bUILDINGOUTRIGGERSAILING CANOES INTERNATIONAL MARINE / McGRAW-HILL Camden, Maine ✦ New York ✦ Chicago ✦ San Francisco ✦ Lisbon ✦ London ✦ Madrid Mexico City ✦ Milan ✦ New Delhi ✦ San Juan ✦ Seoul ✦ Singapore ✦ Sydney ✦ Toronto BUILDINGOUTRIGGERSAILING CANOES Modern Construction Methods for Three Fast, Beautiful Boats Gary Dierking Copyright © 2008 by International Marine All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. 0-07-159456-6 The material in this eBook also appears in the print version of this title: 0-07-148791-3. All trademarks are trademarks of their respective owners. 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If you’d like more information about this book, its author, or related books and websites, please click here. For more information about this title, click here Contents Preface vii Chapter 3. The Wa’apa 28 Acknowledgments x Rig Choice 29 The Hull 29 Introduction The Ama 31 Some Outrigger Basics 1 The Double Outrigger Option 31 A Brief History of the Outrigger Canoe 1 Materials for Building the Wa’apa 31 Why Use an Outrigger? 1 Approximate Time and Cost for Building Length of an Outrigger Canoe 2 the Wa’apa 32 Weight of an Outrigger Canoe 2 Speed of an Outrigger Canoe 3 Chapter 4. Outboard Motors 3 Sailing Rigs 43 Sailing Rigs 3 The Oceanic Lateen Rig 43 Paddling Your Outrigger 3 The Gibbons Rig 48 Structure of the Outrigger Canoe 4 The Hawaiian Rig 54 Accommodation 4 Stub-Mast Rigs 55 Mix and Match 4 Units of Measurement 4 Chapter 5. Terminology 5 Boatbuilding Basics 58 Choosing Materials for an Outrigger Canoe 5 Strip-Planking Versus Plywood 58 How to Navigate This Book 5 Tools 59 Materials 59 Chapter 1. Work Space 60 The Ulua 6 Lofting 60 Materials for Building the Ulua 8 Glues 61 Approximate Time and Cost for Screws, Nails, and Staples 62 Building the Ulua 8 Cutting Plywood 63 Cutting Strip Planks 64 Chapter 2. Scarfing Timber 65 The T2 17 Joining Plywood Sheets with Fiberglass 67 Materials for Building the T2 19 Joining Plywood Sheets with Butt Blocks 68 Approximate Time and Cost for Building Filleting 69 the T2 21 Filling, Sanding, and Fairing 69 Sheathing with Fiberglass and Resin 71 Chapter 9. Laminating 73 Cross Beams and Hull Connections 113 Bonded Fasteners 74 Building a Solid Laminated Iako 113 Painting and Varnishing 74 Building a Hollow, Box Beam Iako 115 Metal Work 75 Aluminum Tube Beams 116 Workshop Health and Safety 75 Connections 116 Maintenance and Repair 75 Chapter 10. Chapter 6. Steering, Leeboards, Building the Ulua and and Accessories 121 T2 Strip-Composite Hulls 78 Steering 121 Do a Practice Session 78 Leeboards 127 The Strongback 79 Accessories 129 Molds 80 Planking 82 Chapter 11. The Outer Stem 84 Spars, Spar Specifications, Fairing and Smoothing the Hull 85 and Sails 134 Removing the Hull from the Mold 85 Spars 134 Glassing the Interior 86 Spar Specifications 137 Fitting the Interior Structure 86 Sail 139 Fore and Aft Decks 87 Manus, Splash Guards, and Dashboards 88 Chapter 12. Stretching the Ulua 90 Rigging,Tuning, and Sailing 147 Rigging and Tuning 147 Chapter 7. Sailing Basics 152 Building the Wa’apa Plywood Hull 95 Swamping and Capsize 156 Hull Middle Section 100 Glossary 160 Chapter 8. Amas 102 Resources 164 Foam and Fiberglass Amas 103 Building a Plywood Ama 106 Index 165 Strip-Planked Amas 109 Ama Connections 110 Preface Far in the distant past, when I was maybe thir- At that time the Coast Guard had LORAN trans- teen years old, I started sailing small model mitting stations all over the North Pacific, and I boats on the pond near our Wisconsin farm. I had spent a full year on Wake Island, a very small ring of some information from library books to guide me, coral with a beautiful lagoon. During my stay there, but there was really no one to help or influence me. I restored a sunken fiberglass sailing dinghy. The Steering, of course, was the problem. In the days many hours of fast sailing in crystal-clear water while before radio-control, a quadrant on the rudder was watching the coral heads passing below had a far- attached to the mainsheet. The harder the sheet reaching effect on my future. An additional three pulled, the more the rudder was turned to counteract months in Saipan and nine months in Palau ensured the weather helm. This was a primitive system and it that my life would be intimately associated with the worked some of the time. Pacific. One day after watching my model constantly After more than four years in the Coast Guard, rounding up into the wind and not holding a course, I decided that I’d better go back to school. I pur- I spotted an interesting piece of driftwood on the chased a 28'(8.5m), Swedish-built monohull and edge of the pond. The driftwood was a piece of pine lived aboard it in a houseboat marina while working that had warped into an elegant, curved shape. I at night and taking classes in the day. The San took it home and attached a single cross beam, with Francisco Bay area in the 1960s was a hotbed of a pair of waterski-shaped wooden floats at each end. backyard multihull building. The designs of Arthur I removed the sailing rig from my balsa monohull Piver and Jim Brown were allowing people who had and mounted it onto my new double outrigger. a big stack of plywood and few years of spare time to I was elated the first time that it sailed. The lit- build their own boat and cruise long distances. tle double outrigger not only went very fast, but it My friend Rich Clark, also living at the also steered a straight course, without any rudder. marina, had just completed building a 24'(7.2m) I don’t know where I got the idea to attach out- Piver Nugget trimaran, and I went along on its first riggers, but it could have had something to do with sail in San Francisco Bay. My experience on the the enormous pile of old National Geographic maga- farm pond was duplicated out in the bay on a day zines that my grandfather had collected. No doubt I when untried boats should have stayed in their had seen outrigger canoes in the photographs that berths. We flew along at amazing speeds with finger- they had published. It took another ten years before tip control. Steering was effortless until the under- I really learned my lesson. strength plywood rudder snapped off at the water- I joined the U.S. Coast Guard after high school line.