Hard Dodger for Valkyr General Forum Forums

Post edited 11:45 am –January 26,2012 by Scott Carle

I know I have been pretty absent lately:) amazing how life that includes a new child will keep you busy. (our daughter is now 10 months old)

I have been going slowly nuts with boat deprivation. None of our projects on the boat have been getting done. She is still sitting with the fuel tank un-repaired.

As spring approaches I finally just said getting back to the projects is a priority. Though I know the fuel tank is the most critical I met a guy a year or so ago that does aluminium fabrication. A few weeks ago I bumped into him again and was talking about how I would like a hard dodger. He hadn't done much on sail boats but had worked for Grady white,Hatteras and other big boat manufactures designing and building the hard tops and towers for their boats. He had a boat and a top he was working on in his shop  at the time and his work was absolutely beautiful. So I asked him to quote me on a aluminium frame for a hard dodger on Valkyr. Ouch!!!!  Our budget is limited and his quote was significant. The just the materials at his cost exceeded a grand. I really wanted an aluminium frame for the weight savings.  I also wanted someone else to build it as I hadn't gotten around to in in the last 18 months and probably wouldn't for another year if  I built it myself. Anything that I built would be decent but much heavier and not as visually appealing. My wife knowing me well just said "go for it. at least it will get done":)

Then came a couple weeks of design,redesign,pay a deposit for materials,one last meeting on the design and finding that it wouldn't work the way I had envisioned so back to the drawing board and redesign again. By now both they and I are feeling a bit frustrated.  What happened is that I wanted to incorporate a traveller into the top of the hard dodger so I could move it from near the transom.  We had a design for this but when we did the final on deck measurements we found that to give room between the boom and the dodger for the blocks and such that it pushed the dodger top down very low so that it would be harder to get in and out of the companionway. Also because of how low it was the support legs assumed some very awkward looking angles due to the aft windows. We couldn't put the forward leg of the traveller arch in the center of the window as there wasn't enough structural strength there to support the potential loads. We needed to move that leg forward to between the windows for the strength. After a couple of days and many hours of how about this and what about doing this way,I finally came to the conclusion that we could do it but it would look ugly and be uncomfortable to get under to get to the companionway.

I called him and told him to just disregard using the dodger for the traveller and that we were going to simplify to just being a solar panel support with hand rails on top for security and clearance to get in and out of the boat. A couple of days later he showed me a design that he had come up with that I absolutely loved. It was very strong and had lovely lines. 

It still needs for me to build the roof over it. The hand rails and aft boom protector rail are just temporarily bolted on. They will bolt on through the roof when finished and will be part of what holds the roof onto the frame. The frame is made of 1 1/4 inch ID 1/8 inch wall anodised marine grade aluminium ( I think the OD is 1 5/8 inch) . The hand rails are the same grade aluminium in 1 inch ID size. For deck pads we used hinged pads that will allow me to remove four large stainless bolts and pull the entire top off the boat. As it sits in these pictures it is just temporarily screwed to the deck with 8 screws. I still have to drill out all the mounting holes fill with epoxy and then re-drill through the epoxy plugs where the coring was. I was able to grab the frame and with all 188 lbs and all my strength yank and pull on the frame and it didn't even budge.

Amp Welding is the company that did the work.  Talk to Tom Arnold the owner and tell him I sent you:)

So after all that build up here are some pictures of the finished frame sitting on the boat.

This first picture is from aft portside view.

Aft starboard view

one of the things we were concerned about was visability while sitting or standing at the helm. There is great visibility under the dodger and when standing you can see very well also.

aft portside view of handrail and boom protector meeting at the mounting plate welded into the frame.

Close up of mounting plate and handrail and boom protector pads temporarily bolted to it.

underside of same mounting plate.

close up of the deck mounting pad and the backing plates that will be installed on the underside of the deck inside.

View down the starboard side of the dodger at handrail level.

Post edited 9:47 am –January 31,2012 by Scott Carle

I am not sure about windage. It is 27 inchs tall above the coach roof. about 7+ ft wide and 9 feet long or so…I will have to measure it to get exact dimensions as they changed the length on me from the initial design to the final design. Right now the whole thing is weighs in at about 80 to 100 lbs. When I get the roof and solar panels on it I expect it will hit about 270 lbs total. I went with the aluminium and the high cost of it as a material to keep the weight down. We are planing on putting isnglass panels around the sides for cold weather etc..  I'm unsure if that will create more windage or reduce windage by removing the sail that  the top of the dodger will form. I will report on it after using it for a while.

I just finished mounting it today. I drilled and routed out the core yesterday on the deck and backfilled with epoxy.  I drilled the pilot holes with a 1/4 inch drill bit all the way through the deck.  Then drilled the top layer of glass over the core with a 3/4 inch bit. Then used an allen wrench in my drill to take out the foam core. I think it created a empty cavity about 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Then I use one of the caulking tubes of west system two part epoxy and injected it into the holes.:) after taping over the 1/4 inch holes in the inside of the boat. Didn't want epoxy dripping out on to the various parts of the galley,pilot berth and settees. I used another allen wrench to make sure that there were no air voids after injecting the epoxy.. the epoxy is pre-thickend so it is pretty stiff. If I got air out I kept adding epoxy till it stood proud of the deck. I did this to all 16 holes.

Today I came back and used a chisel to take off any epoxy that was standing proud of the deck.  Then I lined up the hard doger again and marked all the holes on the back two legs. Moved the dodger frame again to the side a bit and hand drilled all 8 holes through the epoxy plugs I created yesterday. Again I used a 1/4 inch drill bit as that is the size of the holes in the alumimium pads on the legs of the dodger. After that I took and dropped a couple big screws through the rear leg/pads/ into the deck holes to fix that end in place and then marked the front legs. I then moved the frame and drilled those 8 holes. 4 holes per leg. After that I got a countersink bit and counter sank all 16 holes just under a 1/4 inch. Maybe an 1/8. Then a trip to the store for 16  2  1/2 inch  1/4 inch machine screws in stainless.:( 23 dollars for 16 of them and lock nuts to match.. I bought a extra bolt and two extra lock nuts but didn't need them:)

I went all old school on sealing the deck pads and holes. I used butyl rubber. I ordered a bunch of it in a white color a while back in 50 ft rolls because I knew I had this project coming up.  I raised the legs up 8 or 9 inches and rotated the pads till I could access the bottom of them and doing the back two first totally covered the bottom in butyl and then punched out the holes with one of the bolts. I then rolled a small piece into a thin roll and wrapped it around the bolts just under the head of the bolt. Inserted the bolt into the pad till that roll squished and then made a bigger roll and put it around the bolt up against the bottom of the pads. I sorta formed it into a cone so that when the bolts are tightened it would squish down into the countersunk top of the holes and form a compression O-ring of sorts and totally seal the hole and threads. We then carefully dropped the frame down while guiding the bolts into the holes. Surprisingly everything lined up and fit perfectly on deck. I then had a friend drop by just in time to use a screw driver to keep the bolts from from turning while I used a racheting wrench below decks to tighten everything down. I used identical size and bolt pattern aluminium pads as backing plates below deck. I did not bed them or the bolts below deck.  I had to wallow out 5 out of the 16 holes on the backing plates below deck because the bolts were not perfectly parallel. The worst of them was only about 1/16 of an inch out of alignment.  I felt pretty good about that given I drilled all the holes by eye. Not sure where my drill with a bubble in it went.  though on second thought I would have messed u if I did that a the deck has camber and the holes needed to be drilled 90 degrees to the camber,not to level. We tightened all holes fore and aft and then starboard and port on each leg. Going back and re-tightening after getting the initial round done. I did not try to tighten it super tight but did get it very snug. I will go back in a week and tighten once more. The butyl rubber needs time to ooze out as the initial tightening takes affect. Done this way it should stay water proof for the life of the boat or until someone spins a screw messing with it and breaks the seal created in the area that was countersunk. The butyl rubber should stay soft and pliable for another 30 years. I have stuff that was bedded by the manufacture on valkyr that used butyl and it is still mostly pliable. What they didnt do is replace the core in the deck with resin or countersink the topside of the deck before mounting hardware. Even not doing that most of the hardware on valkyr still didn't leak.

I took pictures of the process and will post them when I get a chance. I'm on my netbook sitting on the boat right now and don't feel like playing with pictures with this computer.

Ok I got the pictures off my phone and here are a few that show the above process.

The hole in the bottom is 1/4 inch. This is the size of the bolts that will be used to mount the hard dodger. In this picture and the next couple you can see where I wallowed out the foam core.

Starting to fill the holes with epoxy.

More epoxy:)

aft starboard leg holes filled with epoxy. Notice how high the epoxy is mounded..

I bought a cheap set of sacrificial Allen wrenches for wallowing out the core and for making sure there were no air voids in the epoxy once it was injected into the holes. I had to add epoxy to about 1/3 of the holes because of air trapped in the hole.

I'm not sure if this displays it well but the epoxy shrank a bit over night as it hardened.

I used a wood chisel to smooth the epoxy out and make the area the pad would sit on flat. I even took down the non-skit where the edge of the pad would sit. I would have sanded before bedding here if I had been using 5200 or some other similar product but with the butyl I didn't worry about it. The butyl has little to no adhesive quality/strength of its own and is just a bedding compound that fills and seals between the pad and deck. The bolts are what hold the hard dodger on. I think 16 1/4 inch stainless bolts will do the trick.

scott

Beautiful bedding job Scott,and a handsome dodger!

Oh and I'm a bit jealous when I think about boats in places where it doesn't rain every day:)

Scott Maxwell

Hey Scott,

All is well,Amatheia had a fun summer and fall last,sailing north from the Columbia River and cruising around the San Juan Islands and the Puget Sound. She is berthed in Olympia,right at the southernmost part of the Sound and just 2 hours north from Portland by car. I'm up there a lot and with spring coming on will do some exploring in that area.

And just as soon as I complained about the rain,presto,it stopped! We have a rare sunny weekend forecast and I took the opportunity to play hooky and take her out for a sail today,just gorgeous with Mt Rainier and the Olympic Mtns all white with snow and gleaming in the sun.

I'm glad that fatherhood is going well for you AND you get to work on the boat too!

Scott M.

Thanks for posting all the pics.  They are great.

Now if you'd just lengthen it by about 4 feet you'd have an excellent pilot house project:-D