What this is about

We live by the D'Entrecasteaux Channel in Southern Tasmania. It, and much of the Tasmanian coast, offer amazing cruising possibilities. Previously, we owned an old, sturdy and fast 33 ft Huon pine sloop that we loved. The things it didn't offer - easy portability to other waters, shoal draft, beachability and the simplicity of dinghy-like sailing - are the things we gradually craved more and more.
For at least a few years I have thought that I should build an open, or mostly open, 20-something footer that would satisfy these urges. After much looking around at designs, we finally settled on the Stir Ven.
She is beautiful, fast, seaworthy, floats in 25cm of water and is designed as an adventure boat on which one can spend a few nights.
We hope she will be ready for use by the summer of 2012/13!

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

lid is on

Last weekend, I finally put the lid on my boat. All the plywood decking and the coach-house roof is now on.
The decks were pretty easy to do. I coated them with epoxy on the undersides first and then started from the bow and glued them on. I was pleased to see that there was good contact with all the deck beams and the decks all look fair. For the aft-most piece of deck, I glued on all the hardware doublers, then epoxy coated it and painted it first as I didn't fancy having to paint the undersides of it once it was glued on. I also painted the lower deck area first

looks like a stir ven now!

the excess deck was trimmed with a router

lower deck area painted (I like my two small planes)

the cabin seems to fit the boat well



The coach house roof required the building of a jig which I did out of MDF (left over from the crate that my plywood pieces came shipped in) connected with pine stringers. I then epoxy coated the 3 layers of the 4mm ply (each layer was made of 2 pieces finger-jointed together) first with neat epoxy then with slightly thickened epoxy. I clamped and weighted and screwed down the ply (only at the edges which were to be trimmed off anyway). This seemed to work really well.

The roof, when I put it on, was just perfect. It sat perfectly in contact with the bulkhead, coamings and cabin front. I am very impressed with Mr Vivier's designing skills.

I am right now in the midst of deciding what to do about the deck. I really planned on putting a laid/glued timber deck on but I am having serious second thoughts.

positives - it looks really, really beautiful, feels nice underfoot

negatives - more maintenance, laborious to make, small risk of water getting in and causing problems with the ply, more expensive.

Regarding the expense, I was quoted $1250 for teak!!!! $6.30 per metre of 30mm x 5mm strips. I also considered celery-top pine a local Tasmanian timber that is used for decks but it has a tendency to splinter. Vitex, that Mike Randall used is a great option. It's just like teak but much, much cheaper. If I decide to do the strips I will try and get Vitex.

At the moment though, I am tending towards glassing and painting the deck. It will be easier, cheaper and less maintenance over the long term.


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