Simple habits, simple boat

I now have a phone that can take pictures. Just for fun I put a 1:10 scale model of myself on the spreader. There are two stepps on each mast in addition to the 30 cm high deckshouse that is not on the mock-up modell.

I like to climb things and it will be a lot of fun to run up in the mast and have a look around now and then. It will also give me some excersice.

To be continued…

Regards Yrvind.

600 days of nonstop sailing, mostly in the southern ocean will very likely expose us to strong winds. Although I will endeavor to make the masts sturdy it will be nice to have a simple way to increase their strengths.

The following pictures shows one way of doing that. I will place a horizontal strut between the masts at about half their height. The strut can also be used for exercises and lookout. From the strut where it connects to the masts Dynema ropes extend down to the deck, to strongpoints, my Yrvind-cleats acting as super-strong chainplates. The shroud angles are never less than 26 degrees. Half that angle 13 degrees is ample. The haliard is now down to half the mast hight. This reduceses the compression and bending appreciably.

I do not think it will take long to set it up, especially after getting some practice. The masts are very close to the hatch and with one mast on each side the operating area will be very steady.

The below pictures shows a one to ten scale mock up of the idea. The first picture shows the port side of the model slightly from foreward with the wind in from foreward.

The second picture show the boat with the wind from starbord slightly from behind on the same tack.

The below picture shows the model going downwind. The nice thing about the balanced lug sail is that the downhaul can be mowed. The sail is not attached to the mast. In this scenario the dawnhaul is on the Yrvind-cleat on the bow on the starbord side. I all of the pictures the sail on tha other mast is rolled into its casset and lashed to the deck.

The last picture shows the same set up but from behind-

To be continued…

Regards Yrvind.

The most convenient and safest departure point for my circumnavigation is Hobart in Tasmania, Australia.

There are however two big problems, logistics and bureaucracy. They give me pimples.

These problems we do not have in Europe. Last year I took my boat on a trailer to Kinsale Ireland. The only hassle was the Calais Dower crossing. I blame it on the English. They always like to complicate things. To get on the ferries between Sweden and Denmark and between Denmark and Germany all one had to do was to pay in drive through gate, elapsed time about one minute. Not that it was very difficult to park the car in Calais and find the office and there do the paying but why?

Leaving Ireland for Madeira was no problem at all I just left. In fact the authorities did not even like to talk to me. I had tried that before first when I sailed a fifteen footer to Newfoundland and later when I sailed a Vega to Florida.

My project goes very well and the more I work on it the better it seams. The Kinsale starting point will add a lot of miles to the journey. The total will something like 30000 nautical miles with an estimated average speed of 2 knots it will take 600 days. Can a ten-footer have that kind of autonomy? At first it seams impossible. Will my 400 kilo food last that long? A little calculation shows that in fact there is an ample margin. For example muesli is about 370 kcal per 100 gram. 370×4000 (400 kilo muesli ) gives 1.48 million kcal. That will give me 2467 kcal per day.

A calorie calculator for a man 67 kilo 1.67 meter long age 75 years says he shall not eat more than 1855 kcal per day if not to gain weight. 1.48 million divided by 1855 gives 797.8 days or 800 days a margin of 200 days. As far as food goes, therefore no problem, besides I use fewer calories than most. I easily gain weight.

Sailing a small boat in the southern ocean is not the same as staying in an old person home. Still compared to my active life ashore just sitting in the boat for 600 days is not the best. But just sitting is not what I intend to do.

I hope to have a pedal- and crank operated generator to move my arm and legs a bonus is the electricity. Between the side-by-side masts I insert a bar for chin-ups etc. Also there will be a lot of water around the boat to be swum. Up here in Scandinavia there is a special breed of people, the winter bathers. They cut a hole in the ice and skin dip. When living on the island of Tjörn I was on my way to become one. Twice a week I went for swims. I had hoped to do it the whole winter through but in December I mowed to Västervik. Here it is not as convenient.

I can do with a bit more books. Luckily there is a lot happening on the e-book-reader market. E-paper uses no electricity when reading only when you turn the page. Unfortunately the different brands are not all compatible with each other. I like to read books in several languages. Some of the e-book-readers do have dictionaries, however I am not shore you have to be on line to have access to the base. What brand do I chose? Probably several different ones, time will tell.

A problem is that I will be away from my dentist for a long time. I remember reading about a German dentist one of the early settlers on the Galapagos Islands. It was in the thirties bad times in Germany for some. He had decided on a safer place. Most craftsmen suboptimise. He had seen enough of dental problems to realize that the last thing he wanted were to live on an isolated island with toothache. He pulled all his teeth and made himself false teeth of platinum. Unfortunately he became allergic to platinum. I will consult my dentist.

Regards Yrvind.

Cleats are important hardware. The conventional ones are easy to use but other ropes gets caught in them and they are only strong in one direction. Also if more than one rope are atched to them only the last one can be released. the Yrvind-cleat adress these problems.

On YRVIND TEN there will be ten of these cleats. Four are placed on the hull a bit above the waterline, handy for anchor-line for hauling the boat upp on a rock and for attaching a rope around the boat when out swimming. Below are some pictures showing the first four ones. Click once or twice on them to enlarge.

To make it extra strong I removed the Divinycell core. First I drilled the five boult holes through the outer laminate.

With the help of a insex key I smasched the core.

With the help of compressed air and hemostatic forceps (Rudolf – German quality ) I got the pieces out.

It is very important that the surfaces do not get contaminated by oil. I use an oilfree AERFAST compressor.

Here is the fitting.

The space where once the Divinycell was has been filled with glassfibre clippings sized for epoxy with the help of a pair of twezers, then epoxy has been injected. Below the fitting there is now 2 inches, 5 cm solid glassfibre laminate. It is attached with five 8 mm high tensile steel boults from Bulten. The base of the fitting is six millimeter stainless steel the rod diameter is 12 mm. It is strong enough to lift several fully loaded YRVIND TEN.

Inside is a back up plate and extra strong washers.

To drill the holes straight the 5 cm distance I used a mirror, see a previus post.

Now half of the time the sailing will be done in wintertime. to Awoid cold spots I cover the backing plates with divinycell lids. Holes for the nuts are routed out.

checking that the lid fits.

Next I will glue the lids in place.

Some may say this is overkill. To those I ansver. I endeavor to do my best. To make evrything so strong and good as I can. Not neccesarily that it will be needed. This is in cotrast to our society where everything is made just to be barely functional. One reason I build this boat is that it makes me proud and happy. Therefore I do my best and when I look at the result I am filled with joy. It is worth while. An other thing, sailing a boat those built in stormy waters makes for good sleep. By definition the cause of accidents is always a surprise. This kind of boat has redundancy built in.

To bee continued…

Regards Yrvind.

Ignorant persons describe my planned trip as a suicide mission. There are exceptions. This gentleman defended me by writing in Wall Street Journal: All the signs of a suicidal personality are there–enthusiasm, confidence, zest for life, building something that has never been built before, big plans for the future. By golly, you must be right!

I like that. Of course the very idea that I have thoughts of suicide is wrong. My boat and me are sane. A small boat well made is safer than a big one. It is less complicated and smaller forces are acting on it. On a small boat you have more control.

As for myself I was raised on the windward side of a small Island in the North Sea and as a grown up person I have messed about in small boats for more than fifty years. I have in small homemade boats contented spent more than a year in those southern stormy waters called roaring forties and screaming fifties. That includes passage in a nineteen feet boat, east to west around Cape Horn in June, the full southern winter. And that was before GPS-navigation. The sun did not rise more than 11 degrees above horizon at noon. Compared to that modern navigation is easy. I know what I talking about and I know what to expect.

Most people misunderstand life. Let me explain.

Comfort does not make you happy, on the contrary it is dangerous to your health. It makes you lazy, fat and bored.  It is only by using energy that you can create energy and it is the surplus of energy that makes you happy and healthy. Happiness cannot be bought for money.

Man adapts. The human being is the most adaptable creature in the universe.

When a person smokes more dopamine than needed is released. Dopamine is part of natures feedback system that helps us to survive. This nicotine release creates a momentarily happiness not connected to surviving. To restore homeostasis the body adapts by reducing its dopamine receptors. In the same way as a sensible farmer would reduce the area he cultivates if it suddenly started to grow more food than he needed.

When the dopamine receptors are artificially over stimulated. The size of the receptors is reduced and the smoker becomes a slave to nicotine. Smoking is short sighted.

Borrowing money for consumption is also short sighted. It is pleasant momentarily but the borrower becomes a slave to the bank. Borrowing is a disaster in the long run.

Daily I use a bicycle to transport myself. Occasionally when leaving for a different part of Sweden to give a talk I use my car. By pressing the accelerator I can climb steep hills with no effort. It is pleasant and my body adapts quickly. It learns that going uphill can be easy and fast. The next day when I am back on my bike climbing a hill I am in for a surprise. It is laborious. My body has adapted to the ease of driving. It has been addicted to the power of oil. Had I not used my will power and returned to my bike and used effort to climb hills I would have become a slave to my car.

In a thousand ways our civilization over stimulates us. Not just by nicotine, by cars or by lending us money. Most people nowadays are slaves to many masters.

As with all addictions we need more drugs, more borrowed money, bigger cars and bigger boats. We get deeper and deeper into trouble and misery.

With my voyage I hope to show mankind that, luckily there is an opposite way, a more natural, sane and ecological way to be happy. Slowly as I have gained insight I have made myself less and less dependent on stimulants, I have become less and less a slave. I have never used coffee, beer, vine, or tobacco, not even once. Twenty years ago I stopped drinking tee. I have no TV. Ten years ago I stopped listening to the radio. It took about a year for me to get detoxed. Now I need no radio. I hear my inner voice loud and clear. I do my own thinking.

The way indigenous people orient themselves in nature and navigate at sea is amazing; still a Swedish man born into such a society at a young age will acquire the same skill.

Blind persons compensates by developing other senses like hearing to guide them through life.

Feelings and moods is nature’s way to guide animals and us to a behavior that favors survival. Animals are not bored, except caged in a zoo.  What makes us different from animals is not feelings but control over feelings by the frontal lobes. We use alcohol to anaesthetize them when we like to relax.

In my planned trip I will be at sea for more than a year. There I will be protected from over stimulation. Hopefully that way I will gain much of my senses potential power and increase the clarity of my mind. A voyage like my planned one will give plentiful stimulation. I aim to come back a younger man to start building a nice small cruising boat; one not restricted by a ridicules ten feet rule.

These thoughts are old fashioned. They have been around for thousands of years. They can be found in all ancient civilizations in one form or other they are based on fundamental principles, but as no one makes money on them money is not spent to advertise them.

Regards Yrvind.

Orthogonal, perpendicular, normal, square and right angle, we have many names for the things we love. And right angles are one of the cornerstones of our modern civilization and for good reasons, without them everything would be crocked. It is so basic that even our Euclidian space is defined by it with the help of the Pythagorean theorem.

Even boat builders are well served by right angles. But it is not always easy create them.

Here is a trick. Use a mirror. A straight line reflected into a mirror continues as a straight line into the mirror only if it is at right angles to the mirrors surface. The pictures below illustrates the point.

Click once or twice on the pictures to enlarge.

On the picture below I do not hold the stick at right angle to the mirror

In the picture below the stick is at right angle to the mirror.

My boat has a very thick hull, almost 50 mm or 2 inches. Now I like to fit strong points with backingplates, each having five bolts, hence the holes have to be at right angles to the surface. You may have noticed the mirror image of the drill when drilling into shiny surfaces like polished metall, when holding the drill at right angles it looks like a stright line. When it extra difficult I use a mirro with a hole in it to drill a pilot hole as seen in the picture below.

Below is a picture of the fitting and its backing plate. In the background is the 40 mm Divinycell core.

To be continued…

Regards 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.