2. The Trimaran boat build shed

It was autumn and the he first job build a shed, using the cold months of winter to get the mould frames set up so that I could start using epoxy resin and fibreglass to build the boat when the seasons were warm enough to cure the resin. I planned the project around the seasons, so that I always had something that could be done. Progress could not be prevented in my plan.
We moved to Roxburgh, about 1-1/2” hours from Queenstown in the South Island of New Zealand during the summer December 1989. A lovely little town on the side of a river between two large ranges.
It was a country town, with 3000 people on the side of the Clutha River, and a 320 megawatt power station where I worked as an area operator in 1990.
During the summer the temperature can get into the high 30 degree Celsius. The following winter was the coldest on record since the second world war at a low of minus 28 degrees and never got above minus 5 for approximately 7 seven weeks.
So I definitely required a shed!!
I begged and borrowed from some locals for corrugated roofing iron, and only had to buy some 100mm x 100mm x 6M posts and battens for the roof. Begging is something you become good at as a home yacht builder.
While the locals spent their winter days inside next to the roaring fires, I was seen outside building my boat shed. My ears, nose and hands were constantly cold. I reckon they must have thought I was madly insane, they were correct. Everything was constantly white because of the cold, including the coal pile.
Once the shed was built, I had to build a strong back, to support the mould.
This is a solid frame or platform on which the temporary frames and the male mould for the main hull was to be built. The timber for this frame was 200mm x 50mm non treated pine. I concreted stumps into the ground, to provide a solid base that would not move, and built the strong back onto the stumps. This can be seen in the photo of the shed.
The most important thing I learnt from very good tradesmen when serving my time as an apprentice Fitter turner Machinist is that if you start off rough, the job will finish rough. No matter what you try and do later with a rough job it will always finish as a compromise, so always start off with as perfect a job as you can and your boat will look like the panels on a brand new car. No humps or hollows, and minimal filler.
I developed excellent skills as an apprentice and take pride in whatever I do.
I set up the strong back dead level in every direction. This was to be the birth of my Trimaran project.

1. Trimaran Project 9.2M Grainger MTB

The photo displayed is of a Trimaran I built from scratch as an amateur boat builder.
It was my first Trimaran building project; some would practice on something much smaller in case it turned out to be a disaster. But not me that was only a distraction from what I knew I wanted to do. I was impatient and did not have time to waste on a smaller project.
Now for some back ground before I get into the project. (1-1/2” pages of back ground that is all)

To go directly into the project then click onto the Archive window to the right of this page and click May and you will see the list of pages numbered in order. These will be added to monthly.

I am married with 2 children and a very patient and lovely wife. We have been living in Melbourne Australia for almost 9 years now, and really love Melbourne for all it offers, trees, parks, stadiums, trams, trains to the foot of the stadiums etc, Philip bay is nothing compared to Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf and it’s many islands, but it has salt water and that is OK.
New Zealand is where we were born and raised; it is a beautiful country, with many of the best sailing waters in the world. Gulfs, bays and harbours full of islands etc. It also has some of the best inland scenery in the world. However home is Australia, we love this very big dry island and gum trees, and our children are certainly Australian now, it where they have done most of their growing up.
We moved here nearly nine years ago, when I was given the opportunity to transfer from N.Z. to Melbourne with the company I was employed Parker Hannifin.
The boat building project was really a seed that was evident when I was approximately 10 years old. I built a balsa Trimaran power boat. Electric motor powered by small torch batteries. From what I remember it looked really fantastic.
When I was 11 yrs old and wandering along the banks of the Hatea river in Whangarei, North Island of N.Z. I noticed an old man working on a steel skeleton frame of a yacht on a slipway. It was not long that he gave me a job tying chicken mesh to the rusty rod steel frames. As that mesh was tied on layer after layer, the boat really started transforming in front of my 11 year old eyes into a real monstrous yacht.
Several weeks later I stood by and watched as a team of plasterers applied the fero-cement plaster to the chicken mesh, pushing it through the mesh and smoothing it off on both sides. The transformation was complete, and my dream began.
I was involved with an old P Class that was rotten, but I managed to block some of the holes with pieces of wood and 4” steel nails. I progressed to racing on Hartley 16ft and Hartley 18ft trailer sailers. That is where I caught the racing bug, and then bought a laser 2, the design has a trapeze and spinnaker. They can fly when set up well.
I raced the laser 2 at Weymouth yacht club, while also racing other days on various other Keller's until I ended up sailing on Innismara, a 67ft strip planked Kauri yacht built, owned designed, built and raced by Bernie Schmidt.
Bernie was an optician, and obviously had an eye for fast reaching and downwind hull designs. He was 67 years old when I joined his crew of 13. It was his seventh yacht that he had designed and built and also raced. Innismara was designed by being carved and shaped from a 3ft block of wood. He Bernie then cut the finished model up into about 12 sections, so that he had the shape of the hull for 12 sections along its length. He then used a yard rule and scaled each of those sections up to the full size yacht that floats today. No real drawings were ever drawn.
Initially it was going to be 60ft to match Ranger, a very well known racer built approximately 1936, on the Auckland harbour, but Bernie’s laminated Kauri keelson ended up being longer due to the planks he had, so rather than wasting the extra timber he stretched his frames out to a 67ft yacht. He was a seat of the pants guy, and full of many stories. In the 1920s he raced an 18ft skiff in Sydney and was the first Kiwi skiff to beat the Aussies at their sport. They presented him with a beautiful “silver Skiff trophy” which sits in the Tamaki Yacht club today. He was still discussing ideas for a new design up to the day he died. Swinging keels, and more rocker in the keelson etc. Some people use swinging keels now. What a fantastic man to have known and sailed with.
I left the crew and bought my first keeler a Hale Wagstaff 24ft ¼ tonner. My wife and I and crew raced her for a couple of seasons and did very well from the first race. She was a great powerful windward boat, and very forgiving. We sold that to build a house, and have our first child a lovely daughter Vanessa.
Well this is where the Trimaran story begins.
When single and with my sister on the Queensland coast in Australia while on holiday I spotted a very lovely looking trimaran flying along faster than everything else on the water. It was Riverside Oats a Tony Grainger Designs yacht. http://www.graingerdesigns.com.au/
Well that memory was festering away in me, especially now that I was land locked and not sailing.
I talked about it with Paula my wife, told her what my materials list added up to etc. She told me that as long as it did not cost much more than that I should do it and get it out of my system.
Guess what, I was out by over double the price. I had no idea of what expense I was getting us into.In my next blog we will start the process of building the shed and strong back for the male mould of the main hull.