The Montauk Catamaran Company Chronicles, 12/15/14: Another Aka Completed

Nutcracker madness is over, so it's back to the boat shop!

David Ryan December 15, 2014

(The Montauk Catamaran Company Chronicles is an ongoing series of posts detailing the construction of Mon Tiki Largo, a James Wharram Designs Pahi 63 MkII. The author’s current boat is the catamaran Mon Tiki, a JWD Tiki 38, which he built in 2012 and currently operates as a day-sailing charter in Montauk NY. You can see all the posts in this series by clicking here.)

Aka #2 laid up and and clamped.

Between getting Mon Tiki hauled, a very wet nor’easter, and The Nutcracker, not a whole lot got done on the Pahi 63 last week. But this morning we were back at it, and got the triple course of 1×6 laid up on the second aka (crossbeam). Since I said part of the reason for making these posts was to remember things I might forget, a couple of notes:

Priming each face to be glued takes about 10oz of epoxy (not exactly 10oz because we use the proportion mixing marks on a 1-pint mixing pail). It takes the same amount of epoxy, plus 2 pints of fumed silica and 2 tablespoons of milled glass fibers to make glue for one face. Each set pair of triangular cheeks uses about the same amount as one 1×6 face.

So completing one aka is 8x the above amounts. If my math is right that’s about 240oz of epoxy & hardener, 16 pints of fumed silica, and 16 tablespoons of milled glass fiber. There; recorded.

Akas #1, #2, and #6 are done, leaving #3 (started), #4, and #5. Aside from the hulls themselves, these are the most massive parts of the boat. Thank goodness we have a stay-home-dad as our next-door neighbor; when they get to this point they’re too heavy for Amy and me to lift on our own!

Also this week, and as with Mon Tiki, we will be sending a sample of our hull-plating out for testing at an ASTM-certified lab. This redundant, because we have a test of the same material (meranti plywood) from the Mon Tiki build, so the numbers should be the same. But it is what it is. When those results come back we can talk about the intersection of engineering, construction, and regulations.