Trimaran - Especially Searunner - Owners

[Rotten Ricky]

"Do do you have any interior pics? I like the green trim and canvas work."
Pat.


Hi Pat,

I gradually converted the colour to traditional blue as I simply do not like green. Dumb, I know... I will include an earlier pic of starboard profile. You can see the "Clipper-like sheer-lines that appeal to me. This is not the cold "Tupperware-meets-Star-Wars" styling of modern multihulls!

I have been searching for interior pics but without luck so far, but I am in the middle of re-organizing and making back-ups of my pics, so sorry that interior pics are not available right now - but it is what you would imagine. The few interior pics are fairly limited being that the subject area is so close to the lens. It has fairly basic painted wooden shapes and surfaces that I have been trying to upgrade, but the higher priority reconstruction has meant that the boat interior has basically been a construction site for years! Will try to get interior pics again soon.

While the relatively nautical-racy look of the SC is partly due to the low profile of the coach house, I think as a cruiser it could have been about 8" higher without losing its appeal. This would have given headroom clearance inside and meant that the wing berths would have been far less claustrophobic, as the berth-to-ceiling clearance is only about 20". I can handle it, but some others can't. Again, this is a cruiser - not a racer.

I do have plans to build a solid dodger, something so essential in these cold and rainy north-west waters, but I will go to a lot of trouble to make sure that the styling of it is congruent with the rest of the vessel.

Despite the grumbles about the centre-board, I take my hat off to John Marples, who has infinitely more training and experience than I do, for creating a wonderful trimaran. Too bad not more of them have been built.


Cheers, RR.

[sddmack]

for the owners: is de-lamination a common issue with glass over ply self-build boats?

it doesnt seem to be discussed very often.

thanks

[longjonsilver]

Originally Posted by sddmack

for the owners: is de-lamination a common issue with glass over ply self-build boats?

i have never seen a boat build itself.

Seriously tho, polyester over plywood is problematic, epoxy over plywood is long lasting, if the epoxy is protected with grey primer.

blessings
jon

[Roy M]

It's not discussed, at all,with epoxy-based fiberglass over plywood. If you drop a winch handle on epoxy-glass, you MAY end up with a star-shaped (asterisk) impact fracture, which eventually grows in size as hot sun and cool nights expand/contract the glass and allow water to enter. This results over time into a dry rot issue.

Polyester resin based glass over plywood behaves differently. The impact breaks the tenuous bond to the plywood, resulting in a bubble of the the laminate that isn't necessarily seen at first. After multiple expansion/contractions the bubble grows in diameter, eventually cracking and allowing fresh water, from rain, washdowns and dew, to rapidly enter and rot the plywood. The longer it allowed to so means big problems down the road.

Epoxy costs a lot more than polyester. It lasts far longer, also. My SR 40 is now almost 43 years old. The only dry rot has been from water seeping through fastener holes (usually wet hatch hinges) that show up occasionally.

[Kaimana]

Originally Posted by sddmack

for the owners: is de-lamination a common issue with glass over ply self-build boats? it doesnt seem to be discussed very often. thanks

Hey Sddmack

I built my SeaRunner 25, my SeaRunner 37, a 56-foot sailing fishing tri I designed myself, a 24-foot fishing boat, a 24-foot proa, an 18-foot proa, and those are just the boats I've built for my family.

I've been building boats professionally since 1970, and in those days all you could get was polyester resin. I switched to epoxy in 1976, which was Shell 140 with Versamid 125 hardener, then to a WEST-system clone in 1985; cost half as much and just as strong.

Even the "good" variety of polyester, which is called isophthalic resin, has POOR adhesion qualities compared to epoxy. The "bad" polyester, orthophthalic, which is what a lot of the older home-builts were built with, is even worse.

And glass jobs done with either of these are prone to delamination and loss of adhesion. Things that help this are: letting the paint wear thin over the glass, small dings in the glass that let water through so that the wood underneath undergoes swelling and shrinking as it alternately wets and dries.

Bottom line, any time you repair an older home-built, use epoxy for both gluing and glassing.

And for building a new boat? Using epoxy is cheaper, in fact it costs less than half as much as polyester.

How can I say that when epoxy is $90/gallon and polyester is $45/gallon? Easy. An epoxy layup is three times as strong, and has three times the puncture resistance as the same layup with polyester has.

So you can put one layer of 6 oz with epoxy on the boat, and it's the SAME strength and puncture resistance as 3 layers of 6 oz with polyester resin. But you pay for and use THREE times as much resin and cloth for the polyester layup, which totally nullifies the "cost advantage" that $45/gallon polyester has over epoxy. In fact, when you compare these two, the polyester layup costs almost TWICE AS MUCH as the epoxy one. And they're the SAME strength!

Now if you add in the fact that the polyester layup doesn't stick to the wood worth a darn, it burns your hands and skin, and the hateful, nose-burning experience that working with polyester is, there's no comparison: it's epoxy hands-down over polyester.

With Warm Aloha, Tim

[Roy M]

Bravo, Tim! You made the case for epoxy. Using polyester is essentially a waste of resources, adds useless weight, and is a greater danger to the builder's health. Aloha!

[sddmack]

Thanks for all of the quick and informative replies. This thread is awesome.

The two aspects of building a boat that I am most fearful of or find most intimidating (other than the 2000-4000 hours) is fiber-glassing and putting in the diesel engine.

Maybe I should find a fiber-glassing hobby first. It just seems like it would be very unforgiving when/if I screw up.

[Roy M]

Why don't you build a dinghy first, including painting the finished boat? You'll be able to use it on your completed big boat, as well as having fun rowing and sailing a much cheaper craft.

[sddmack]

Originally Posted by Roy M

Why don't you build a dinghy first, including painting the finished boat? You'll be able to use it on your completed big boat, as well as having fun rowing and sailing a much cheaper craft.

I thought about that exact thing when I was looking into molded ply builds. If I screw it up it wont really matter much and I can probably build a small one in my two car garage.

[Kaimana]

A small boat first is a great idea! You know what? Try building a small square box first, before the small boat. Use the same techniques, glue, fasteners, and so on. Hard to mess up a box. You'll be much more comfortable with the tools, fasteners, glue, and so on when you start the boat. And wood boxes are useful!

You hear me run on in the forum about how I've built boats since I was yittle. I try to be humble about what I know, which is a lot. But there's a simple reason I know as much as I do.

I went into boats poor.

If I'd had money, I would have just bought a boat. I would have bought sails, and hired someone to put the engine in. But I was poor, and I REALLY wanted a boat.

So I had to learn how to build it myself. When it came time to put the first engine into the first one of my boats that had one, I had to put it in. Fuel system? Figure it out, Tim. Exhaust system, charging system, lights, wiring, and switch panel? Figure it out.

Sure, I made mistakes. I studied what other people had done, a lot, before I tried it myself. Hung around boatyards and asked dumb questions of people who were way more patient with me than I would have been. People helped a lot just by letting me watch. And there's nothing like showing up with a couple of six-packs after the quitting bell has rung, to get boatbuilders talking.

I had teachers along the way, like my friend Becky, who got me into her Dad's sail loft and taught me how to make sails (because I couldn't afford to buy them), and Mr. Kawamata, who taught me how to fish Hawaiian-style. I will be eternally grateful to all of them.

When I built my third sailboat, it was designed for commercial fishing. So ditto I had to learn refrigeration and hydraulics.

And none of it was really that hard. It just looks hard when you're at the beginning with no experience. And each thing you learn makes it that easier to learn the next thing.

As someone far wiser than me said:

"We, who have done so much with so little for so long, are now qualified to do anything with nothing".

With Warm Aloha, Tim

[Kaimana]

Just woke up, should have included this in the last post.

These three books are INVALUABLE if you're planning on building a wooden/epoxy/fiberglass boat of any size yourself, whether it's a monohull, a catamaran, trimaran, proa or ??:

1. SeaRunner Construction Manual by Jim Brown, download for free here: Download the Searunner Construction Manual … | OutRig Media and sometimes you can find used copies of the print version. Mine was given to me by Jim himself in 1977, and I still have it.

2. The Gougeon Brothers on boat construction: https://www.amazon.com/Gougeon-Broth.../dp/1878207504

3. Russell Brown's Epoxy Basics manual here: EPOXY BASICS

With Warm Aloha, Tim

[sddmack]

thanks Tim.....I have #1 in PDF and #3 in hard copy. I also have Russell Brown's Scarfing Basics. I can look into ordering #2.

I might actually start with something super simple....like a planter box lol. Although I might have to find food grade friendly epoxy if there is such a thing.

I even thought about making my own heavy ice chest...glassed ply on the outside and glass over formed closed cell SPF on the inside.

[Tusitala]

try building a small dinghy. Richard Woods has a small tortured ply one ( 3mm?) called Crayfish. I built one with my son when he was 11 as a fun father/son project. It's still our dinghy almost 19 years later. And again I would recommend a boat of such size/displacement that you can use and outboard for auxiliary power, you can save a huge amount of build time that way.

Pat

[sddmack]

Originally Posted by Tusitala

try building a small dinghy. Richard Woods has a small tortured ply one ( 3mm?) called Crayfish. I built one with my son when he was 11 as a fun father/son project. It's still our dinghy almost 19 years later. And again I would recommend a boat of such size/displacement that you can use and outboard for auxiliary power, you can save a huge amount of build time that way.

Pat

I like the Woods Duo 10ft row dinghy.

[Tusitala]

a much nicer boat, don't think that design existed when we built our. we would have needed the nesting version to fit. FWIW I think our Crayfish with oarlocks, gunnel guard and storage compartments weighed in around 48lbs.