Redesigning the Pilgrim 40 Trawler / Canal Boat

jimbob said:

thanks for all the info; never would have thought of mounting the camera to the dock,guess it will all work out so many things to consider when choosing a retirment home

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drf6 said:

We have a rear facing camera mounted aft, under the boat deck.

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Reiziger said:

Brian,
Look at the following Link, this yard build a Motor Catamaran with Alu hulls and composite superstructure.
HEINEEK 4800
CeesH

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French manufacturer JFA just launched the first unit of their new Long Island class, an 85-foot sailing catamaran. In a slight departure from what is considered the norm these days, instead of composite, the hulls were manufactured in aluminium. However, the superstructure was done in composite. The design of the Long Island 85-footer is by Naval Architect Marc Lombard. ..New Launch: JFA Long Island 85' sailing catamaran - YachtForums.Com

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eyschulman said:

I am new to site. used to own one of the early P 40s. I used truck rear view mirrors mounted outside wheelhouse worked well, cheap and low tech. My boat was on east coast and sold back to great lakes. If the present owner is on site say hallo we called her Serena. There where SS ladders aft of siding door to get to the roof I do not think any other boat had that custom touch there was also a pad on stern for a outboard motor mount. Could adjust mirrors to see both rear quarters from helm.

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brian eiland said:

I know you were referring to the dual material construction of that vessel, and not so much to the vessel itself. I wasn't very impressed with that design for a canal boat. Why make it wider than necessary for canal work, and why have twin engines....just more expense in purchase and maintanence....etc.............................................

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eyschulman said:

....There where SS ladders aft of siding door to get to the roof I do not think any other boat had that custom touch .....

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drf6 said:

To answer a few questions....
Pilgrim #9, #10 and #18 (possible others) had the second ladder to the boat deck behind the starboard side pilot house door.

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brian eiland said:

This is the one photo I remember saving....

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Today, at K&M Yachtbuilders, metal components delivered to the construction hall are far more refined: Precut stringers are the precise shape required to yield the finished hull, and they arrive from the computer numerically controlled (CNC) laser cutting facility with an intricate pattern of notches cut halfway through their depth to interlock with the transverse frames, which in turn have a corresponding pattern of narrow cuts around their outer curves. These pre-cut structure members with cutouts, coupled with precut hull plating, assure a stronger hull than conventional build, and require fewer highly skilled builders, and much shorter production time on the shop floor

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Building with kits (alum and steel) saves much of the expert but time-consuming manual work, because parts come precut from CNC-laser, or CNC-plasma cutting machines and fit together only one way....

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I like this new way of building boats. Nevertheless I must admit with the old method the welders on the shop floor had a very big part in making the hull what it should be. With the cleverly engineered metal parts that fit together to become a firm structure without the workers manipulating any part, construction follows the procedure planned by the engineers. Still it is a fascinating process to see a yacht take shape following the arrival of a pile of metal parts. And we can build much faster now.

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When we build with metal kits, the hull comes out smooth, with a lot less finishing work.

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A 50' boat can be finished within months. It allows welders and yard professionals with less experience to build a strong, lightweight hull exactly to specification in a predicatively short period of time.

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We had a lot of demand for the kind of quality built steel motoryachts we build here. ...That is why the innovation program was started ( the government funded project mentioned earlier, Virpack's Smart Kit was one outcome).
At Jetten Yachting one of the first boats built by the Smart Kit method was a 40' steel-hulled cruising yacht. The yard had built hulls to this design previously, but always by traditional methods. The same boat built from a Smart Kit was finished in just eight months, cutting build time in half.

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Building with kit-ed CNC-cut components is so efficient that just 2 weeks after construction began, the hull of this Bestevaer at K&M is ready for plating, which has started at the garboard.

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Another savings of the Smart Kit for Jetten is that not all plates must be cut by laser. Laser metal cutting allows no more than 0.1mm deviation from computer drawings, but less expensive plasma cutting is now as precise as 0.5mm-0.8mm maximum deviation.
So we have the main construction of transverse frames and stringers laser cut, but the hull plating plasma cut.

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The process of optimizing cost and build time for our yachts continues. The Smart Kit gets smarter all the time, while we also try to improve on yard logistics and cost efficiency. The lower the cost of our yachts, (and the shorter the build time, BE's edit), the bigger our market

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nickbranson said:

Regarding a computer cut kit. This fast build route will need you to source another couple of other things too.

1) A company with a C.N.C plasma cutter with a cutting table of around 20ft x 10ft. Some kit parts are 20ft long. The company will need to cut to an accuracy of plus or minus 1/8th inch over 20ft. Not a problem but get them to state this in your contract! They will need to be able to number them as per the drawings as each part has it's own location. When you have identified possible companies we will send rough D.X.F drawings to them on your behalf for quotation purposes. When you have chosen your company we will send them precise D.X.F files.
The company will need to 'nest' these parts on the sheet sizes they have available.
After plasma cutting (if needed) cross check measurements from a cut piece of steel can be made against the computer dimensions. These kits are tried and tested and fit together extremely well. We guarantee this so long as the parts are cut accurately!

2) Plate handling- best with a forklift or overhead gantry! Long, thin, heavy plates need handling without kinking. Plate grabs, and pullers will also be needed. Are you using MIG? Recommend MIG as a lot of welding is involved. Approximately 1/3rd build time on tacking the kit together 1/3 on welding up and the last 1/3rd on grinding and detailing. A lot of builders buy this equipment second-hand and then sell it on completion.

3) Also you will need to buy tube and angle for things like the handrails, rubbands, sterntube. Standard steel sections.

Savings? Compared with the traditional way- Loft (or draw out) full size the boat plans. Hand cut each frame and centreline piece, Template and hand cut each skin plate, Fiddle about endlessly making good. The results- 50 to 100% more labour, higher steel wastage, large quantities of grinding disks for linishing the cut plates, excess plate distortion and uneven lines, more overheads and more filler. A boat with less resale value as the unevenness and roughness will inevitably show. It cost more and took longer to produce an inferior product.

Costs for C.N.C cutting a 40ft Luxemotor - D.X.F drawings hired for one boat- $4,275, C.N.C cutting $4,000? I don't know what it costs in the States and guess it varies widely as it does here in the UK. A steel boat builder would expect to take 800 man hours to complete this kit.

It's fun and fast putting a kit together especially in the tacking together stage were large chunks of the boat get added every day! For a good looking boat it is cheaper than any other way.

Our company is at Branson Boat Design Dutch Barges - Kits and Designs there are others as well so if our designs don't suit, try another company but stick with kits!

Nick

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My wife Lise and I had lived respectively a long and exciting careers.

We wanted a new way of living in seeking a pleasure craft that could provide us the ultimate retirement adventure, an alternative home and a memorable summer residence as a reward to our hard-working and successful life.

Current retirement alternatives do not offer much to those who have achieved something in their life and are just ready to be put out to pasture.
We had a need for a boat that could put a sense of freedom into our retirement adventure.

There is a camaraderie in a boating community that is non-existant in a cement high-rise cities and or suburb.

Our need was also to become more involved the heartbeat of life as we are more aware of Mother Nature and her ever-changing moods something you lose with big cities.

We needed more that a summer cottage so we bought a condominium for Skiing during the snow season and we wanted to buy a kind of a Canal Barge like a Boataminium for the rest of the year.

As a Sea Cadet I have sailed since the age of 14 then became a Sailing Instructor at Cornwallis Base in N.S. during the summer as a Navy Reserve Second-Lieutenant.

Since then I chartered sailboats until 1995 and around 2001 I was tired with the handling of huge headsails, getting soaked wet in an open cockpit and living in a expensive submarine, all this at a 15 degree heel. After a 3 year of research, we made that eccentric choice : Buy a Boat with Confidence in order to find a liveaboard for that ultimate retirement experience in order to escape the jungle of traffic, jammed bridges, construction, concrete and asphalt of big cities like Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

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brian eiland said:

If you look thru some of that KSS information and links I just posted, it's hard not to see that this is the ideal manner in which to build the relatively big flat panels of our decks, our cabin sides, and our cabin roof for the new Pilgrim design.

And these 'pieces' can all be built on a big flat horizontal table that produces parts with a 'finished side' to them, and the glass lay-up can be varied from part to part (main deck different than cabin side, different from cabin roof).

Set up properly this would all go much faster than traditional hand lay-up, with fewer people, be a much cleaner operation, and produce a superior resin injected piece.

Derek has worked with PVC foams like this for years, and much prefers them for this process. That said, there are no set rules that the Pilgrim redesign could not utilize the same foam-cored panels for its superstructure. BUT, I also think that the newer resin-injected-ready polypropylene cores could also be utilized in place of his beloved foam.

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...excerpt....
KSS is to forget all we know about traditional boat building. This is the hard part. The blinkers of what we know are very powerful. KSS takes the requirements of the final craft, the properties of the materials involved, the structure and what is efficient in the boat shop, and combines them into a common sense handling process.

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I spent 4 days in Lenoir Tennessee at Derek Kellsall’s KSS workshop. We built the hull of a 42 ft catamaran. Two friends are building two 42 foot cats at the same location there. When finished one guy will take his to Florida and the other will sail on TVA waters. One will have a normal bridge deck with accommodations and one will be more of a open/day charter cat.

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t amazed at how pitifully easy and fast it was to construct a hull. Half of the hull ( one flat panel) had already been infused and formed so all we had to was build was another half, form it and then bond the two halves together. I would estimate that two hard working people could easily build both halves and bond them together in about 10 days while still keeping it fun. Boat building fun? Sheer heresy you say? Read on.

Prior to the workshop I had only seen two boat builds. A Bruce Roberts 53 in steel and an F-31 in foam epoxy. I have repaired my boats dozens of times with foam, glass, polyester and epoxy resin, but never built a boat from the ground up. This was a real eye opening experience. I went from being terrified that I would never have the time ( or stamina) to fair the hull surfaces, if I ever took on such a project, to realizing that on the infusion table flat beautiful fair panels could be produced at a rapid clip. Hulls with gel coat or ready for paint. Derek has so damn much horse sense and has just found the simplest way to do things. Another quality I find appealing in anyone is being willing to be wrong and learn from other people no matter what their background. Well during each of the workshops new techniques are discovered and Derek incorporates these techniques into the knowledge he brings to the next workshop. I boarded my plane back to Minnesota with “I want to do this!” echoing in my head. Of course it would be easier to buy a used boat, but I found the KSS process to be surprisingly enjoyable and satisfying. Parts are created so quickly on the table there is a level of excitement that has to be experienced to be believed. Fiberglass and resins for me has been nothing but sticky, picky, itchy, stinky drudgery for me in the past. Now I have a whole new way to look at the process and confidence that I could do it and not want to give up from the sheer drudgery of sanding years of my life away with the wind blowing outside.

I came into work this morning and my YouTube subscriptions sent me this video. I watched it and wanted to cry. Cry at how much work these very talented guys were doing that they didn’t have to. I cringed when I watched the video, like watching someone paint a house with a half inch wide brush or cut a lawn with a fingernail clippers. I guess us humans revel in doing things the hard way out of sheer momentum or stubbornness. Every culture has their idioms, but in this case I have to stick with, “You can lead horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.”

jam

PS:.... from a multihull forum

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