Woodie - DS1 project

[lemsteraak]

Greenlake - yes you are right, it is a game of inches. Anyplace you can save some drag is important. The aluminum cheeks are rounded and thin to slice the water if they stick down below the surface of the water minimizing drag. The newer aluminum cheeks on the latest boats are squared off at the bottom like what you said. Woodie is a "gentleman's" racer, I'm looking for style points. Which brings me to our next subject - Coamings

Woodie had these goofy wood coamings screwed to the side of the cockpit for looks. They probably looked good sixty years ago but looked pretty sad. They actually have a purpose on these old DaySailers as these boats have just enough buoyancy when swamped to float, barely. The old coaming was really tall, like six inches tall so they would stick high enough out of the water allowing you could to bail the boat out. If you cut down the coamings, you lose this function and need more buoyancy to self rescue.

I looked at the coamings on Woodie and they would be expensive to replace and the wood in the inside didn't look quite so bad and could beach out, so I reversed them. The port one is now on starboard and vice versa. I cut down the centers for hiking out and left a little height in the back. I found if you turn sharply and take a deep cut at the leeward mark, the stern swamps with a lot of water, very quickly. This riser should deflect some of that water.



You probably noticed a little addition besides the riser, I added a wood skirt. The wood coaming is really flimsy so the skirt adds a lot of strength and not a lot of weight.



The skirt adds a little height and I couldn't get the edge of the coaming to look right by itself. It just looked like it was cut down. I guess I should have left the edge proud about a quarter inch but it was already cut down when I got the boat and wasn't pretty. This modification isn't difficult, I took a 3/8 inch board and scribed the inside edge and made another cut about 1 1/2 inches parallel to it. Then glue and clamp in place with some parchment paper to protect the fiberglass. Sort of used the deck as a mould.



You need a lot of clamps. I used West G-Flex Epoxy mixed with some sawdust to thicken as there were a few gaps. I then used some fiberglass tape to reinforce the joint on the inside and it is quite stiff because it is joined from two compound curves. This would be a great way to strengthen this edge on the later O'Day DaySailers - the ones without all the wood.



Starboard side, roughed out and reinforced with fiberglass tape. You can see some of the tape on the bottom edge. I think it will soften the edge when finished and help fool the eye into thinking it is seeing a wooden boat. Now if it would only stop raining ......

[GreenLake]

You are doing mighty fine work on that boat of yours!

[lemsteraak]

OK back to work, Nationals in in Eugene and I want to have Woody on the line

I need to make a proper rudder, a racing rudder but one that has a nod to DaySailer heritage. My idea is to use a nice piece of walnut to make the base and inlay the pintles. The rudder cheeks will be the same shape as the old fiberglass rudder. Here is what the inlaid pintles look like. I'm thinking of riveting the pintles in with copper as I don't want them to ever move.

[JimTan]

This give me lots of information for restoring my Falcon 16.
Thank you very much.

[SailLI]

The photos for this post are no longer available. Does anyone happen to have a copy of them? I know this is an old post, but I am hoping to start a similar project and would love to see how it was done. Thanks.

[GreenLake]

The images were located on google sites, which is no longer maintained by google. Unless someone saved a copy (or the original poster provides different links) these are gone.

What project are you contemplating?

[lemsteraak]

Ooops, looks like Google decided to cut the link to the hack I used to post pictures. I didn't realize there was continuing interest let me see what I can do

In the meantime, an update. I had a very difficult time with the centerboard, the trunk must have been made before they standardized. The centerboard I made was based on a the standard O'Day DS1 dimensions. Woody's case is thinner and it looks like the pivot point is set about three inches higher so when you lower the board the forward edge hits the front of the case an the board will not drop. I modified an old board and barely had the boat ready for 2023 Memorial Day Regatta in Eugene. With a rough bottom, no spinnaker, and dropping out of the last race because of a broken vang, she placed 3rd, out of 12 boats. Even won one race outright. Think I was lucky.

This year I want to finish the centerboard I made and I'm going to lower the centerboard pivot so it matches the newer boats. If I have time, I'd like to put on a racing bottom, she has really rough antifouling paint on right now. What do you think, maybe she will be able to keep up? I'm still not going to rig a spinnaker, hate spinnakers.

All in all, I'd say the experiment was a success, and I think we can get more speed out of the old girl. I'll keep you posted.

[GreenLake]

Ooops, looks like Google decided to cut the link to the hack I used to post pictures. I didn't realize there was continuing interest let me see what I can do

If you still have the images, you may be able to upload them as attachments.

You may need to use jpeg compression (quality) settings lower than 100% in order to get the file size below the limits for attachments, which is 512KB. Don't try to simply scale the picture, because a high quality postage stamp is less useful than a larger picture with some details compressed.

I think you should be able to edit your post in place and use the "place inline" method to move the anchor for the attachment to where your defunct link is now.

[lemsteraak]

I have to apologize, I will go back and get the photos online again. Google was nice to host for a long time.

I'm rethinking the Woody project. Don't get me wrong, I do think Woody is a success, first time out we placed third overall out of 11 DS at the 2023 EYC Memorial Day Regatta, and even won one of the four races outright, without a spinnaker and we didn't start last race. The last Al Morris we placed 7th out of 17, again without a spinnaker but I feel we sailed the boat well. I lost to a bunch of my heroes and I'm afraid to place better we are going to have to analyze and rethink the project, up our game.

The original concept is to take a very early boat that never raced and was on its way to the dumpster and turn it into a "gentleman's" racer. By that I mean an elegant, simple, fast boat without any go fast do dads like a spinnaker, cunninghams, downhauls, traveller, hiking straps, sails made from racing cloth or even a tapered racing mast, ..... a simple daysailer. The concept is to get our heads out of the boat, observe, look for advantages.

But .... I broke a few class rules. The nice wood full bulkhead I've been told probably isn't class legal, OK, isn't class legal. My thought there was these old DS1's made in the 50's with wood seats are manifestly unsafe, you just can't self rescue one, they don't have enough buoyancy when inverted. The wood bulkhead was to keep the water out but I think this can be accomplished without a full bulkhead. The Woody concept is to have an old DS that can be easily self righted by one old person. A Woody secret weapons is her mast, not what you would call a racing mast but a work of art. A hand made Ian Proctor mast, tapered ever so slightly at the top but the whole from half of the mast doesn't have any opening so it will float, like a "wood" mast. I believe that was what was intended with the first production DaySailers, high coamings and a mast that floats so will not turtle and easier to bail out in a seaway.

So, I'm open to ideas on how to make Woody faster while keeping her simple to operate and protect her crew in big waves and high winds.

Some things I'm looking at doing this winter

Racing sails
Minimum weight
Hiking straps, just to keep us in the boat, hiking out is just so undignified
Racing bottom
Dyneema running rigging
Moving the mainsheet mechanism further forward, midway forward on the centerboard trunk
Lowering the centerboard pin, the current location is about 3 inches higher than the later DS1's. The whole centerboard rides higher so it is less effective upwind and leaved a big void in the trunk for more turbulence downwind.

I feel she has more speed in her.

[GreenLake]

Without the pictures it's tough to quickly check what your boat has or doesn't have in terms of rigging. So, I'll just run down quickly the list of my mods, and what I think they provided:

1. Sails.I'm on my second set of Jotz sails. Good sails matter, and I spend the money to replace them when they are past their prime, but I don't race very competitively, and in a light wind area, so I'm getting a few more years out of them than otherwise.
2. Cunningham. The sails came with the cringle for it. Mine is awkward to adjust, but at times it's nice to be able to get the wrinkles out.
3. Boom downhaul. Easier to add tension to the sail than with halyard alone (as gravity works with you on that). Use halyard to hoist sail and boom, then pull boom down and tie off with downhaul. Never found a reason to adjust that one other than when hoisting a sail.
4. Ratchet blocks. I like being able to hold main and jib without cleating them. Feeling the pull, even if mechanically assisted, is great feedback.
5. Traveler. I'm using the Phil Root style traveler, which is a triangle at the stern with fixed height. I used to own a boat with a split mainsail and a setup that let you effectively adjust the height of the triangle in the back. That one I never managed to get an advantage of. I'm not convinced center boom sheeting is an advantage, nor do I think mid-cockpit travelers are a good fit for the DS.
6. 12:1 Vang. This one really improved gust control going upwind. Really happy with it for that reason alone. I might come around to where I set it up so it can be played more easily.
7. Barber inhauls for the jib sheets. Definitely help upwind. One of the earlier mods I did.
8. Jib halyard tensioner. A small item, but I really like how easy it is to pull the "scallops" out of the luff of the jib. 2:1 proved enough.
9. Dyneema running rigging. I had fun splicing the dyneema halyards to double braided tails, but I can't point to an actual advantage. I downsized some of the auxiliary lines (outhaul, reef) to as small as 2mm to save weight. (See thread "Rope for various lines" in "Rigging").
10. Spinnaker. Added one and built my own spinnaker pole from bamboo (lighter than metal). Dead downwind, "wing on wing" with jib and main proved almost as fast and trying to fly it too far into the broad reach gave less speed advantage than hoped for --- there's also a tradeoff that the operation is a bit distracting and setup and takedown does take a moment. But often, it will give a boost that makes it worth it. In my case, I use it extensively for cruising. No need to crawl along if I can go fast and cruising often gives me more suitable wind angles.

I've spread out these ugrades over a number of years, but I've managed to avoid the situation where I felt I had to undo an upgrade. So I'm generally happy with most of them and don't feel that they needlessly complicate my life.

Which ones of these do you plan to do, which ones did you do already, where do you intend to do things differently and why?