Skerry How to align boat after stitching

Builder's Forum
1

Hi,

we just have stitched our Skerry. Now how are we going to align it? We have put the Skerry on two sawhorses of the same height at frame 1 and 3. Does this guarantee the Skerry is at level with the waterline?

If so the center frame should be perpendicular and the daggerboard trunk should be suiting the bent floor when being horizontal on the top to my understanding - is this correct? 

Frame 1 and 3 should also be perpendicular I suppose. 

At our boat only frame 3 is perpendicular. Frame 1 and 2 are not perpendicular and not in even in the same way, altough the frames are positioned according to plan measurements top and bottom. The deviation is about 5mm over the height of the frames.

Also the frames are not totally horizontal. The center frame is ok. Frame 1 and 2 are slghtly off unfortunately not in the same direction. Also the top of panel 3 is somehow not leveled at the frames, again not consistend with the level of frames - deviations are around 5mm or less than a quarter inch. The stern is perfectly perpendicular, not so the bow, about 1cm off from top to bottom.  

Are these deviations within acceptable tolerances or do we need to fine tune and if so how?

It would be great to hear of your experiences. Thanks for your help!

 

Regards,

 

Reinhard

 

 

 

 

2

I hope the CLC folks pitch in here.  I think a bit of twist is OK and you'll probably have a hard time getting all the things in the right alignment by the end you are done (my skeg, for example, is a bit mis-aligned), but small differences are unlikely to affect how the boat sails.  The way I think about it, a slight mis-alignment in your own weight in the boat is likely to changes its underwater shape a lot more than millimeter-sized imperfections in the construction.

 

That being said, you can tighten or loosen some of the stitches to change the shape of the boat a bit and try to align things a bit better.  I'm not sure I would worry much about the frames, but the twist you might want to fix.  Just make sure your saw horses are really level and that the twist is real, looking at the bow/stern rather than the frames.

 

Mihai

3

Mihai, thanks for your advice, I will give it a try - the problem is our workshop is really small and I cannot step far away to see the twist- we only have got about 2 feet(!!!!)left. I can only see it from my measurements. Anyway I'll try not to worry too much.

Reinhard