Pre-Season Projects

[GreenLake]

With a tilt-trailer, it's great to have a bit of friction. The boat doesn't need to be immersed. You unlock the trailer, let it tilt until the transom hits the water and then give it a gentle push to help overcome the initial friction (not very much of it) - the rest happens by gravity.

As I wrote, I do not support the rear half of the boat on the rollers any more.

My sailing buddies, who sail lighter boats around 200 lbs, all drive their trailers deep into the water until their boats float off. I don't need to do that.

[itguy1010]

You also mentioned concerns about friction from the bunk pads. Some say those felt pads are really the best surface. You can get teflon skids for the bunks, but critics say any sand or other abrasive that gets between the hull and skid will scratch the boat. With the felt pads, abrasives get pushed into the felt. I actually bought a skid kit at one point. But once I got the boat weight properly distributed fore and aft and between bunks and rollers, I had no problem launching or retrieving. So I never installed the skids.

Yeah, its funny. I've looked at some trailers that are all rollers (keel and side hull support) and I thought that was the way to go but now it sounds like I have the best combination. I never seem to have any trouble launching or recovering and we rarely hit the same lake twice. I've never had to pull the pin on the tilt function of the trailer but I would like to try it so I know what the advantage/disadvantage is. I'm guessing its either for steep, short ramps or for boats with greater displacement that don't float right off the trailer as easily as the DS does?

My general practice is to back the trailer down the ramp until my rear wheels on my towing vehicle are just about touching the water. At this point its pretty simple to just push the boat away from or onto the trailer with maybe just a little bit of winch action to snug the bow into the yoke.

[itguy1010]

With a tilt-trailer, it's great to have a bit of friction. The boat doesn't need to be immersed. You unlock the trailer, let it tilt until the transom hits the water and then give it a gentle push to help overcome the initial friction (not very much of it) - the rest happens by gravity.

As I wrote, I do not support the rear half of the boat on the rollers any more.

My sailing buddies, who sail lighter boats around 200 lbs, all drive their trailers deep into the water until their boats float off. I don't need to do that.

Ok, so when you pull the pin you are what, just backed into the water how far? How much force do you have to overcome to pull the pin and guide the boat into the tilted position? Also, how does this work in recovery? And, can you single-hand this operation?

[itguy1010]

I'm hijacking my own thread here but...

I finally remembered why I wanted to remove and replace my masthead. Well, maybe not replace it but I want to add some flotation to the mast to help prevent turtling in the event of a capsize. It appears from reading other threads that a couple feet of pool noodle shoved into the mast is enough. I really don't want to mess with expanding foam and I like the idea of being able to remove the noodle if I need to. Will 2 feet do it? And, will it stay put?

[talbot]

I'm skeptical of the pool noodle idea. I had another DS (a '79) with a mast that appeared to have been completely filled with foam during manufacture. The Dwyer extrusion doesn't come that way, but it looked like it was done during the boat assembly. I bought the boat in '89 from Mark Schroeder, who was active in DS racing and also an active tinkerer. If he had done the mast fill, I'm sure he would have mentioned it. Anyway, I never heard that foam-filled masts solved the turtling problem. Not until O'Day and later manufacturers began making waterproof hatches did they begin to call the boat capable of "self-rescue."

I actually think the most practical device would be something like a CO2-activated mini life raft in a valise strapped to the cuddy. However, this "VFD" (vessel flotation device) would not spread out like a raft, but would inflate into a stubby tower inside the foretriangle to get its flotation as high as possible along the mast. OK--wait, I got it--it IS a little life raft! Oblong. And it inflates lengthwise adjacent to the mast, guided and retained by an accessory line along the mast's leading surface. (Let's just agree that if the capsize happens on a spinnaker run, the spinnaker pole magically gets out of the way.) Once you get the boat back up, you release the line, take down the raft, and deflate it for restorage. Unless the DS sinks, in which case you climb into the raft. When you see it advertised in the West Marine catalog, remember you read it here first.

FYI: Revere claims it's 4-person Coastal Raft, pictured below, is the smallest and lightest available. And it costs about $1300. For that, you could buy a second Daysailer and tow it along behind.

liferaft.jpg (111.08 KiB) Viewed 12814 times

[jeadstx]

The old O'Day brochures mention "foam filled" spars.

I have capsized once (2012) since I put foam in the upper 2 feet of my mast. The boat did not turtle and the mast head stayed afloat until the boat was righted. The boat was swamped with water in the inner hull, but she stayed afloat in part due to the 60 pool noodles stuffed in there.

John

[talbot]

Well, that's good to know. So back to the second question that was posed: How did you keep the foam in place?
60 noodles! Zowie, I think I might have 30 stuffed inside my hull. Pool-noodle envy.
Did you try to fill the entire space, or did you concentrate noodles up in the coaming area? I recall someone saying on the forum years ago that if the inner hull is breached, you actually don't want the low part of the bilge very bouyant, because that will only encourage turtling. (I don't think the writer had your practical experience.)

[GreenLake]

Ok, so when you pull the pin you are what, just backed into the water how far? How much force do you have to overcome to pull the pin and guide the boat into the tilted position? Also, how does this work in recovery? And, can you single-hand this operation?

I single-hand all the time. Before I started racing, I would say, at least half my trips were single-handed or with me being the only one setting up the boat.

For launch, I just get to the point where the trailer hubs are near the water line (half the wheel submerged).

The release takes no unusual force. I don't recall whether the DS needs tilting, or whether it tilts on its own. In either case, it's near the balance point, so not much force to guide it. (Sounds silly, because I just did it last two weeks ago, but I can't remember whether I had to push it up or hold it down, letting go slowly.)The initial "shove" to get the boat going does not need you to hit the gym to prepare for. The DS weighs 600 pounds, so just the inertia feels like resistance, but I'd estimate that any middle schooler could get my boat going.

In recovery, I do not use the tilt feature, because the angle makes retrieval harder. Instead, I back the trailer in just to the point where the rear roller is almost covered by the water. I replaced it with one that has a shallow V with a deeper notch in the middle. That captures the bow and forces the boat to load straight, until the bunks start taking weight (at which point there's no more side slip).

[GreenLake]

About floating high: Theoretically, if your boat floats very high, the mast points downward and depending on where the center of buoyancy ends up, there could be a moment that pushes the mast under.

The pool noodles are only active if the bilge floods. If it stays dry, it's the geometry of the bilge and under-seat spaces that determines the propensity for turtling. If in doubt, nothing beats an experiment, of course.

[talbot]

Not sure about that last point. I think sitting at my computer drinking coffee on a rainy day theorizing about capsizes instead of getting my work done is way better than actually tipping the boat over and trying to right it. If you've ever read Don Quixote, Cervantes has a long description of how to build and test a helmet, which sounds very much like my own innovations.

[GreenLake]

Yes, rainy days.

That's when I disappear into my shop and the epoxy comes out, whether a project really needs it or not.

[Alan]

On the subject of DSII mast flotation, my 1980 has what sounds like the same stuff Talbot referred to. It's square in cross-section, and is a different foam than that used in pool noodles. I found it while replacing the base casting. It won't budge when I pull or push on it, which may be because it runs the length of the mast.

On the subject of bilge flotation, I just discovered a bilge flotation tank, different from the bow tank. It's mounted in the bilge forward of the mast. I've owned my boat for eight years, and I had no idea it was in there.

You can see the aft wall of it in this photo:

DSII compression post resized.jpg (189.65 KiB) Viewed 12802 times

Here's a better photo, borrowed from jeadstx's gallery. At the right top, you can just see what looks like a piece of flotation foam. There's a similar photo in jdoorly's gallery, so we've got at least three DSIIs that have the tank.

DS2 compression post.jpg (241.67 KiB) Viewed 12802 times

And here's what it looks like from the front. I got this photo by lowering a camera into the bow flotation tank through an eight-inch inspection port installed in the forward cuddy bulkhead. There are gaps at the top (arrows) and it doesn't look like it was ever attached to the cuddy floor.

So, I suppose I should put an inspection port in the cuddy floor above the tank and pull out the flotation foam to see if it's still dry after all these years.

[talbot]

In my '73, they didn't pour the foam in. It's just some foam blocks in what later became a bilge tank. The forepeak flotation tank itself was full of a bunch of loose chunks of glue-spattered styrofoam they must have had lying around the shop in Massachusetts. I have sometimes wondered if my boat was a prototype DS II, before they went into production. The number stamped on the hull is higher than some other DSII's, but I still imagine someone saying, "Hey, what should we do with that prototype that's been taking up space?" and a supervisor saying, "Hell, stamp it with the next available hull number and ship it out." I agree it might be a good idea to open the cuddy floor and pull the old foam, but I'm afraid what else would fall out when I do. That's what happens with this boat. I don't move anything that I'm not prepared to replace or rebuild. As I rebuild more and more of the boat, it keeps getting younger while I get older.

[TIM WEBB]

TRW has that wall/bulkhead as well, so make that four! I put an inspection port on the foredeck last year, in order to repair the bow eye, inspect the stemhead L-bar, and open up some possible storage area. Found loose blocks of dry 36 year old Styrofoam in there. That wall is what keeps the foam in the bow from "migrating" aft in the bilge.

The foam under the seats that I can reach is also dry, so I'm leaving well enough alone for now. TRW's mast had that square foam in it, but it was all disintegrated, so I knocked it all outta there and shot expanding foam into the top. I think I'll knock that outta there as well and put in pool noodles carved up into long thin squares ... ;-P

[jeadstx]

Talbot,

I filled the top 2 feet of my mast with spray in foam. Then I sealed any old hardware mounting holes that were in the mast to help out with flotation. Although my boat which is a 1976 build is at the age when the mast should have been filled with foam, it isn't. My mast was replaced by the P.O. with a mast from a 1958 Day Sailer, I guess after damaging the original. My original rudder was also off the same 1958 boat. As far as the 60 pool noodles in my hull, I put those in after a capsize in 2010 where I found that water leaked into my bilge. The 2010 capsize was before I put the foam in the mast head. During that capsize I had to get flotation under the mast head to keep the boat from turning turtle. A guy in a passing boat jumped in to assist me and helped keep the masthead up. I had trouble righting the boat and grabbed the centerboard and swam the boat on it's side about 200 yards towards shore. Once in water where I could touch bottom, I was able to right the boat. I beached it and bailed it before heading back to the ramp.

Once on the trailer the stern drain emptied water out of the bilge, took about half an hour. In the next few days I took pictures of the bilge to find out the condition of my flotation. It was at that time I found out that the P.O. had removed most of it. On this site there were posts that mentioned using pool noodles and since I was planning my first attempt at the Tx200 I thought I should get sufficient flotation in the bilge. I knew I would be carrying more supplies and gear than a day sail and wanted plenty of flotation. I knew from the capsize that water could leak into the bilge. I put the initial pool noodles in thru the cockpit inspection ports and filled up the bilge under the cockpit pretty good. I had trouble getting them in the bow however due to their length. So I cut them in half and stuffed as many in there as I could. Then after I installed the oarlocks, I had additional inspection ports and put more in the sides of the cockpit above the only surviving original flotation.

All the flotation paid off when we capsized during the 2012 Tx200. The boat stayed on it's side with the masthead on the surface. The boat's bilge started to fill with water from some areas along the hull deck joint and settled to a point where the centerboard was level with the surface. About that time one of the other boats in the fleet came out to assist. The guy that dove into the water righted the boat. The boat took on water, but stayed floating with about 2" freeboard. Although swamped, the boat was sailable if it needed to be, but we were towed in none the less. On shore the boat was bailed and pumped out. We sailed 25 miles the following day with some water sloshing in the bilge.

As for the bulkhead in the bow of the bilge, I have one also. Like Tim, I added an inspection port in the bow to repair my bow eye. The area in the bow is full of broken pieces of foam that are in good condition despite their age.

John