Author: Yrvind

Click once or twice to enlarge the picture.

Yesterday I took delivery of a new kayak. Should I spend time enjoying myself on the water instead of building on my boat?

Lutherans would say of course not. In defense of myself I say it is for my health.

If I do not take time build my health I have to spend time being sick.

And what is health worth?

Ask the sick man.

It is a LISA  VKV-kayak. Ingvar Ankervik is also in the picture. The color is RAL 1023 Verkehrsgelb (traffic yellow for those of you who do not speak german). YRVIND TEN will be painted in the same color. I do look fat and hunchbacked. It is because I wear a high volume floating device below the blue jacket.

On Monday I turn 73 and a ½ year. When I was younger health was taken for granted. When I was nearing 60 I started to run not to lose it. When I was nearing 70 I had to start doing exercises. Now I am adding kayaking.

I am fit as a fiddle, running 10 k twice a week, paddling several hours at the time, doing exercises twice weakly. Had I been the average Swede I would die in 5 years time at the age of 78,5 and be sick the last ten years of my life. I hope to mess about in boats for at least an other 50 years.

Regards Yrvind.

For some time I have been working for money. Unfortunatley that is neccesary. During that time no progress have been made on the boat.

I have now made a small pile that will keep me a life for a while. Do not worry, I will soon start to work on the boat again. Also not everything done on the boat is visible or worth publishing. Many things are trivial and banal.

To be continued…

Regards Yrvind.

THE MOST FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION

Life is what happens to you while you wait for the next thing. So the saying goes.

When do you start? That is the most frequently asked question. The answer is, I have already started, I started when I got the idea to sail around the world non-stop in a boat shorter than 3 meter.

Designing and building is part of the process. It is now that the difficult vital decisions are made. It is now that I have to find money for the building. Like many hard things, the process gives lot of satisfaction.

… 3, 2, 1, go! When the rockets fire there are not many decisions left for the astronauts. At that time most of the difficult vital decisions has been made. At that time the money for building the rocket has been found.

Click once or twice on the picture to enlarge

Desiring to secure her later years financially, and avoid the poorhouse Annie Edson Taylor on her 63rd birthday 1901 stepped into a barrel she had designed and went over the Niagara falls. At that time all the difficult vital decisions had been made. At that time she had found the money for building the barrel.

At that time when the lid was screwed on she had no more decisions to make.

When I leave for my circumnavigation I will have more options than Annie. I just have to keep going. It will mainly be a question of the thickness of my skull bone.

Now I will not be pushed to speed up my enjoyable work. The building of YRVIND TEN is part of my satisfying life.

Regards Yrvind.

When i was out in my kayak I saw a swan. She might have the same displacement lenght ratio as my boat the YRVIND TEN.

I said to myself.

Back home I got some numbers. A swans weight is 12 to 15 kilos, her designed waterline lenght is about 2 feet that gives her a displacement lenght ratio of 1500 for 12 kilos.

Now YRVIND TEN got a ten feet waterline her estimated weight is 1.5 tons. That gives her the same displacement lenght ratio of 1500. Now a swan is quite a fast mover. Scale her up 5 times and her hull speed increases by the square root of the scale or 2,236. The hull speed of a swan is 1,35 times the square root of two, her waterline lenght. That is 1.909.    2.236×1.909=4.269 knots. That speed will give me 100 miles a day. That is in ideal conditions. If I get half 50 miles a day I bee happy.

An other thing. I did climb the mast to inspect the damage done by the bridge I hit trailing her home from Stockholm. The mast was hit about 20 cm / 8 inches from the top. It was a big bang but the solidly built mast is still in good health.

Regards Yrvind.

The Nyköping talk was a disaster. The organiser had no remote control, but worse, their computer had a mind of its own. My carefully sorted pictures came up out of control, some were distorted and the last ones was absent.

However the room was filled to capacity and public was kind and even seemed to enjoy my improvised talk.

I was guided out of town. My guide was told not to go under low bridges as I was trailing my boat with the mast standing. He misunderstood the instructions.

A big bang made me jump as we passed under a bridge. It was all dark. At 50 km/hour my mast had hit the bridge. The shroud knots had  some flex and no damage was done. A good test for stormy waters.

Apart from little incidents like the above one a trailable boat is a wounderful thing. It allowed me to bring my boat up to Stockholm over the week end. Not to mention last year when I trailed her to Ireland for a good start on my transat. She came back to Sweden from Martinique in a container and again I trailed her from Göteborg to Västervik.

An outher time I trailed an outher boat to La Trinite France then sailed her to Newfoundland. From St. Johns she went on the road to Maine where I sailed her a few weeks before bringing her by car to Newport R.I. where she was sailed. Finally on the road again to New Jersey and shipping her back to Sweden.

Trailing extends your cruising ground enormously

I strongly suggest a trailer able boat. Give her a strong bottom that you can let her down on concrete stone and other hard surfaces. Mine has a bronze sole, strong, antifouling, and a good earth plate for your lightning conductor.

Below a bonus picture. Me and my co-author selling the new book Den unge den gamle och havet at the boat show.

Regards Yrvind.

To day was the last day from the boat show. Beppe, my webmaster took two pictures of the boat with the sign from The European boating direktivs message. It translates that its illegal to sell the boat and to use it. Crazy ideas in a crazy world.

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The text enlarged

Tomorrow I will give a talk in Nyköping.

Regards Yrvind

After two days at the boat show I have been experiencing not much but rain. Hopefully tomorrow will be sunshine.

Regards Yrvind.

Tomorrow wendsday the 29th of August I leave for Stockholm. I will exhibit “YRVIND.COM” the boat I last year sailed to Martinique in at “ALLT PÅ SJÖN” in Gustavsberg Värmdö.

I will also sell the new book “Den unge, den gamle och havet” . On saturday and sunday I will be joined by Captain Thomas Grahn, the young, my co-author.

On Monday 3rd of September I will give an illustrated slide show in Nyköping at NK-villan. I will bring my boat and books.

I hope to see many people with a positive interest in small boat cruising.

Regards Yrvind.

There has been some progress on the C.B. It is strong but heavyer than I like. Last boat became to heavy. But to cite Churchill when his wife nagged him about spending to much money. We must save she said. No Churchill said we must make more money.

On this line I have given this present boat a lot of displacement. The big modell, the 1/8 was test sailed with 1850 kilos scaled up displacement.

All structures brake down. It is only a question of time. If I will not have the means of leaving from the southern hemispere I will leave from Kinsale Ireland like last time. That means I have to be at sea for maybee 18 months. In that long time in rough weather a lot of wear will occour. Therefore I now give her scantlings to match. The C.B. weighs in at 15 kilos.

To enlarge click once or twice.

Here is the start of the C.B-case.

Here a picture of he pattern.

As can be seen I have to glue on additional pieces of Divinycell H130. To clamp them I use wedges.

It is handy to be able to cut out the shape on the table. To be able to do that I have shortend the jiggsaw blade to the thickness of the Divinycell 2cm.

Here cutting. The saw blade cut through the Divinycell but not the table.

I thank Petter for helping me to laminate.

To be continued…

Regards Yrvind.

The main forces on the mast is compression due to the haliard and bending due to wind. The bending force is reduced by reefing, but there is still a lot of compression force. The masts ability to withstand the compression decreases by the square of the lenght that is compressed.

Last night I said to myself that a good way to reduce that force is to mowe down the point where sail is attatched to the mast when reefing. If in strong winds it is lowered half the distance the compression force is reduced to a quarter. If the sail is attatched to the mast without a halyard it is halfed again.

That way there is only one eight of the compression on the mast left. Weight and wind resistance of the halyard is also gone. A gain well worth considering.

Below are two pictures illustrating my chain of thougt. Click once or twice to enlarge.

A close up.

The masts will be short between 3 and 4 meter 10 to 13 feet and distance between thema only 1.2 meter or four feet. It is therefore very simple to use the masts as suport for steps to a temporary ladder to use when lowering the sail.

To be continued…

Regards Yrvind.