Cabin-less Fever

It's been one month since I've updated this blog, but I have an excuse.  My wife and I have been busy with the newest member of the sailing crew...

This is baby Adeline, and she will be helping her father to sail his i550 some day.  Can you see the look of concern in her eyes?

So, while I haven't been over at the boat shop much lately, my fellow builders have been, and they've been busy.  Not only has there been a lot of building going on, but there's been a lot of "refining" and "re-engineering" as well.  Hopefully it's all for the better... Here's what the boat looked like a few weeks ago:

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So far, so good...  You can even get a glimpse here of the plans we have for an articulating bowsprit.  I imagine this is a first for the i550 class.  We shall see how it goes, but if nothing else you can't claim we're not being ambitious.  Speaking of ambitious....

We've had a cabin-ectomy!  There was some back-and-forth in the group as to whether the cabin should stay or go, but in the end we figured the reason we are building these boats is to race them.  If we wanted boats that offer generous accommodations, we wouldn't be building these boats.  Note that this is not a flush-deck super-extended cockpit design like Chris Beckwith's (http://i550paninaro.blogspot.com/).  There will still be a companionway, and it will still be possible for non-claustrophobics to go below.

You can also see above that the cockpit frames have indeed been trimmed back as promised to accommodate the widened cockpit.  We've also placed in stringers along the hull sides, and we've added "floor-to-ceiling" stringers along the hull bottom.  These are going to be part of a dry well in the center of the cockpit for sticking the outboard while racing as well as providing some flotation (at least when it's not being used for beer storage as well).

You can also see the cleats that we've added along the top edges of the frames.  These were created by ripping some 1x1 stock along the diagonal.  They were glued in using thickened epoxy and held temporarily in place with brads.  These will provide a solid gluing surface for the cockpit sole, cockpit sides, and decking to adhere to and should prevent having to send anyone below to attempt filleting and taping joints in an space about the size of a coffin.

Finally, we also went through a back-and-forth discussion in the past few weeks about whether we wanted to go with a keel- or deck-stepped mast.  Eventually we settled on a deck-step, and here's the solution we came up with:

The arc you see above is 6 thin pieces of old clear yellow cedar that have been laminated together.  Dave has had them sitting in his garage for a couple of decades, and they have finally found a home in our project.  It seems as stiff as a piece of steel, and it should be a great way of distributing the mast loads evenly.

The keel box has also been installed and plans for foils should start shaping up soon as well.  I'll update on both of these aspects soon...