If you've never drawn a boat full sized before, you may find yourself saying, "What's the big deal? Just draw what the designer said to draw." Believe me, and I say this with the most sincere face that I can muster, we also wish it worked that way.
Some boats are quite easy to draw. The shape is simple and there are no quick reverses or slightly odd transitions in order to not run afoul of class rules. Those boats get lofted quickly, and they bring joy to the builder as he gets to jump right in and get to work making sawdust. The six-metre is a specialized animal, however. There are very strict rules regarding hull shape, ballast size, and volumes more that are there to help level the playing field within the class. And the job of the naval architect is to find ways to make the fastest boat possible that still conforms to those rules. As a result, there are often little oddities in the shape that are critical to meet a rule, but which make a loftsman sit back and say, "hmmm, what's going on here?"
In the case of Cherokee, there has also been a subtle redesign of her keel and ballast to shift her weight forward, and that change needed to be incorporated into the final drawing in a way that looks fair and sweet, and still conforms to the class rule. And lastly, there are some very sharp curves right along the leading edge of the ballast that weren't fully detailed in the original drawings, but that we know are there. If you're a boat geek and like to see how folks deal with that sort of thing, I'll be writing it up in a separate blog soon and I'll include the link here.
So, it that sounds like a lot of excuses as to why we are still in the lofting phase of the project, I apologize. We would rather folks see the time we're spending on the front end as a sign of the dedication this team has to getting it exactly right. And that, in fact, is exactly what it is. Here's a sample.
Those lines that curve down from left to right are cross sections of the ballast (aka water lines), looking down on them from above. The shape of the curve slowly changes as the water lines rise up through the boat, and the job of the loftsmen is to make sure that this change is logical, fair (i.e., good-looking), and most importantly, what the designer had in mind. If you look closely, you may see that there's almost a glow around some lines. That's the white-out we used when we needed to tweak a line just a little bit.
Here's the same lines a little farther aft.
The closely-spaced lines fading down to a point on the left side are these same water lines at the ballast keel as above. Each water line is 4 1/2" higher than the one next to it when viewed from the side. In this photo, however, you're looking at the water lines as if you were hovering over the boat and looking down. When the lines curve together and appear to be equally spaced from one another, it indicates that boat is gently and consistently flaring upwards, getting wider while maintaing the same basic shape.
Karl and Robin have been spending a lot of time moving back and forth from the body plan lofting floor (pictured here) to the long lines, making sure that any tiny change they make on one is reflected in the other. Not only that, they have to confirm that a change in one either contributes to or does not take away from the fairness of the other. It's like pulling on a thread in a spider's web... change one thing, you change everything.
While some folks are working on lofting, others are doing the more mundane work of getting the shop together. After all, we're not just building a boat here, we're building a boat shop as well. There's tools to be bought, borrowed, and organized. Shelves for fasteners and other parts need to be found. Metal storage lockers and waste disposal containers to make sure that we have a safe and fireproof shop...
It's truly amazing how much behind the scenes work goes into setting up a shop. Pictures can't begin to do it justice. Some days we sit back and wonder at how much work went into such small visible progress.
No fear, though. As soon as we have the lines just right, we're going to be making parts like a house afire. Count on it.