the shape shown, but as that does not look very neat on a job of this kind, due to the curve in the face of the transom, it would be better to bevel the front edge of the transom so that the plank ends make a seam right around the corner and are. fastened to oak backing pieces screwed fast to the inside of the transom around the edges.

This particular job is one of the hardest in the whole construction of Sunfish. Anyone who can figure out this transom and make a neat job need have no fear of any other part of the work. Apply the bevels as you take them, is the keynote.

The curve to the transom should be bent in it first. Steam the boards well in a steam box and then clamp them over a mold built for that purpose with about an inch more curve than you want; it will always straighten back a little, so put more curve in than you need.

Another way to build this transom is to bend about a 3/4 or 7/8-inch transom and level the edges so that the plank ends go right past, flat-footed on its edges, then trim off these projecting plank ends to receive a 1/2-inch oak or mahogany facing-piece and bend and fit in this transom, fastening it with screws, plugged, to the inner rough transom. Be careful to set the transom up perfectly level when you bolt or rivet it to the knee that holds it to the deadwood.

When this is shored securely, and it is usually, held by two stout timbers spread out like a pair of legs to the floor to hold it up and forward at the same time, you are ready to bend around the ribbands.

First run the sheer ribband — about a 2-inch square strip of clear spruce — in one length if you can get it; if not, join two pieces together by nailing a piece outside and lapping over the two ends where they, butt. Don’t attempt to scarps and rivet the two pieces of a batten together Sometimes another batten is bent outside of the first at the deck edge, as that is a very important part of the boat to keep absolutely fair and true. At intervals of about 6 inches run other ribbands fore and aft from bow to stern. They will, of course, be close together at the ends and once in a while the ends can be left out by using a shorter batten amidships.

Where there is a short curve in the frames, put the battens closely together, and where they are flatter spread the battens. Use square-headed coach or lag screws, turning them in with a monkey wrench after first drilling a hole so they will not split the wood and put a flat-iron washer under the head of each one so that you can pull ‘the ribbands up wood to wood without having the bolt-head bury itself in the ribband.

She will begin to look very much like a boat when you get her this far along, and by standing off a way you can see just what her shape is going to look like. If, in putting on the ribbands, the molds do not seem to be fair, don’t go and cut one mold to let the ribband in so it will touch the next, until you have carefully looked along the batten and tried your measurements. It may be all that is needed is to plane down the ribband a little, reduce it in size, or taper one end, and it may then bend in and still show a fair, easy curve.

No designer would think of trying to bend all the curves that make up a set of lines for a boat with one kind of a batten. They have many differently proportioned battens, some like your ribbands, all one size throughout their length; some larger in the middle than they are at each end; some large at one end and gradually diminishing all the way to the other end. So graduate your battens, if they are too stubborn, and don’t blame the designer.
In the next number we shall start in and frame up the hull and proceed to plank her.

Table of Offsets of 32-Foot Cabin Cruiser Sunfish

Nobody builds a boat nowadays as they used to. Lumber can now be ordered at the lumber yard or saw mill in the sizes desired, and you don’t have to hew and chop them out by hand, so the tools needed are mostly just a carpenter’s outfit. I don’t mean by that just a hammer and a saw, but such a kit as every carpenter is supposed to have. Such tools as the old time broad axe and whip saw are not required.

You can order a stick for the keel and get it already dressed — as they term planed lumber — to the size desired, but let me warn you right now, if you do order it dressed be sure to mark it down in big letters that’ you want the keel to be 3 inches by 4 inches after it is dressed. Other- wise you will get a stick that was 3 by 4 in the rough, and, it will be 2 7/8 bу 3 7/8 when you get it. The stick for this boat’s keel must be 28 feet long and good for every inch, not a 28-foot piece with a foot of the end bad.

For the stem you want either an oak or a hackmatack knee, square or a trifle out square in its crook, 3 inches thick, without any skewgee or twist to it, with one arm 5 feet long, the other 3 feet, and thick enough in the throat to allow your stem being cut from it. It is safer to wait until you have drawn out the shape of your stem and made a 1/2-inch wooden pattern of it. By trying this pattern on the knee as you are selecting it, you can see if it is large enough or not.

There is one thing particularly needed in building any boat and that is a clear head. Stop and think out your-work and don’t believe the time spent in planning and laying out the work carefully is lost. It’s all simple enough if you don’t try to go too fast and get all confused. In laying out the stem, as an example, the outline of it is simple enough, but to tell how to bevel it off looks puzzling to the novice at first. Look at the plan showing the waterline’s shape. As each waterline ends forward at the stem it comes in at a different angle. If you have laid the boat’s lines down full size on the floor you can, with a bevel square, set that instrument or tool to that bevel and cut the stem until it fits. Each waterline from the deck down gets sharper and sharper. By spacing off these waterlines on your wood you can cut at each until you have it bevelled to just what the lines call for. Don’t bring the edge of the stem to a feather edge, but have it about 3/4 of an inch wide to take a metal stem band.

The rabbet for the ends of the planking can be cut the same way by the use of the bevel or by taking a little piece of 1/2-inch pine board about a foot long and 3 inches wide and cutting a notch so half of one edge is 3/4 inch wider than the other half. This 3/4-inch projection represents the thickness of the planking. Chisel out the rabbet until this template fits on the face of the stern and the notched part fits snug in the rabbet. Another way is to wait until the molds are all set up and then bend a batten around them and cut the rabbet so the end of this batten fits true in the rabbet. The only objection to this is that it is more difficult to work in that position, standing upright, than it is where you can lay the stem flat on a floor or over a pair or wooden horses and sit on it and chisel out the rabbet.

The after deadwood can be made either in one piece or built up of smaller ones. If cut from one piece, which is more desirable, it takes a piece of 4-inch wood 18 inches wide and 6 feet 8 inches long. If built up of several pieces the upper part can be made from a 4 foot piece of 4-inch by 6-inch oak, and the shaft log from a 2-foot piece of 4-inch by 6-inch oak, and the deadwood below it from a 4-foot piece of 4-inch by 6-inch oak. The three must be jointed to a perfect seam where they meet and bolted together with rods of 1/2-inch diameter galvanized iron or copper. You can buy this rod iron in 12 to 14-foot lengths and also the clinch rings that go over the ends where you rivet them up, but be sure to get wrought-iron clinch rings and not the brittle cast-iron ones.
In some localities it may be difficult to obtain a knee large enough to cut the stem from it. If so, it can be built up in two pieces just/as the after deadwood, using a straight piece of oak 5 feet long, a foot wide and 3 inches thick for the stem proper and back of it a small knee about 2 feet long on its arms, as shown in the accompanying sketches.

Appearance Plan of 32-Foot Cabin Cruiser Sunfish

It is to be supposed that a man who undertakes to build Sunfish has had some experience in the use of wood-working tools, and that Me will know enough to be able to bore a bolt hole without choking his auger and in jointing up the deadwoods will square up the edges always from the face side so that when the various pieces come to be bolted together they will set true and level one on top of the other and not be canted or staggered out of the vertical. Such A, B, C principles a man is presumed to know when he tackles the building of this boat. The short sternpost is fitted dovetail to the after end of the shaft log so that the lag screws that are to hold the stern bearing will have cross-grained wood to hold to instead of end grain.

The bore of the shaft hole is so short that there should be no difficulty experienced in getting, it through a solid log and so do away with the seam along the line of the shaft that would be there if the log were made up of two pieces with the shaft hole gouged half out of each. That is the way they are often built where there is a long deadwood to go through and in attempting to bore which the auger will often run off to one side or the other. Here the hole is only 22 inches long in the wood, a very easy job to bore.

As you work out each piece, scratch centre marks and be sure that you set these marks all, true when, after painting the two faces that come together, you rivet the stem and deadwood to the keel. Countersink the bolt-heads on the underside of the keel far enough to get a wooden plug dipped in white lead over them and so leave a flush, smooth job on the outside.

With the keel, stem and deadwood all together we have the backbone of the boat ready to set up and as the fairness of the boat depends on her being held rigidly to the desired shape while in the course of construction, be careful to get the shores, or short posts of wood that are to hold her keel, true to the measurements given above the floor — and don’t trust to the floor’s being true; stretch a chalk line very tight and measure up again to see that ill is right before you set the keel up on them.

Plan of 32-Foot Cabin Cruiser Sunfish

The finishing off of the boat after she is all planked and decked is most important if you want a good looking boat. The trouble with most amateurs is that by the time they get this far they are so anxious to get their boat afloat that they do not take the time to properly plane off, sandpaper and otherwise prepare the wood to properly receive the paint. Do not shirk this part of the work. Keep at the planning off of the seams and planking until all humps and hollows have disappeared and the plank, anyway you bend a small batten around its surface, shows absolutely fair. When it has been planed as true as is possible, start in with coarse sandpaper, folded over a block of wood and scrub the plank crossway to the grain until every plane mark is obliterated. Then, with finer sandpaper, rub it fore and aft, cutting out the marks of the heavier paper. Then, and not until then, is your boat ready for paint. In a boat where wooden plugs have been fitted over her planking you can go still farther by taking a bucket of hot water and a big sponge and sponging over the entire planking from deck to keel on both sides. Your boat has to be wet sometime, and the wood and the plugs have to swell. This sponging process makes the wood go through it’s swelling before she gets overboard and shows particularly in the case of the plugs, which, owing to the wood having been slightly compressed when driven in with a hammer, is more apt to expand than the planking, and you can go around your boat as soon as the wood has dried with a chisel and shave off dozens of plugs that have swelled out a sixteenth of an inch or so beyond the surface of the wood. You can imagine what this would have done had you first painted your boat. For this reason many experienced boatmen never attempt to finish up a brand new boat as soon as she is built. They launch her and use her a month or so, then haul her out and allow her to thoroughly dry and then put her through the finishing process of sandpaper and two or three good coats of paint, for, by that time, the wood has come and gone all it will, due to swelling and any little straining the boat may do until she gets swelled up tight and solid has been done. Now, when she is finished, she will last for years, only requiring the surface of the paint to be replaced where it wears out.

For those who do not understand just how the line-up to which the copper is to be painted, for in 28-Foot Cabin Cruiser “Mollyhawk” we show what is called a boot-top, that is, several inches of the copper paint shows above water when she is afloat, a few words on this subject may be of assistance. With the boat set absolutely plumb, tack a straight edged board across the bows at the height you want the boot-top forward, and another across the stern the height the boot-top is to be raised there. Between these two, just so it clears the side of the hull amidships, allow a fish cord to sag until it gives you the proper height amidships, which, as you will notice, is lower than at either end. Then, with a long spirit level or a batten of wood and a short one, you can go along this line at intervals of every foot or so and mark spots on the planking to correspond with the height of this line. Then tack a batten, carefully sighting along it as you do so, to see that there are no unfair kinks in it, and with a race knife or the point of a brad awl cut or scratch a light groove along in the planking. Many a man before you have made the mistake of simply marking this with a lead pencil, which the first coat of paint has obliterated, for even a scratch, in time, becomes lost to sight through being-filled up with the paint. It is a good practice to always keep this mark visible by re-scratching it occasionally, for nothing looks worse on a boat, as you yourself may have noticed, than a crooked wave-like line, where the two paints meet.

While it does not matter, if the boat is to be used in fresh water, whether the bottom be painted with a copper compound or not, it does make a great deal of difference if she is to be used in salt water where the torredo works such havoc in boat’s planking by eating innumerable holes in it. Copper paint is the only thing that will keep this destructive little worm away and for that reason a great many people believe that copper paint should be put right onto the bare wood so that the copper can soak into the pores of the wood, but as it is the liquid that really goes into the wood, depositing the copper on the outside of the planking it is very doubtful whether this method has any virtue in it or not, or whether the copper be applied on top of a fine coat of lead. One thing we do know, and that is that the bottom should be kept completely covered, with some copper paint and. not allowed to chafe to the bare wood.

The finish of 28-Foot Cabin Cruiser “Mollyhawk” I am going to leave entirely to those who build her. I do not know of any business that has so many conflicting opinions as that of painting a boat. Of course, I have my own views on the subject, but I can take you to another yachtsman who has had equal experience and he may advocate an entirely different manner of painting the boat. Some want a white painted top side. Others stoutly condemn it and say any colour but white should be used. Some want varnished decks. Some would not have a varnished deck. Some will swear by one brand of varnish and some by another, all the result of personal experience on their part and more than likely the different opinions have been the result of accident more than anything else.

So, paint 28-Foot Cabin Cruiser “Mollyhawk” any color you like; you’ll do it to suit yourself, anyhow — you’ve a right to; she’s yours.

28-Foot Cabin Cruiser Mollyhawk

There is one little point in the construction of 28-Foot Cabin Cruiser “Mollyhawk” that I wish to draw your attention to particularly, and that is the knee on the after quarter, just above the half round moulding. This is called a quarter badge, and it is just such little fittings as this that set off your boat and add to her shippy appearance. Do not try to make this out of half inch wood and plaster it on, for it will not stand. It is not like putting interior trim in a house, but get it out of one thick oak or hackmatack knee, as shown in the accompanying sketch, in which you will see that the knee itself is about two inches larger than what shows on the outside. By making the knee about two and a half inches thick you can cut a rabbitt in it and fasten the ends of the planking to it, leaving the little quarter badge extending out about a quarter of an inch beyond the planking and yet it will be solid enough not to curl or crack in the weather. While we are talking about knees just consider the, two little sketches here shown. Most people do hot think the mere outline of a knee has anything to do with a boat’s looks, but in this they are wrong. Just as quickly as a house architect would notice a house built without eaves, so can a man used to water and ships spot a clumsy, amateurish shaped knee as shown in the upper figure. Such a knee, while it might, be useful and appropriate in building a. chair or a table, will make Mollyhawk look clumsy if it is used at the after end of her cabin or the forward end of the little raised deck aft,” the turtle deck, as you might call it, where on either side a knee is shown which fills up what, would otherwise be a very awkward looking square corner. Make the lower arm of the knee longer than the upright end and of some such curve as I. have here shown.

Another little detail to which I want to call your attention, and which applies not only to 28-Foot Cabin Cruiser “Mollyhawk” but to all boats, is the quarter bitts aft and heavy mooring bitt forward. This forward one should go down and be mortised into the forward deadwood, although many people only use a short bitt and key it fast on the underside to an oak block which fits from deckbeam to deckbeam. This, to my way of thinking, brings too much strain on a yacht’s deck for the main mooring bitt forward. Such a style of construction is all right for the small quarter bitts aft, but I would not advise its use forward. How many people have ever considered the reason why the edges of the bitts were champhered off the way they are on ships? Very few, I’ll guarantee. But when I explain the reasons for it by means of the diagrams, A. B. C. D. and E. a blind man can see the point. I have seen bitts-rounded off into all manner of fancy shapes, the man who did it evidently thinking that the idea of champhering a bitt was to make a fancy piece of furniture out of it. The real reason is this: The head of a bitt, as shown in figure A, is there to make rope fast to, and, naturally, the strongest part of this bitt is right at the deck. The higher up you go the more leverage the anchor cable has to break it. For that reason the champher is cut at such an angle as will make the cable ride down, and ride is the nautical word for slide, close ‘to the deck. If you ever go to sea on an old sailing ship, where nearly everyone of the many ropes has to be coiled down over belaying pins, you would soon notice that on a belaying pin, shaped like Figure B, you can lay fake after fake over such a pin and they will pile up clear to the top without sliding off, as shown in Figure B. While with one shaped like C, when you get near the top the upper fakes of rope will begin to slide up over the top, as in Figure E, and you cannot coil nearly as much rope over such a pin. I have seen an old, deep water mate go along ship’s bulwarks, and every pin he found patterned after that shown in C he’d heave away to leeward with a deep sea blessing on the head of the man who made it.

A precaution to be taken when you are building the deck frame of your boat is to fit inch and a half oak blocks, snug between the deck beams and nailed to the same so they will come underneath the deck wherever there is to be a deck fitting fastened above. Do not trust to the deck. Soft white pine will never hold the screws, nor is it a good practice to put a cleat on deck so that only one screw comes into a deck beam, and you trust to that one good fastening to hold.

Putting on the ribbands in 28-Foot Cabin Cruiser Mollyhawk

Anyone capable of building 28-Foot Cabin Cruiser “Mollyhawk”‘s hull knows enough to lay a quarter-inch tongue and groove cabin floor, and to build the seats and bulkheads either of one wide board set on edge or by first building a spruce frame and staving up the front with cypress or yellow pine tongue and groove staving in narrow widths. Boards two to three inches wide with their edges champhered so that when they come together they make a “V” shape seam is just as good and far cheaper to build than a transonic front all formed of panels or other forms of expensive, joiner work. All such ginger bread work, while it makes, a boat look a little more stylish is no better than a plain pine board painted or a tongue and groove staving as we have suggested, and you can refinish the latter with one half the trouble and expense of a fancy panelled transom. The advantage of the “V” seam formed by the champhered edge is that it hides any slight unevenesses in the thickness of the seam where the two boards come together, which is not the case where the boards are square edged and, especially, if it is painted white. But as to just how you finish the interior of your boat, whether you use expensive joiner work or the plain cheap kind does not in any way affect the serviceability of Mollyhawk. It is a matter of personal taste and entirely up to you to say just how much money you care to spend on it. You can use cypress at about 5 cents a foot or use bird’s eye maple or Circassian walnut at about 30 cents a foot. The same thing applies to the hardware below decks. Some owners will use the ordinary lacquered iron door-knobs and locks and drawer-pulls. Others will use glass ones, and others solid brass ones, the latter are far preferable, but when you buy them makesure that you are getting solid brass and not iron simply dipped in brass, as much of the boat hardware now sold is made. You will find, in a couple of years, the rust will strike through and your’ boat hardware will be anything but a thing of beauty. Especially is this true of the deck fittings, such as flagpole sockets, chocks and other deck plates, although my choice for such fittings would be galvanized iron in preference to brass. They are just as strong, if anything, stronger than brass, will not look so shoddy as brass does when it becomes tarnished, and if for any reason the galvanizing does get nicked you can retouch it with a bit of aluminium paint and make it look as if it had just come from the store. Let me call your attention to one apparently insignificant point about fastening on your deck plates and that is to see that the screw heads fit perfectly into the countersink bored in the chock or deck plate, whatever the fitting may be. Sometimes a hole for the screw is bored vertical, while the face of the deck plate is slightly bevelling. The result is that one sharp corner of this screw-head sticks out like a knife, and will cut you when you polish the brass, and on which strings of cotton waste generally cling, looking anything but pretty. Use a metal counter sink in your brace and bitt and ream out the holes until the screw heads just fit flush with the surface of the metal. Do not leave the heads standing up, and, on the other hand, do not let them sink an eighth of an inch or so below the surface of the metal. In that case you should use a screw with a larger head to fill up the hole, for such holes, form puddles for the dirty brass polish or water.

Molds in place of 28-Foot Cabin Cruiser Mollyhawk

Before laying the deck of 28-Foot Cabin Cruiser “Mollyhawk”, while the hull is all open, is a good time to put in your engine bed, line up and connect your shaft and install the motor. Make a template for your gasoline tank and until that arrives fit in all the necessary floor beams both for cockpit and cabin floors. All can be fastened down with the exception of the forward cockpit floor beams. These will have to be left until the tank is in, so build a platform and sides to securely brace this tank in its proper place.

The floor beams for cockpit floor and cabin floor need not be dressed stock; that is, they can be left unplanned as they are entirely out of sight, the cabin floor, of course, being laid absolutely level; But the forward and after cock-pit floors which are exposed to the weather would be better off for a slight crown so the water will drain to either side where lead pipe scuppers are to be fitted down and out through the outer planking so the rainwater will run overboard. The main cabin floor can be made of wide stock, that is, boards 6 or 8 inches wide nailed down with the exception of a loose trap down the centre. These will permit get-ting into the bilge of the boat if occasion should require your cleaning out the limbers, or to clean out the bottom when you lay her up. The two cockpit floors should be only 2 to 4 inch strips, the narrower they are the more yachty is the appearance. These decks should be caulked payed and puttied and a rabbeted oak sill set in white lead and nailed down forming a sort of frame to receive the lower end of the cockpit staving. It takes a little extra work to get this rabbeted sill out and most amateurs, in-stead of doing so. will be tempted simply to nail a cleat on deck and then nail staving against this cleat; but the latter is very apt to leak, while the former insures an absolutely watertight job, and if you have ever lain in a bunk and felt the cold drip from a leaky deck you will know what this means. Take time and do it right now. You can-not change it later without a great deal of trouble and expense.

The laying of the side decks is slightly different. An oak edge-piece (sailors call it the “covering board”) about 4 inches wide, the same thickness as the deck, which should be about one inch thick, is to be fitted so its outer edge is even with the outside of the planking. From there in the deck is laid in narrow strips. The forward and after ends of this decking are nailed to oak cleats fastened to the side of the after end of the house and the forward end of the after deck.

From the end of the raised deck the main cabin is made of two built-up sides consisting of a top and bottom rail with vertical stiles mortised and tenanted info them, forming the windows as shown in the plans. These sides are fastened to the deck by rods of five-sixteenths iron going through the lower rail through the deck and the end of the oak deck beams. By making these sides of 1-inch stock you will have wood enough to dovetail the ends of the short cabin beams into them. Here, also, it is customary to run one or two beams clear across from side to side to hold the sides accurately in position until all the others are in place, the deck laid and the sides of the skylight erected. Then, when the boat is secured by the skylight beams going across, these can be sawed out and -their ends, as well as all the other beams, covered by a 3-inch by 3/8-inch finishing strip or, if you do not object to the ends of the beams showing, you can round off the ends of the beams with a chisel and let them show.

The construction of the cabin skylight is just the same as the cabin sides, although, of course, it is longer. The beams are dovetailed into the sides just as the cabin-house beams were, the deck laid in strips of white pine about 4 inches wide by 5/8-inch thick and the whole covered with canvas, just-as the main deck was when it was laid, the canvas being held at the edges by a row of copper tacks and the ragged edge of the canvas covered by a half-round oak molding.
You have probably seen boats whose cabin-houses were defaced by dirty black stains running down from under this molding. If you will shellac the inside of the half-round molding before you put it on you will not have this difficulty.

The after end of the cabin of 28-Foot Cabin Cruiser “Mollyhawk”, the forward and after cockpits, are to be built of 3/4-ihch tongued and grooved cypress staving about 2 1/2 inches wide bradded to the sill-pieces and edge of the deck. Do not drive your brad straight in. Put them in on a slant and they will pull the staving and hold it much tighter. Punch the nail-heads in and finish the holes with a bit of putty.

Briefly stated, the process of planking may be compared to the construction of a barrel. As the barrel staves are made wide in the middle and narrow at the ends, so is the yacht planking wider amidships. Just how wide each plank shall be you have to determine by bending a thin batten around one of the midship frames and dividing it up into such widths as your stock of planking will permit. For instance, if most of your cedar planking which the lumber yard has delivered to you will only allow you to get out a plank five inches wide in the middle without leaving bark on the edge, do not lay your boat for six inch planking. This distance, measured on the batten in inches, divided by five, will show you how many planks your boat will require. How wide these planks will be forward or aft at any other frame can be determined the same way, by dividing the length along the frame to be planked into the number of planks that are being put on amidships, which would probably give you something like 2 3/4 or 3 inches.

The top strake, or “sheer strake” as it is called, and two or three more below it and then the garboard or plank which goes next to the keel are generally fitted in first arid then the space between is divided up as previously described. To find the shape of the garboard requires what
is called “spilling.” In other words, it requires the spoiling of one plank which is generally a thin pine or cedar board about 3/8 of an inch thick. This thin board is used as a pattern cut roughly by eye so as to fit along the keel, and then, with a pair of compasses, set so as to span the greatest interval between the edge of the rabbet and the edge of this pattern, proceed to prick off a line of spots along the pattern, keeping one point of the compasses at the edge of the rabbet. By laying this pattern out flat on the one inch cedar board from which you are going to cut your garboard, and pricking these distances back you can readily see that you get a line of spots the same shape as the rabbet against which the edge of this plank must fit. This “spilling” process is repeated for almost every plank. The only ones that will not require it are the few on the flat of the side of the boat just under the “sheer strake.”

You will hardly be able to get these planks all out of one length. Not many boats nowadays are built that way, but where you do have to use two, make the seam where the two ends meet come midway between two frames and then rivet their ends to an oak block fitted snugly between the frames about half an inch wider on each side than the planking, so that the plank above and below will lap half an inch over this butt block. Common sense alone will tell any man not to make all these butts in his planking come in a line in one spot between the same two frames, but to shift the butts as far apart as possible, using the long length of a plank forward in one case and aft in the next, so that at least two planks come between butts made in the same frame space.

There are few places in this boat where the round of the side is so pronounced as to require hollowing and rounding the inside and outside of a plank so as to make it fit against the frame. Aft, on the quick round on the counter and in the few planks that end in the hollow of the after frames this may be necessary. Never rivet a plank fast to the frame until its inner edge makes a perfect joint on the face of the frame. I know what you will be tempted to do. I have seen it done time and again, but those who did it always regretted doing so. That is to chisel off the face of the frame into a series of flats so that a flat plank will fit where it should be rounded. The result is the boat shows a series of ridges or if enough is planed off to make the plank show a smooth rounded surface the plank will be reduced to only about 5/8 or 1/2 inch in thickness, and as this is just where the fastening goes it is where the plank should have its full strength.

To fasten the planking to the frames use 2 1/2-inch copper nails rivetted over copper burrs, and to make a good job first bore a hole so the heads of the nails will sink in or be counter sunk about half an inch. These holes, after the nails are rivetted up, are to be filled with cedar or white, pine plugs dipped in white lead and tapped in over the nail heads, so that when the. planking is finally smoothed off all will show a clean wooden surface and she will not look like a spotted pig, as she will if the nail heads are left flush. This is only done in very light rowboats or racing boats where the thickness of planking will not permit of countersinking; there the nail heads are smoothed off with a file, but Mollyhawk is not a racing shell.

Along the garboard seams, in the ends of the planks and such places as under a clamp where it is impossible to rivet up a copper nail use 2 1/4-inch galvanized iron boat nails, but bore for them just the same. Do not try to clout them in with a hammer for if you do you may spoil a plank that has taken you considerable time to shape, due to the nail buckling over in the hard oak and splitting the plank.

When all the planking is on, calk each seam carefully with boat cotton spun out and rolled to suit the size of the seam and paint each seam with thin white lead paint.
This will stick the cotton in and hold it while you proceed with the rest of the work and make the putty stick when you come to putty and paint the outside.

Molds of 28-Foot Cabin Cruiser Mollyhawk