Wooden Boat Plans And Kits | The Cockpit Project Installing the Teak Decking

Wooden Boat Plans And Kits

The synthetic teak was waiting for us when we arrived back home. The package included 8 tubes of M1 polyether adhesive, a serrated trowel and 13 precut pieces of the teak material. They had sent me a first article back in August that didnt come close to fitting properly, but we worked out the problems and they remade that part and shipped it along with the rest of the pieces. The first thing I did was check fit each one on the deck, and they all fit reasonably well. 

Once I was sure all the pieces fit, I taped off each recess, applied the adhesive and installed each piece one at a time. The finished cockpit looks a lot better than the weathered teak look that we had before. The total cost for the teak, adhesive and trowel was $1,009.00. I added two rolls of tape, some sandpaper, a carpet roller and a little acetone so the total material cost added up to about $1,040.00. It took about 20 hours spread out over a week to install all the pieces. 

I started with 3M #2050 masking tape which worked well. When I ran out of it I tried  #2090 blue tape. The lower tack allowed the M1 adhesive to penetrate between the tape and the teak which I had to sand off after it was cured. 

I applied the adhesive with a caulking gun then spread it with the trowel.

The adhesive was evenly spread across the seat, with a thick bead of it around the perimeter.

I used the carpet seam roller to press the teak into the adhesive. To get it to lay perfectly into the recess, I started rolling in the center and worked toward the edges, squeezing out any excess adhesive.

I pulled the tapes as soon as possible. The temperatures hovered near 100 degrees every day while I was doing the installation, so the adhesive started curing almost instantly. 

The finished installation looks good. The black "caulking lines" are aligned within about 1/8" from piece to piece.

Of course the project wouldnt be complete without new cockpit cushions. 

Were pretty happy with the final results and now that Plasteak has accurate digital files for the teak inserts, it should be easy for any Beneteau 423 to be fitted with synthetic teak. Feel free to call on me if you have any questions about the material or the process.

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Boat Plans Catamaran | Five Weeks in La Cruz

Boat Plans Catamaran

Weve been enjoying our stay in La Cruz for the last five weeks, spending most of this time hanging out with friends and getting Finisterra reprovisioned and ready to head further south.  The boat is ready to go and the weather looks good for a Thursday afternoon departure so around noon well slip out of the marina and set a course for Cabo Corrientes. After rounding the cape Finisterra will head for Tenacatita where well spend a day or two before moving on to Barra de Navidad.

Scenes from La Cruz:

Philos Bar used to be the local hangout for the cruising crowd but as more and more people from colder climes, especially Canadians, call La Cruz home in the winter, the music has evolved to accommodate their taste.  The place is open during the daytime, but is usually pretty empty until around six in the evening, so there plenty of room for Philo to park his motorcycle.

Philos is basically a big palapa with a thatched roof. This is the view looking straight up from "our" table. 

Cruisers still inscribe boat names on the wall at Philos

On another note, the cruising community is always in a state of flux with boats arriving and departing every day. Some stay on the hook in the anchorage, others stay in the marina, some spent a few days or weeks in both places.  Finisterra stayed in the marina because I had several projects I wanted to finish. A new arrival, the Swan 60, "Thor" also elected to stay in the marina.

Brand new Swan 60. There is a 2011 Swan 60 listed on Yachtworld for $3.1 million. My guess is that this one came off the showroom floor for something more than that.

Designed by German Frers, the 60 is a good example of Nautors evolution from heavier to lighter boats, with perhaps some Italian influence since the firm was acquired by Leonardo Ferragamo in 1998. Drawing courtesy of Swan Yachts.

Over the last couple of weeks while I was busy varnishing the caprails on Finisterra, Thor was a few slips away with a crew of four or five guys getting her ready to sail. It was always interesting to wander over around sunset and have a look at their daily progress.

This boat has only four winches. All sail controls, including the vang and cunningham are managed by pushbutton.

Carbon fiber standing rigging. Each shroud is made up of multiple thin pultruded carbon/epoxy rods encased in a synthetic jacket such as Spectra fiber. Shroud terminations are usually machined titanium fittings. Here they are connected to under-deck chainplates.

I love it when excellent design crosses paths with superb craftsmanship.

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Boat Plans Canada | Cruising the Costa Alegre

Boat Plans Canada

Finisterra departed from La Cruz on Thursday, January 8th, bound for beautiful Barra de Navidad. Our course took us in a southwesterly direction from La Cruz toward Cabo Corrientes, or Cape of Currents. After rounding the cape, we turned southeast along what is known as the Costa Alegre, or Happy Coast, so named because of the many beautiful coves and beaches along this coast all the way to Manzanillo.

After we left La Cruz the wind filled in nicely, about 12 knots out of the northwest. I hoisted the mainsail with a single reef and unrolled the jib. I put the reef in the main with the expectation that wed find plenty of wind around the Cape, as it often blows pretty hard there. We rounded the Cape around sunset with about 18 knots of wind on the beam, a bit lighter than expected, so it was a very pleasant sail. As night fell we bore off on a southeasterly course and the wind dropped to about 5 knots, still out of the northwest, so we started the engine and motored with the jib furled and main sheeted in tight. Its about 130 miles from La Cruz to Barra and we averaged about 6.5 knots over that distance and arrived early the next morning. We took a berth in the marina at the Grand Bay hotel and spent the next few days relaxing and exploring.

Grand Bay Hotel in Barra de Navidad

The marina is across a shallow channel from the town of Barra. To get there we took the dinghy and landed at a concrete sea wall adjacent to the old Sands Hotel.  To keep the wall from damaging the dinghy we put out a stern anchor.

Its not yet the tourist season in Barra so the town was pretty quiet, and this policeman was relaxing on a very pleasant morning. Notice his hat at lower right. 

Even in La Cruz, the marina was guarded by sub-machine gun toting policia. They are always friendly once they get to know you.

We had lunch at a waterfront restaurant. While their parents enjoyed lunch, local kids had a blast jumping off the railing.

We left Barra on January 13th and motored in no wind a few miles to Bahia Santiago and anchored in the northwest corner of the bay. The water temperature hovered around 83 degrees so it could have been very pleasant swimming, but it was too murky to see much. We spent a day walking along the beach and then took Finisterra around Punta Santiago and anchored off the Las Hadas resort for the next five days. Its a nice anchorage and we had a lot of fun hanging out with friends from S/V Unleashed. Unfortunately the cost to land a dinghy in the marina is now 200 Pesos per day (about $14 USD). There were half a dozen other boats in the anchorage and everyone grumbled about the cost of landing here. We have noticed a lot of price increases in everything, including food, fuel, slip rents, etc. everywhere weve been in Mexico compared to last year. While it is still possible to live more cheaply here than the US, things are changing quickly.

The beach in Bahia Santiago

Finisterra departed Las Hadas the morning of January 19th. This part of the Mexican coast, from Bahia Banderas all the way to Huatulco is known for its light air and for the next 185 miles we motored over a flat sea and no more than three or four knots of wind, with the exception of a few occasional puffs out of the northeast. The water temperature rose to 84 degrees and humidity hovered in the 80% range. With these conditions the air is always a bit hazy. We spent a good part of the day dodging long lines but eventually got far enough out to sea to avoid them. Of course that put is out in the shipping lane, where there is a lot of traffic. Fortunately we are able to spot ships with our AIS system and we had no trouble avoiding them.

Finding Internet access is always an interesting, or frustrating, experience in Mexico. At the Paradise restaurant overlooking the anchorage we found a well stocked bar, free wifi, and a big screen TV where we watched Seattles improbable win over the Packers.

Finisterra anchored off Las Hadas

We anchored on the northeast side of Isla Grande, Ixtapa around 1700 on January 20th and immediately jumped overboard for a refreshing swim. While at anchor there we scrubbed Finisterras bottom, which had developed a fair amount of growth since it was last cleaned in La Cruz. The next day we came into Marina Ixtapa, where well stay a few days before heading south to Acapulco.

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Boat Designs And Plans | Five Days in Yellowstone

Boat Designs And Plans

It was a long drive from Mammoth to Twin Falls. We took the "road less traveled" through Ely and Wells, Nevada. There is a lot of open space in central Nevada and we enjoyed the solitude of the open road in one of the more remote parts of this country. We arrived in Twin Falls a little before sunset and had a nice dinner not far from the spectacular Snake River gorge. The next morning we were on the road early and arrived in West Yellowstone, MT in the early afternoon. This became our base of operations for next five days, from which we made day trips into the National Park.

We had planned to arrive in Yellowstone a couple of days after Labor day, thinking that with kids back in school, the park would be fairly uncrowded. Apparently a million other people had the same idea. The place was packed from dawn to dark. In several places, the very large parking lots were maxed out, with cars backed up on the roads. It would have been easy to let the crowds ruin our time there, but we made the best of it, and did the tourist things along with the rest of the tourists, but also found lots of outlying places where the crowds and tour buses didnt go. The weather was near perfect every day and the hiking was excellent. We fished the Madison River and caught only a single brown trout. There were fishermen in drift boats, in waders and lining the banks at nearly every likely looking spot on the Madison, Firehole, Yellowstone and Gibbon rivers so we didnt fish much at all. I could bore you with dozens of photos of geysers and other fantastic Yellowstone attractions, but they look just like all the others youve already seen or taken.

After five days of beautiful scenery in Yellowstone, we drove south to Jackson, Wyoming and spent a few days in Grand Teton National Park. The crowds were much smaller and we did a couple of wonderful hikes. In the evenings we watched elk and moose, bears and coyotes in the meadows and along the banks of the Snake river and Moose Creek.

When it was finally time to head home, we decided to take Highway 189 out of Jackson and pick up I-15 south out of Salt Lake City, which would take us back to our hometown in southern California. On the way out of Jackson, the news on the radio was that I-15 had been flooded out just north of Las Vegas, so we changed course and took I-80 west to Winnemucca then south to Bishop and down Highway 395 toward home.

We arrived home a couple of nights ago to find Finisterra wearing a thick coat of grime but otherwise in good shape. Now were back at work getting her ready for her next adventure.

Yellowstone:

People visit Yellowstone in all kinds of vehicles but none as cool as this one. Notice the econobox parked next to it.

Peregrine falcon

Bull Elk

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