Author: Yrvind

Most ropes have two ends. A good thing for the man that wants to steer from inside and also from the outside. Many a time a I have woken up when the boat got of course. May bee the wind had increased or something else was the matter. Climbing out of the worm bunk and slightly adjusting the rudder was all there was to it. When the weather is squally and demands many adjustments it is tiring. Yrvind Ten will have an inside and an outside steering position. As it takes some time to find the right setting it is a good thing if the two steering adjustments don’t affect each other.

One such system is to have self  tailing bottom acted winches under the aft deck, the axis being sealed by stuffing boxes to prevent water from entering the sleeping room. As I have two rudders and no line can take compression I need four winches. (The winches are under construction). This will handle the inside steering. Luckily a line has two ends. From the winch the line leeds to the tiller handle where you get a lot of leverage. From there it continues to a point close to above the rudder axis where the leverage is minimum. When the line is tensioned the force is equal all along the the line but the moment depends on the leverage so if pulling on the rope near the rudder axis the tiller will move. The pictures below will hopefully help to illuminate the idea.

Above. The mock up. One of the rudder heads in the foreground. The four winches are in the background.

The lines for starboard and port swing comes out of a fairleed and goes to a small bollard. The bollard will reduce the force  – which can be great when surfing down a breaker –  by 90% and direct the line to a cam cleat.

Steering with lines from the swimming platform or from the main hatch or from the mast topp. The fairleed is close to the rudder axis. The lever is small and the rudder handle is swinging.

Above, the four winches. My bunk is just below.

To be continued…

Regards Yrvind.

Good New Year.

Miki from Wienna is here again to help with computer modelling and wideo.

I have had an eye operation. I was nearly blind on the left eye. For a man that has ten thousand books that was bad news.

It was the macula. A nice doctor drained the eye did her work and filled the eye with air. After a while water started to leak in. I saw the world like through a diving mask half filled with water. later only a bubble was left. Then the bubble was gone. Then I could look up. I had been laying on my stomach for two weeks.

However I had been thinking on my boat. I had decided that I needed a new rudder system.

Below the old one.

Here is the new system.

It gives me more place on the swimming platform. I can also stand there when sculling. The rudders foreward en will be under the platform preventing them from ventilating when the boat is travelling fast, that is surfing down a breaker.

There will also be a lot of fine weather. For those days there will be a side hatch close to the water on each side. See above.

Above chart table and book support.

Above chart table from side. It can be angled will slide and by changing the fulcrum can move up and down. Also when on other tack it can be angled from the other side. I will spend a lot of time reading my 100 kilo books during the planned 600 days voyage.

To be continued…

Regards Yrvind

Grigory visited me last summer. He came sailing in his little boat across the Baltic.

After looking at my boat he volentered to publish my book in russian.

Today I recived a registred mail from Moscow.

Inside was the book.

The back cover shows 20 feet Bris, the boat I built in my late mothers basements route 1972 – 1976.The price is 5€ or 220 rubles if I got it right. For copies please contact Grigory.parusa@narod.ru

http://parusanarod.ru/bib/books/yrvind/index.htm

I have been away given talks and it has gone well. In Sandviken I got help from small boat builder Martin Stenberg. He is building a chinerunner of his own design close to Enigma. In Germany Henning Saal is building an other Enigma. Henning is helping me to produce electricity. He is converting an electric bicycle engine to a muscle driven generator. Hopefully I can show more about it after he has done further trails. I am grateful for the generous help giving to me by the small boat community.

I have also been talking in Norrköping, the site of The Swedish Transport Agency. Nice and friendly people but some of the laws they try to enforce are ridicules. One such is the EU:s RCD the recreational craft directive. The RCD forbids Small Ocean going boats. When I exhibited my boat in Stockholm I got a note stating that I was forbidden to sell it or use it. I asked them what they were going to do about that. If you sell it we will destroy the boat, they said.
When I lived on the west coast a farmer having a peaceful breakfast was disturbed by shots being fired. Looking out he saw his cows lying dead on the field. His crime. He had not put a plastic earmark on his cattle. This is contemporary Sweden.
But hidden beyond the bureaucratic rules there is always a small cheap functional solution to problems. Before our good bureaucrats act,  I will be beyond the horizon.

Photo abouve me and my boat with paper from the Swedish transport Agency forbidding to use it or sell it.

A child understands that a small boat is more seaworthy than a big one. It is a fact that a small boat designed and built according to the right thinking is safer than a bigger one. Big boats create dangerous forces. Complicated technology is needed to control such forces. The more complicated a boat is the more vulnerable it is, especially in a marine environment. Only in a small, simple, functional, boat does one have absolute control when the sea brings down its ruthless fury.

Photo above small creatures are stronger than big ones an ant can lift more than ten times its own wheight

Photo abouve: Small things are strong: Mary Edson Taylor 1901 at 63 years of age this coragues schoolteacher went down the Niagara falls and survived. Her craft was small and strong, now more than a 100 years later with modern composites we can make even stronger small craft.
Back at work I continue with my mock-ups one after the other, each one an improvement on the previous. It is a creative process similar to writing and when you write you always make a draft and rewrite. Not so in boatbuilding. Why?  Well, we got the Recreational Craft Directive with its bureaucratic rules that puts the builder in a corner where he do not have much alternatives.

Photo abouve part of the saloon.

Photo abouve click once or twice to enlarge. One of the many discarded hatches.

To be continued…

Regards Yrvind

For some time now I have been experimenting with hatches and their locking devices. I have made some progress.
The reason I am so thorough is that I plan to use the same system of hatches and the samen layout of the interior but modified on the next boat. Yrvind Ten has turned out to be a very sympathetic boat so far and I have kind of fallen in love with her. Her only fault is that she is slow. That can problem easily be resolved by keeping the displacement but making her longer. But of course then she would be able to set a world record for shortness.

Being faster she would not need to have so much loading capacity for a given distance. The length displacement increases with the cube so a longer waterline quickly pays dividend. For example increasing her from ten feet to 18 will decrease the displacement length ratio from 868 to 162 (I include a displacing bolted on bathing platform) the lower number the faster boat.

Below are pictures of my experiments. They are to be continued until I am satisfied. Click once or twice to enlarge.

Stainless steel against stainless steel can seeze up so in the pictures below i have pressed aluminum bronze threads into the fitting to reduce friction.

Tuesday 15 of October I will be interviewed on the Swedish national radio P1 at 16:30, world events permitting.

Wednesday 16 of October I will give an public illustrated talk in Trosa at Folkets Hus 19:00
http://trosa.com/event/foredrag-med-sven-yrvind/

Friday 18 October 13:00 I will give a talk at Bergslagens Industridag Göransson Arena in Sandviken

Then it is back to more experiments.

To be continued…

Regards Yrvind.

I am now working on the foreward part of the boat. Here is a mock up of the hatch and locking system that divides the boat into a wet and a dry compartment. The sleeping room is in the dry part. I belive that if you can keep yourself warm and dry you be fine in any weather.

The reason the wingscrews only have one wing is to put their center of gravity excentric. This will prevent vibrations to unscrew them when they not under pressure.

The hatch slides up and down. That mowement is guided by a labyrinth. The hatch can also mowe unrestrained towards and away from a deep gasket of 2×3 centimeter section. Turning four M10 screws will compresse it agoainst the gasket and the passage will be waterproof. This is handy in a storm when the boat is likely to capsize. That kind of conditions do not occur all the time. Therefore it is enough to close the hatch with wood pieces once it is in position. Then it gets into the labyrinth and can not fall down. This is quickly done and make it spray proof. Good enough for beating against a freash breeze with the main deck hatch open.

The above may not be totally clear due to my incomplete command of the english language. The belove pictures may help to elucidate. Click once or twice to enlarge.

Abouve the hatch

Above the two stage locking system. Fisrst I turn the wood piece then if needed for mor pressure I turn the screw.

Abowe a sketch.

To be continued…

Regards Yrvind

Michael from Austria is here as a volunteer helping me with my project. He phoned one evening and now he sits here smiling.
The centerboard case are in place and we are doing the mock up of the forward part of the boat. We both agree that the seats are comfortable and that I will get a lot of stowage.

Something else. A light bulb

I am still grappling with the question of how to get electricity during the winter in the southern ocean. I did not really understand the mechanical energy equivalent so I was planning to use a cranking device. Maybe my ignorance was due to the fact that I never had actually seen electricity. True I many times have seen high voltage discharge but that is not electricity.
750 watts of electricity is equivalent to one horsepower one horsepower. One horsepower is to lift 75 kilos every second one meter against gravity. A 75 watts light bulb is consuming one tenth of a horsepower. I being soon 75 years old and have lost half of my muscle mass will be happy if I can produce one twenty of a horsepower for a little time.
Outside my kitchen window across the street there is a 75 watt bulb wastfully burning day and night. I only eat two times a day but I take my time so I have had plenty of time to reflect on that bulb. During summer I do not notice the light because the friendly sun is shining most of the day. I have been living here in Västervik since 2005. That is about 8 years every year has 31536000 seconds. This means that the mechanical equivalent of keeping that bulb burning that time is equal to hauling 28 cars from sea level to the top of Mount Everest. When I was a child I was told to switch of the light when leaving the room.
Thinking of the light bulb across the street have made me considering towing a turbine to charge my batteries. Using a wind turbine is not practical due to the many times I will be capsized and the danger of being hit by the fast rotating propeller.

To be continued…

Regards Yrvind.

The sound is a bit weak, please increase the volume on your computer.

The idea of using ridges to guide the centerboards up and downhaul did not work to my satisfaction.

The new aproach is to use fairleads. I made up a few of carbon fibre. Click once or twice to enlarge.

Before I glued them on to the centerboard case I dusted the surface with cupper powder using a salt shaker. The purpose is to reduce marine growth and to make the surface a bit more wear resistance.

Below is the fairleads in place.

I will make new rollers with a hollow in them so that the line are keept in the middle and be less likely to jam. A jammed line is no good.

The rudder arrangement is now working to my outmost satisfaction. Only thing is the stainless steel structure is far to heavy. Therefore I will make a new one of composite surfaces, keeping the same geometry.

Once I had that thought I realised that the new structure can have the shape of a tank. A closed surface is strong.

The use of a tank way back is to fill it with saltwater running before gales. The yellow 15 feet boat I 2011 sailed with to Martinique had mowing ballast in form of lead. I could move them from side to side but also to the very back of the boat. It was a good idea.

It also struck me that in heavy rain I could collect extra water to do some washing when the sun later comes out.

Also it could cive some extra flotation.  The platform is bolted on and therefore its lenght is not measured according to the harmonized standard of the EU:s Recreational Craft Directive, besides few things are more stupid than measuring a boat by lenght, or in fact any volyme by lenght except if they are of the same shape.

I take care to make the details good on this boat in order to have experience of them and use them on the next proper small boat.

To be continued…

Regards Yrvind.

The ropes in the centerboard did not run smothly so I am working on an other much better system. More about that later.

The rudder system is also being uppgraded. When I designed it I had in mind the boat sailing to windward healing 20 degrees so the rudder axis is 20 degrees out to compensate for that and also 20 degrees slope that they will not catch seeweed and other things . But – my rudders will also serve as brakes instead of a drouge. I just angle them outwards. Now I realised that that will give lift to the aft helping to pitch pole the boat.

The outward angle is now reduced to about ten degrees becouse that is better downwind and the aft to about 5 degrees. Tan for 5 and 0 degrees are nearly the same in this context. Of course it would be even better to angle them forward becouse that will suck the aft end of the boat down but that has to be balanced against catching things. It is a compromise.

Also I widened the platform 18 cm and lengtened her by 5 cm to enable me to have a longer tiller and so that the bathining ladder will not interfere with the line system.

The pictures below show before and after the change. The new line arrangement is not shown.

after change

To be continued…

Regards Yrvind.