Fruits Of My Labor (A-113)

[ebb]

Ah wood luv to circumslide mah butt around that teak rail from pote to stahbrid... one cool and dewy mornin.

The more I've dwelled on what to keep and what to change, the more I feel our straight coamings are salient features that can't be messed with without a fight.
Straight sheer, straight brown "take off" coaming lines. Straight boot stripe, straight loose foot boom. All play in the sweetness of the Alberg design.

It's getting harder for me to mess with the guy's harmony. I've come to realize that a stripped down virgin Commander with those tall mahogany coamings is unparalled.
There isn't a mo'bucks Hesperian with a hot-tub cockpit can touch that rare and timeless style!

[Tony G]

Geez! Something as simple as making a form for these coamings is surprisingly difficult! I can't find a line that goes behind the lazzarette hatch that looks smooth. Trying to mimic a CD36 coaming just doesn't fit on our deck (go figure!). The CD 330 and 36 have much wider decks back by the cocokpit and accomodate the wide sweep of the coaming right around and behind. Ours are a bit too...pinched? If you bring the aft portion of the coaming right through the middle of the lazzarette hatch, however, it looks pretty good. Sooo, the new thought is incorporating the aft section right into the lazzarette hatch... Then I thought, do I want a smaller hatch in the lazarette hatch or should I split it down the center line making it a left or right or both type of hatch? This is starting to seem like a lot of work just to reduce maintenance. Especially when you consider I'm adding mahogany toerails and rubrails.

[ebb]

Tony,
It sounds like you are serious about a fiberglass coaming?
Just surfed by an aluminum Dudley Dix in the making. The angle of coachroof sides is carried aft in a clean sweep to a 2 step transom. That angle visually becomes a very important part of his design - like a facet of a crystal.
The Dix is wide enough so that the cockpit coaming does not have to bump out like ours has to.
Still, a hollow coaming on the Ariel could be made using the seat-back and the coach-roof ANGLES with a nice sculpted curve out from the coach corner. Have to sacrifice some sidedeck to take the wide footprint of this style of coaming.

(Maybe worth a mock up. I'm using office supply illustration board. It's about 1/16" cardboard, stiff, excellent for nice long curves. But also if its sponged with warm water and bent over a form, it'll dry into a more radical curve. And you can almost get a form to use as a mold if you double up and Titebond bent cardboard forms together to get nearly 1/8" thickness.)

It might be possible to get a 3" or 4" top flat across the angled panels that could be capped with wider mahogany for sheet winches and for sitting on occasionally. In CPete's post #276, the 'Nahma' illustrates what I'm trying to say. The sweep out from the coach-roof corners.... the coaming is obviously hollow and is capped. On the Ariel, to get some back support, the coamings would have to be taller and therefor the footprint wider, robbing the sidedeck. Anyway I think the angles are important to have it look like Alberg (or Dix) had a hand in it!

Fiberglass.
I would lay it up over a male foam (or press-board, or cardboard) mold because there are fewer steps that way - tho the finish is harder to get than if you did it in a female mold (which imco is even more of a pita).
OR... maybe a veneer of mahogany could be glued on both inside and outside to finish. With a nice cap nobody would know. And areas of the hollow inside could be useful for storage if you dared cut holes in the coaming/seat back. Eh! Hell, whynot?

Really don't have to go with the curves that fiberglass skin can do. All round single plank coamings with cockpit corners cut from laminated blocks can make bodacious curves too. They be 'posts' front and back like the ones against the coach. You do see coamings sometimes where the posts have been bandsawed with an inside curve too.


Whatever we do with fiberglass is going to end up heavy. 1/8" to 3/16" frp in a hollow coaming of any height is a lot of square feet. The ole Mahogany coaming is relatively lite. But if you want a three D coaming that is hollow inside why not Dudley Dix and use aluminum sheet??? It'll paint up like the rest of the Ariel - and be even less weighty.

What would we do without CommandoPete's always right-on pictures? Eh!
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H m m m m....
How crazy do you want to imagine?
If you have an inside diesel planned, that may mean you don't need the lazarette in its present form. So, Imagine the cockpit seats going across the back BEHIND THE TILLER. It could be a lot like one of the two boats in your post 271. Then you might mold in those nice radiused corners you like so much.
'Course then you end up with a similar problem to mine: where does your mainsheet traveler go??? (My answer is: to hell with the traveler! and go back to the double deck blocks the Ariel originally had...)

You'd have a longer cockpit apparent. You'd even have storage in the thwart seat locker for an anchor and a bunch of other stuff!

And all the Commanders in the fleet would finally have Ariel envy!!!

[Tony G]

We are trying ever so hard to incorporate angles, curves and lines allready present in Dream Weaver's original design as to keep the remod as remeinescent of Alberg as possible. Hopefully in the end we will not only benefit from the well founded design of a great naval architect but also have a boat that doesn't look too ugly because of all the changes.

The current idea is a coaming that provides good support for the back, has additional storage available for lines and such and can hold a butt cheek or two. There are a couple of designs out there I gravitate back to-Cape dorys, the newer Hinckleys, Alereons, Cabo Ricos, Great Dane-you get the picture. The hitch is the 'hatch'. The best looking spot for the aft wrap appears to be athwartship midway through the lazarette hatch. So I'm thinkin new hatch that is even with the top of the traveler track on the inside of the coaming aft and deck level outside of the caoming. That way when on the hook one could slide the boom and traveler over to one side and cozy up in a nice curved aft corner.

Also been giving serious thought to splitting the hatch into two just to the side of the centerline, incorporate some overlaps for strength and added seal surface. That way one could get in the lazarette without having to open the entire area. Its starting to get more complex than I'm looking for though. We are getting snow today so I'll have plenty of time to think about this one

[mbd]

Tony, with all that business going on in the aft of your cockpit, maybe you should reconsider mid-boom sheeting and move the traveler to the coach roof and away from the bottoms trying to find a cozy spot? It might make getting at your engine a bit easier too.

Also, I think Admin Bill should give you a demerit for mentioning that 4-letter s-word.

[ebb]

If you are going to cruise the Ariel, you'll probably raise the boom so you can move freely in the cockpit without loosing your head.

Midboom on the Ariel is exactly over the bridgedeck. If you are going to dodger it, you will probably make that tall enough to get in and out without fuss.

Instead of putting the traveler way forward over the hatch where the forces are probably tripled to control the boom, I think the traveler could be designed to go over the cockpit end of the dodger. In such a way that fingers are protected. A hard dodger can be designed to help take the forces of a traveler. The block spread on the boom would be further aft, easier to haul, and probably have shorter tails. The almost flat top dodger design that Tony has designed would be PERFECT!

You may still have to have a new boom made, especially if a rigid vang is rigged along with the extra blocks. Traveler lines would probably stay at the forward end of the cockpit rather than draped over the tiller and tangled under foot like most have.

An independent arch for the traveler over the dodger could also be used for the forward end to fly a bimini or rig a snug tent.
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When I asked Sponberg (Yacht Design Inc.) what he would do about headroom in L.G.'s cockpit, he simply raised the end of the boom leaving the gooseneck in its original position on the mast! That's how it's gonna be on Little Gull.

[mbd]

...he raised the end of the boom leaving the gooseneck in its original position on the mast. That's how it's gonna be on Little Gull.

Why? To retain more sail area by keeping the forward end low? Is that a better shape for a loose footed main? Inquiring minds would like to know.

The hard dodger location seems like a winner, or, probably been mentioned somewhere here, how about incorporating a traveler and a boom crutch?