30thJune
Second layer of 10mm bottom ply pre epoxied with peel ply. Next job is to pull off the peel ply and drill lots of holes for screws. Back to tiling tomorrow morning and might start gluing bottom on in the afternoon.
29th June
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First layer of bottom ply faired up and second layer cut and fitted ready for coating and glueing on. Going to do tiling on my sisters patio in the morning so hopefully doing pre coating in the afternoon. Got lots of other jobs to do so going to mix them up with working on Nuts to try to keep everybody happy.
27th June
Well actually after 1am 28 th.
An old throw back from times gone by - scoring the ply with a stanley knife for hopefully better penetration of epoxy. Bottom all glued and made 2 videos but file size too big to mess around with at the moment. Sleepy time!!
June 26th
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Faired up stringers and prefitted 1st layer of bottom ply. It will all be removed tomorrow and epoxy saturated on the inside with peel ply in prep for gluing on.
Also glued on cap strip on bow. I have made sure that the overall length of the boat is 5mm shorter than 5m. After glass and paint it will be very close but definitely under 5m. Dont want to claim I crossed the Atlantic in a 5m boat when is is a b...hair over.
June 23rd
Glued stbd bow ply on. Used 10mm ply. I tried a piece of 5mm ply with the intention to put 2 layers on but it cracked even though it was very easy to bend. The 10 mm took the shape even though it is under some pressure.
Sunday looks like another good day for fishing so might try my luck.
Been watching the news on the Titanic submarine disaster with great interest. I was involved with a submarine project and went on a test dive to 750m before it was certified to go to 1000m. Was a bit disconcerting that water leaked in the hatch till the pressure built up to seal the o rings. It was amazing. The water column is filled with the most amazing creatures. Took a tiny quadcopter down to try for a world record on the lowest altitude flight but never bothered to do anything about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg_dgJVO_2Y&t=54s The owner / builder was very smart and super safety conscious. It even had a kevlar cable over 1km long with a float that could be deployed for rescue. I was the captain on the mothership for some years and could speak to the sub and track its position and depth during dives and direct them to preplanned targets. Subs name - LULA 1000
21 st June (shortest night here)
No photos and not much happened. Humidity 90% so didnt attempt to glue anything. (epoxy doesnt like humidity) Spent some time faring plywood and preparing for next gluing session.
Had nice chat to Glen from Terciera (Azores) who is also planning to build a Setka A for the challenge in 2025. I understand he has already taken part in the Jester Challenge and planning to do it again before the Setka challenge. Wow. Busy sailor. I offered to give him my mould for the keel and he is maybe planning to sail here to pick it up. Would be great to meet up and share ideas and experiences. Really nice to know there is another boat from the Azores planning to do the Atlantic Challenge considering we have to cross almost half the Atlantic just to get to the start. For me the most difficult challenge is getting back to the Azores from the Caribbean. I have some sailing experience (26 Atlantic crossings -North and South -plus some Indian Ocean stuff) but havnt been sailing for many years and body warranty expired a long time ago.
As long as Im still moving I will continue.😅
The Beginning of a New Adventure
66 years old. So now what? I am not yet ready to join the pipe and slippers brigade and spend my days watching TV.
So I have decided (from the inspiration of Nathan Levin) to build another boat, a sailing yacht, and sail across the Atlantic in a singlehanded race. I havn't been sailing for about 25 years so it is time to see if I still can. My budget is limited so I have settled on a 5m Setka A, designed by Janusz Maderski.
I ordered the plans from Janusz and spent many a long hour perusing, planning, researching, and finally ordering materials. I live on a small island in the middle of the Atlantic where things like good quality marine ply, epoxy, etc, are not available. Thank goodness for Mr Google (one thing we have here is fast internet - 200 Mbps).
Oak for keel bearers, A4 nuts and bolts, 316 stainless steel for fittings - forget it. All got to be found online and ordered. Fortunately just returned from the Netherlands after selling our canal cruiser and sent a big box to the Azores full of goodies.
Been away from home for over 2 months but now starting to get back into building "Nuts"
The Start
While waiting for ordered plywood and epoxy to arrive (ply from Spain and epoxy from Portugal) I decided to start on the keel
The Very Beginning
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| Big lump of wood on my tiny lathe made my teeth rattle till it was round. |
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| Getting closer to the required shape |
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| Planing it down in half |
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| In half, ends finished by hand, and covered in wax |
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| Made box to make concrete mould |
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| Some steel reinforcing to fit in mould box |
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| Ready for pouring concrete |
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| All poured and now just have to wait |
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| Box demolished and plug pulled out. Just waiting to dry out and fill with lead |
The Keel
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| Very wasteful to cut the design out so cut it without the little stubs at the top |
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| I cut small pieces from offcuts and bevelled them 50% each side to weld on |
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| Welded the stubs on and ground them flat |
Chopped up an old gas bottle and played with my welding machine and grinder to make a container to melt lead in.
Ready for pouring lead. Made small fire around gas bottle filled with lead which was shielded by cement blocks (but open on the bottom for air with the help of a little fan which got a bit melted). The lead melted quicker than expected and the system worked very well.
First pour with the help of Nathan who is also building a Setka (and got me started on this adventure)
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Happy as a pig in Sh1t at the result. We poured the second half and Nathan whizzed home to get his lead and we poured his 2 halves while the fire and mould were hot.
Setka kit arrives!!
Plywood arrived in good shape all the way from Spain via truck to Lisbon and ship to Azores. Now just got to convert this block of wood into a boat. As you can see my workshop is in bit of disarray with many other projects on the go.
Fiddling with frames
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| The very beginning: actually starting with some bits of wood |
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| Transom frame |
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| Frames moving along |
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| Getting bigger. Still tiny but a small boat after all |
These frames were made in early spring so weather still too cold for epoxy. I took the frames into our house, where we have a wood burning stove, and placed them on the roof beams above the stove.
Glued up all the stringers and finished the frames and flew off to France to move our small canal cruiser from Roanne in France to Roermond in the Netherlands to put it up for sale in order to pay for this project.
Back home
Got back to Faial Azores towards end of May after a very interesting cruise in complicated conditions on the French canals. Low water and weed were the problems.
A new beginning, or second start
I see in the Setka Atlantic Challenge conditions you must have a blog of construction with at least the frames up on the strongback.
So here goes.
Frames going up.
Some progress with frames set up and stringers going on
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| A few more bits of wood |
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| Attacking the stringers with planes to fair up |
Crappy photo of transom prep. I am not a great fan of sanding and epoxy saturation in compact positions so am doing a pre saturation with epoxy and peelply for the inside of all plywood. It is great fun as I have never worked with peelply before. Actually very easy.
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| Pulling the peelply off |
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| Another pic of my first ever fiddle with peelply |
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| Transom ply glued on |
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| Pre fitting plywood and checking for fairness |
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| Removed all the ply and saturating the inside with epoxy and peel ply |
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| Stbd side glued on |
Port side is ready to glue but very humid today so not messing with epoxy.
Well that is the progress so far - 18th June.
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