Hard Dodger for Valkyr General Forum Forums

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

So the hard dodger project moves forward. I scarfed 3 4x8 sheets of luan together to get a single piece of plywood 5.2 mm thick for the roof of the hard dodger. Once I bolted it down I used a router to trim it to the shape and size of the dodger frame.  This happened a month or so ago and then I got busy again and it wasn't till this week that I got out and started applying fiberglass to the top and bottom. I used 9 ounce fiberglass cloth on the top and bottom of the ply. It took 4 pieces 60 inchs wide by the 9 ft length of the top of the dodger. I over lapped the edges in the center by about 30 inches to give a highly reinforced strip up the center of the roof that should be walkable 🙂 18 ounces of fiberglass and epoxy both top and bottom. It should be noted that I scarfed the wood together in place on top of the framework and then fiberglassed the top, flipped the whole thing over and glassed the bottom and then flipped it back right side up. It was interesting to say the least. I was also working most of the time in a 5 to 10 knots of breeze and trying to keep the fiberglass laying flat as I worked the resin into it.

Here is a picture of the last corner of the bottom to be glassed and you can see the wind catching the cloth and flipping it up. 🙂 inspite of the not ideal conditions I think it came out great. I'm very happy with it, especially as it is the first fiberglassing project I have undertaken like this. I have done real small repairs before but no large scale construction projects.

the finished bottom. you can see the slightly wavy line down the length of the roof that is where the two pieces of cloth overlap. I did my best to keep a straight line there but on a single piece of fiberglass 9 feet long that proved much more difficult than I anticipated. I used a squeegee to work the epoxy into the cloth and it would pull at the fabric as I did so. The whole top so far, both top and bottom has consumed about 1.7 gallons of epoxy I think. I have a 3 gallon kit of 2:1 epoxy and have used a little more than half so far. Where the bottom is so glossy is where I went pack and used a paint brush to fill in the weave of the already applied cloth and epoxy. The initial application of epoxy to the cloth was just enough to wet it out and leave no dry spots while using no extra. It left the weave of the cloth visible on the surface. After it tacked up and wasn't going anywhere I went back and filled in the weave to give a smooth surface. I haven't done this on the top yet as I still need to epoxy in solar panel mount rails and a lip around the whole top. After that is all done I will go back and paint it all with a layer of epoxy to fill the weave and then paint it all white.

we waited about 4 hours for the resin to dry enough that it was no longer tacky and then flipped the roof right side up and put it back in position.

You will notice just behind the dodger a small bimini. This as last weeks project. We recycled the old dodger framework into a small bimini. I think it is going to work out very well. We made the fabric part out of a solution dyed polyester fabric called Top Notch.

The stuff hanging out between the front of the top and the framework is just some wax paper. Once we flipped it over we found out that there was a section just in the center that was still tacky and we wanted it to not stick to the framework.

The top at this point is starting to stiffen up significantly. I think that it will be strong enough to walk on for sure. If not I have some more glass and the rails for mounting the solar panels should make it much stronger also.

Don't mind the mess 🙂 I have tools everywhere, sanders, chisels, drills, extension cords, etc... Ah the joys of doing major projects on a boat. Did I mention that we have been living on the boat while all this has been going on. 🙂 at least it is an outside project and hasn't bled into the interior of the boat. Other than a few drips of epoxy it has been a very clean project with little waste.  I think I have wasted about a cup and a half of epoxy if you add up all the remanents of resin that have hardened in the mixing containers and maybe two square feet of cloth that has been the overhanging part we trimmed off.

Oh I found the secret to trimming the cloth is to take a sharp knife and just trim it off against the edge of the plywood once the resin gets hard but still a little pliable. don't let it get totally hard as it is almost impossible to trim off then unless you sand it down. So far I have totally avoided sanding epoxy or the fiberglass. 🙂 I know it can't continue but I have been really patient and meticulous trying to get it right the first time and not have to redo any of it.

I have to go get the solar panels tomorrow so that I can figure out where on the roof they will go so I can fabricate mounting rails out of wood and fiberglass.

Until next time 🙂

So I test laid out the solar panels today on top of the dodger and was able to fit 13 of them on it. so 13x25=325 watts  of capacity on the dodger top. Then I am going to install one of the older 190 watt panels I bought over the dingy davits for a total on boat wattage of 515 watts. We are talking about embeding the other 125 watts of 25 watt panels into the deck forward.. not sure if that will happen though. Possibly we could install them on top of the bimini by sewing them to the fabric or maybe snapping them to it.