Posts in category: Video

We’ve finally done it!! We’ve made our first bond with methacryalte! Not much from keeping us being a floating catamaran now!

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We hope you enjoy this week’s episode where we make our very first bonds with our methacrylate adhesive. Matt and I had been preparing for days and days, but when it came down to it, we realized we didn’t want to do it on our own. So we brought our friends and fellow Patrons, Brian and Summer to help with the job.

We ended up being SO happy for the extra help, and everything came together so well. Make sure to take a look and check it out for yourself!

We hope you enjoy!

Much love from Annapolis!
Jessica, Matt & Georgie

We have a treat for you with our newest episode – and the great news that our Methacrylate has arrived! Now this means we can permanently bond our hull pieces together!

Before we get ourselves to the point of no return though, we need to figure out a way to suspend the panels to clean them up as well as get the bonding agent on before they’re placed onto the hull. Starting small, we decide to work the forward inner hull pieces first since they only weight about 150 pounds (75 kg) each.

So sit back and join us for this episode where Matt once again ‘MacGyver’s’ his way through a situation with what we have on hand in the tent.

We hope you enjoy!

Much love from Annapolis!
Jessica, Matt & Georgie

We hope you’re ready for the second installment of this episode (remember, there’s no additional charge on this!!) as we get busy once again with unidirectional fiberglass.

After the mess we got ourselves into last time – now we’re armed with a bit more knowledge. As well as plastic cable covers, which are going to make our lives much easier.

Since the unidirectional alone isn’t going to be enough to fill these areas though, once it is cured we also hit it with a mix of resin, cotton flock; silica; and 1/4″ chop strand fiberglass.

All that’s left to do now is bond the deck to the hulls so we can get these bad boys in place! We hope you enjoy!

Much love from Annapolis!
Jessica, Matt & Georgie

In Part 1 of this episode, Matt and I focus once more on bulkheads number 4 and 5. Now that we’ve cut out the areas where the doors will be, we need to go back and add a little strength. This comes in the form of adding three sheets of fiberglass to the tops of the bulkheads – two of the 0-90 biaxel, and one of the 45-45 double biased.

Lots of strength training for these bulkheads, but it will pay off loads for us later. 🙂

Stay tuned for Part 2 where we try once more to add unidirectional fiberglass to the troughs in the fiberglass.

We hope you enjoy!

Much love from Annapolis!
Jessica, Matt & Georgie

With our MDF board properly measured and cut, we can now transfer that to our bulkheads to cut out three perfectly matching doors.

The two of us take the measurements on the bulkheads themselves to find the centerline – and from there, where the doors will sit at each end. Screwing the template into place, Matt uses his router to make a few passes, and presto, we have doors!

The plan had been to do some glassing on Bulkhead 5 as soon as we’d cut out the doors, but an unexpected storm and high humidity stopped us from getting that far. Luckily, Bulkhead 4, sitting up on the bridge deck, still had plenty of work to offer us for the afternoon.

We hope you enjoy!

Much love from Annapolis!
Jessica, Matt & Georgie

This week we move onto work with our bulkheads and run into one area that has us scratching our heads.

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Of course if we’re working on a project we know we might mess up – we want it to be in an area where no one will see. So with that in mind, we start work on bulkhead two, which will be up in our sail locker.

The few stages we have to get through are measuring out the cutout, and then strengthening the area with unidirectional fiberglass. It does not stay put in the routed out trough like we’d hoped…and so we resort to using clear packing tape to try and hold it in place until it cures. It’s a good thing there will be so many rounds of this ahead of us – eventually we’ll become pro’s at it!

Enjoy!

Much love from Annapolis!
Jessica, Matt & Georgie

We spend three more days working to get it back to the one piece it was when it was originally moulded in Vietnam. The underside of the hull went surprisingly easy, but then we had to deal with keeping the upswing even across both sides as we bond it together with our thickened vinyl ester. All goes well though, and other than being a little messy, we have a bridge deck that is all one piece! One project down, only a million more to go. 😉 We hope you enjoy! Much love from Annapolis! Jessica, Matt & Georgie

Aligning has still been a little tough, and that’s because our bridge deck keeps flexing in opposite ways. Time to bond that back together so we no longer have this issue!

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https://www.patreon.com/mjsailing​ **

To get to the point of joining the two sides of the hull together, we have to pass through a few steps – including raising the deck and adding the main beam underneath to keep everything level – as well as cutting little cleats which will pull the two sides together after we’ve added our resin. They’re coated in a clear packing tape, which will make them much easier to use once the resin dries.

There’s more of it to come next week when we switch our attention to the botton, but finally it feels like forward progress is happening here!

We hope you enjoy!

Much love from Annapolis!
Jessica, Matt & Georgie

Now all the pieces are with us, it’s time to give the boat a dry fit before we can think about glassing in bulkheads, or bonding the components together.

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https://www.patreon.com/mjsailing​ **

One of the biggest issues is the side hull, which is resting with its flange underneath the hull. Once we can get that up and over, we can bolt the two together. But working with pieces over our heads which weigh 300 pounds? (150kg) We have to come up with lots of interesting ways to manage doing that with just the two of us.

We also go through the effort to make sure the hulls are properly aligned, which means moving the port side hull forward *just a touch*. Once have made the measurements (in metric) that everything is where it is supposed to be, we use a water level to make sure both hulls are level with each other.

We hope you enjoy!

Much love from Annapolis!
Jessica, Matt & Georgie

We’re only 48 hours into having the first set of components for our catamaran, and she’s already starting to come together and look like a boat!

Follow along as we work tirelessly to get all the components unloaded from the container – and fail miserably at our time allowance. But honestly, that part soon matters less and less to us because we have a great group of people working their butts off to make sure every piece is taken off carefully and doesn’t receive any damage.

36 hours later, we gather a few of them back to put the main pieces of the hull together while we still have access to the telehandler. And once we snap those few pieces together – Voilà she’s already looking like a boat!!

We hope you enjoy!

Much love from Annapolis!
Jessica, Matt & Georgie