Are we board yet ?

Dagger-board that is.

The answer is not quite ! (as I write)

The final, for now, construction job is to make a new daggerboard as the buoyancy tank cum daggerboard case that I am building in situ will be higher – thus needing a longer board and one of my few criticisms of the CLC designs is that they have quite ‘fine’ or thin in section foils – my CLC Passagemaker is similar in this respect. I won’t pretend to be an aero/hydro dynamics expert but I have the thinnest of thin knowledge base that suggests to me that a fatter board will have greater flow and thus lift at low speed. As it is right now the Skerry’s board is almost a flat piece of plywood with the edges shaped but only very slightly and nothing like a ‘foil’ shape.

My example is that I had to build (laminate) both a centerboard and a rudder for my Pathfinder and while that’s a bigger boat all round it’s only 2′ longer than the Skerry : the Pathfinder’s centerboard was 50mm thick and laminated while the Skerry (daggerboard) is made from a piece of 12 mm plywood and all but a basically flat board, What I intend to make now is more like the Pathfinder’s rudder which was around 30 mm thick.

This morning, as I write, I started work on making a new daggerboard with a search through my rapidly dwindling stock of materials and what I found was an unused piece of Douglas Fir that was large enough and long enough to rip down into lengths to use as lamells, It’s a wet and cold day but they are all clamped and glued together so, by the end of this working week, I should have the blank to shape a board from. Iv’e used the plans that belong with the Pathfinder build as it’s rudder is quite close to the shape and section that I need.

While the Pathfinder centerboard was the most complex thing i’d ever built at that time it was immensely satisfying – below.

I have, so far, made the internal spacers for the new daggerboard as 30 mm thick so that should easily allow for a 26 mm or thereabouts daggerboard and i’m already starting to make it’s lamells – the lamells being the lengths of timber that I will glue and clamp together to make a board blank from. I was going to use some cheaply bought joinery timber but on close inspection it’s not only knotty thus weak and the grain is anything but straight…..looks like good candidates for uncontrolled warping and twisting .

In terms of the actual progress I am making on the Skerry, so far I have cut out it’s original case in the center and have mocked up, with patterns, the new off center daggerboard case on the port side. As I write I am waiting on a delivery of new plywood in 2 different thicknesses and am on the second stage of making, I hope, accurate patterns to reflect my change of design of the buoyancy box which the case is an integral part of.

In terms of overall project time i’m a bit behind when it comes to both the new board and it’s new case cum bouyancy tank but it was the same when I built the centerboard and it’s case for the Pathfinder : both jobs have taken longer than I anticipated and both are contingent on other things – with the Skerry project iv’e been able to do other jobs around the main one so my time in waiting for new materials hasn’t exactly been slack time.

As of the last day of 2024 the daggerboard case is almost done, I only have to make a hole in the lid for an access & inspection hatch and then that can all be glued in : right at the end of the year I did several physical sessions with my various planes and finishing with a sanding block so, as of the end of the year, I almost have a new daggerboard made to a much better aerofoil shape than the original : the finishing work is to get the shape and section mostly right and cover it with some fibreglass before the final-final job which is to fill and fair it to as nice a section as I am able.