Features
Sloop with Kubota and Newage PRM Box.
Conventional deep sea seal with brass prop.
Solid Douglas Fir Mast.
Unique features to Neutron Star
Header tanks for water and fuel with stainless tanks between floors to hold gauge transducers.
Knives and spoons containers in iroko and stainless which swing out and lock back in place.
From top left to bottom right: Woody (free in a cereal packet), Sailing boat (present from kids), both superglued in place. Mug rack. Two tin openers, tea coffee, vitamins, scissors and tweezers, condiments, tablets, and lighters. Swinging cutlery bins, galley bin locker, internal water inlet, and the milk cooling bin. Only the varnish was bought, all other parts of the hardware in the picture are made from secondhand wood and scrap stainless steel.
Locker lee cloths which roll up and out of the way in port.
Prop out lee cloths which double to make double bed and fold away if not used.
Diesel heater tank top up system via auto pump and mains press and return timer switch.
Home made autopilot with Navico circuitry and timing belt drive to wheel.
Wheel and Tiller steering with release valve to offer both systems on demand.
The original tiller and rudder were replaced as only the pintle pins were salvageable (after they were aligned). The option for wheel steering I chose was a Vetus binnacle pump and wheel, driving a Vetus ram. The 'cut off and clamp on' type of fittings were used so that I could repair them at sea. I also made the original ones without having to fit one end then run to the dealers to get the end crimped on every time I found the required length for each hose. The pipes run down from the binnacle and through skin fittings into the engine room, they then head aft and come back up through the deck at the lazarette (aft locker). They have a small 'u' shaped bend to allow for ram movement and they terminate at the ram. The binnacle is hand made in stainless steel bar and iroko cladding and the ram acts through a hefty stainless lever which is through bolted to the tiller cheeks, and thorough the rudder itself. As the pipes head down the binnacle they are exposed and joined through an exposed lever valve, so that the wheel can be made free running to allow the tiller to be used for close handling in harbours, or to get best balance when reaching. The valve simply allows free flow of the oil from either side of the pump so there is no power or resistance at the ram. The gearing and sizes of kit were all fully outlined in the Vetus catalogue and I beefed up the items in view of the surprisingly heavy rudder on this boat.
One word of caution is that there is a limit as to the size of continuous running pump that can be fitted to a yacht due to the power consumption needs of big pumps. It can be wise to get a ram of a suitable size to run a reasonably small pump if autohelm functions are required by a continuous running electric pump. I made a small gearbox in the binnacle which turns the wheel on a toothed belt instead of a fluid pump method. The width of NS at the aft end of the keel caused her rudder size to be massive. The power needed to control it was so great that a very large ram was required. The size of the autohelm pump had to be proportionately large and the cost of the pump alone would have been over £2,000.
Teak, Rubber and Alloy rubbing strake with 10mm studs welded to hull and teak laminates bolted tight with nuts. All hidden under alloy and white rubber strake.
Windowed Chain Pipes to see if any snagging is occurring and to be able to light up deck at night when hauling up. Chain pipes are set in strengthened polycarbonate doughnut windows.
The cockpit unfortunately had thin iroko nailed on planks, on top of interior plywood with galvanised square headed nuts and roofing bolts holding the whole lot on to the steel. There was a cavity under the plywood of nearly one inch in places due to the buckling of the plates during welding. The only way to rectify the job short of re-fabricating the lot was to sikaflex hardwood planks to the steel. The whole cockpit was lined in wood so I was forced to repeat the same design. 80 tubes of sikaflex were used to pack out and caulk the whole cockpit!
This is what happens when roofing bolts, plywood and stuck on slivers of iroko are used to deck out a boat.
The rust and old remnants of rotten wood were removed and the lower part completed. Then the coamings had to be tackled the next summer.
The new teak was built up over several weeks on the dry days.
The new 6mm 316 stainless seatings for the new winches were bolted on and the cladding built up layer on layer.
The final job several years later (in need of a good clean unfortunately).
The hatch rotted.
So it was replaced by a strong polycarbonate one (the stereo wires were boxed in later). The old runners will need to be replaced as they are out of line and rotting, but that will be done later. The garage was replaced by a glassfible one