Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Mike,
It’s an old boat and I assume that you are simply looking to pull the sails up and tension the forestay with the jib. The world has moved on since the IYE mast was made, and very acceptable halyards can be made at home using 3mm or 4mm dyneema/spectra. If you use unsheathed dyneema, you can create the splice yourself at home with the right equipment, and the internet is abundant with videos. If you used covered dyneema, you can sew the eyes in the ends using enough stitches. Dyneema is as strong as steel wire, and won’t have a strand break which can lead to damaged fingers.
An internet search for ‘dyneema main halyard GP14’ will bring up many resources.
Yours,
Steve.
Shaun,
Congratulations on getting yourself a GP14.
Generally there are a few ways of learning this sort of thing – going on a dinghy sailing course, which will teach you the basics like what all the bits of rope and wire are and do, being a member of a sailing club where there are people there to help you, getting a dinghy sailing book, books which will show you in diagrams how to rig boats, or looking on the internet for online (and free) dinghy sailing courses, where there will be explanations of how things go.
Depending on your preferred method of learning, where you are in the country (or the world), you may choose one method over another.
The best way of getting support from an online forum is to take pictures of what you are looking at, and then the collective brains can help you with specific questions. If we know roughly where you are in the country or the world, we might be able to put you in touch with someone local to you who can help.
…or, as Oliver recommends, take a look at the resources on the site.
My guess is that the distance between the fixings is 38mm, which is a standard size for cam cleats and the internet is abundant with “cam cleat 38mm” offerings, including from RWO.
“Well painted and maintained you can get away without marine ply.”
I agree, and I will say that if you are going to the effort of making the floorboards, and they are not considered disposable items, then making them from the ply which has waterproof glue and minimum voids is an investment in time sailing over time maintaining.
Grades of plywood are for other forums to discuss at length, but make sure that the wood glue is waterproof.
When I made the floorboards for 9121 (now a training boat at my local pond) I used a big piece of cardboard to make a template, and made the boards out of a single sheet of 1220 x 2440 BPW plywood sliced directly along the centreline, with appropriate stringers. As another poster has said, the floorboard needs to be flexible enough to bend and twist to get over the stern and under the thwart in an action which very much suggests that once fitted will stay in the boat.
Mike,
The discussion about whether a centreboard slot gasket is a good idea or not is played out on many forums, just search for ‘reason for centreboard slot gasket’ as a starting place and I’m sure you will soon have many hours of your life consumed by the arguments either way. The Wayfarer forum gives this subject a thorough beating.
Steve.
I believe that there are two reasons for installing stringers underneath the floorboards of a Mk2. Firstly, the floor is curved, and your floorboards are straight, so to remove the resulting pressure where the floorboards touch, and springiness, install stringers. Secondly, a physical barrier at the edge of the floorboard where it does not touch naturally removes the opportunity for something to get underneath and cleat at the very worse possible moment.
The floorboards need to sit on the hull of the boat, to spread the load of the humans, and not on the aluminium tubes which would be crushed by a concentration of weight.
And now the other part of the question – you definitely need floorboards in this style of hull to spread the weight of your feet. The hull was designed with the expectation of floorboards, and missing them will render stress cracks in the hull from the inside from your feet. One day you may crack the hull.
9mm ply is good, and a cardboard template is a useful tool to get the shape. If you compromise about 2cm off the width, both sides of the floorboards will come out of one piece of standard metric 8×4 ply cut exactly in half. It depends on how long you want them to last as to what quality of ply you use. WBP is OK for this (in my opinion) as small voids are manageable, don’t use indoor ply. The stringers are important, I simply epoxied mine onto the wood with weights to hold the bond until set, without screws or nails, and it all lasted many years. If you make it just right, you can twist a whole half-sheet of floorboard about (with the help of a friend) and fit from the stern, you don’t need to make 4 separate sections.
As for a finish, you need a rough surface but you will have to kneel on it, so sand can be rough on the knees. A way of making a fluffy surface is to varnish the floorboards (or paint them) and then on the last coat, sprinkle granulated sugar, allow to dry thoroughly and leave in the rain to dissolve the sugar – it leaves a lovely fluffy, non-slip surface that is surprisingly effective.
Oliver and I tag team on helping people with old boats – he specialises in wood and I specialise in old GRP / FRP boats, so he flicked this thread to me as he knows I have some stuff that might help.
> This looks like a laminated wooden block of some sort with a square cut out for the mast foot; how is this removed ??
There are two 10mm stainless steel bolts glassed into the hull and pointing upwards. The fabricated laminated wooden shape is fitted over the two bolts, and cinched down. Then, usually, the bolt holes are covered entirely in mastic to make removal difficult and rot less likely. Often the wood on the mast step foot is sufficiently rotten to be carefully nibbled away, revealing the bolt and the nut with washer which should undo cleanly. Then slide the rest of the wood off the embedded bolts. The bolts are precious, as in “I took good care of them so I did not have to find out how to replace them if I broke one off”.
You may not have enough left to know what the shape looked like, so this is a rough drawing, which at the time came with the measurements A-G, and those measurements have been lost in the many changes to the archives over the years, and I don’t have that vintage of boat any more to be able to remeasure. Hopefully you have enough to be able to work out the measurements.
Each laminated layer was made from either 18mm ply or three blocks of hardwood planed to 18mm and glued together. Some people drill a hole through the wood to let the square shape drain, and some say that is how the water gets inside the wood. The complex shape that mates the mast foot to the hull needs to be pretty close to spread the load of the mast, so is a craft to achieve and I used a facsimile of carbon paper to find the high spots and hand carved the complex shape until it was a close fit. A good foundation of Sikaflex 291i (other polyurethane bonding materials are available) can be used to cushion the imperfections in hand made manufacture and make a good bed for the mast step.
Clearly this design is a rot trap, so enjoy working out how to stop the rot from setting in, or accept that the wood is somewhat disposable and pretty much needs replacing every decade or so.
I hope this helps,
Steve.
Oliver is right – and remembered correctly that I did this to 9121, and documented the shape and the dimensions of the mast step. I’ve copied this from the GP14 Owners Online Community site where I posted this in 2014. It’s in the photo album 13292 (which is a FRP MKIV, and please don’t ask me how Yahoo does it’s thing).
<span style=”caret-color: #555555; color: #555555; font-family: ‘Source Sans Pro’, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;”>> One question remains when I come to do this job is what adhesive should I use for fixing the new ply strip to the underside of the step plate?</span>
Epoxy or Polyurethane Foaming Glue are both fine for this – note that Polyurethane Foaming glue only has strength if the parts fit tightly and are clamped tightly. I hope the diagram helps – the complex shape was too hard to draw, and my guess is that each boat is different. If I were to do this again I’d lay the mast step on a thin sheet of solid neoprene to make sure that the surfaces between the complex shape and the hull mated evenly.
I hope this helps.
I found the original posting – I *do not* have the dimensions – I recreated this diagram from memory, but I believe that there is value in seeing how the part is assembled from three layers of 18mm ply, and that the dimensions can be roughly got from the rotted remains of your mast step. If you have the measurements please add them to this posting.
