On Board with Mark Corke

Favorite Boats - Number three: The Golant Gaffer

Following on in my occasional series of boats that I have an interest in I include below a story that first appeared in Watercraft magazine a couple of years ago. This feature was the last in a series that I wrote for that magazine on the building and use of Mallard my Golant Gafffer. Everything that I wrote since this article appeared still holds good and we still continue to enjoy the boat. Enjoy.

 

It's been ten years since Mallard first kissed the waters and during that time we have got to know each other pretty well. I built her in the UK but when my American wife Rita and I moved back to the states there was no way that I was going to leave the boat behind. We keep the boat in a small marina in  Maine which has to be one of the great cruising grounds of the world. There are challenges aplenty for sure, strong tides and granite outcrops that demand care and respect but the rewards is some of the most spectacular sailing territory ever.

 

We mostly do weekends and the odd week here and there when time permits and this year we plan a longer jaunt up to the bay of Fundy and the Canadian maritimes this summer. The accommodations are little cramped for extended cruising but not too bad if you keep organized and tidy. The layout below decks on Mallard is pretty much as Roger Dongray
initially drew it. On ducking below through the companionway the galley area is to port and the chart navigation area is to starboard. Having a dedicated chart area on a 19 foot boat may seem excessive but I do like to navigate the old fashioned way with admiralty chart, protractor and dividers. The chart area also has the main breaker panel VHF and stereo into which we can connect the ipod in which we have a plethora of stored tunes to suit every mood. Running down either side of the cabin are two tapered bunks which end in trotter boxes which we have found very useful for stuffing sleeping bags during the day. Beyond the mast compression post is the heads compartment separated from the saloon by a mahogany bi fold door.
Originally the heads had a wooden hatch but I got fed up with the constant varnishing and have since installed a custom made stainless hatch with an off white power coated finish which does much to let more light and air below. Talking of light I installed deck prisms in the main cabin; on the plans Roger suggests small portholes between the chain plates but I did not want to cut holes in the hull. The deck prisms are fantastic at letting light below and I have never missed the portholes.

 

 Most Golant Gaffers have the Yanmar 1GM 10 as auxiliary power which is fine engine and the one that I originally intended to fit myself but had a change of heart at the last moment and opted for the Lombardini 502. This to my mind has two major advantages over the Yanmar firstly it is fresh water cooled and secondly it has two cylinders to the Yanmar's single
pot making for smoother running. Careful measurement showed that the overall dimensions and weight were almost identical to the Yanmar but even so it is still a snug fit under the companionway step / engine cover. Talking of smoother running I did go a little over the top and got a bit carried away and installed an Aquadrive and HMI thrust
bearing. Sound insulation material further dampens down the engine noise makes itself less felt through the boat. All this extra equipment added considerably to the final cost but I felt that it was worth it at the time and ten years later still feel the same way. I also splashed out on some other stuff too, the Wallas kerosene stove has a been a godsend, easy to operate and cheap to run I installed it mostly so that I would not have to lug around explosive gas and also I knew that the Golant Gaffer was little stern heavy so removing that
weight from the ends of the boat was also an added bonus.

 Speaking of weight the Golant Gaffer is no light weight. Many people when they first see her assume incorrectly that she is a center boarder but she has a deep draft full length keel and an a substantial amount of lead ballast hanging on the bottom of her three foot six draft. With a ballast ratio around the 45 % mark she is very solid and I am confident about keeping all the sail on her until the wind blows in the 16 knot mark. I have had the rail down a couple of times but frankly she is handful then requiring both hands on the tiller. I have sailed her so often now that I know what the wind is doing just by the feel of the boat, 12 to 13 knots is the perfect breeze for her any less and she feels sluggish but when I see the bowsprit start to
twitch I know the wind is touching 16 knots and it is time to pull down the first reef or roll up the jib. Being cutter rigged there are plenty of bits of string to pull and various sail combinations to suit any weather. I often sail alone and enjoy it immensely especially at night. Mallard's long straight keel allows her to track well and when properly set up will sail herself for long periods without nary a hand to the tiller. I did however fit a tiller pilot pretty early on and this takes much of the strain out of sitting for hours steering by hand; I can make tea cook meals and read while Mallard sails on. I also have a chart plotter and the tiller pilot 'talks' to the plotter and will sail between way points which is a boon on long trips. Mallards speed will never win any races and 80 miles in a day is about the best you can hope for but hey this is small boat after all and it should be about enjoying the journey.

At four and half knots she has a bone in her teeth and feels as steady as a rock however she touched 7 knots a couple of times surfing off a big wave in Long Island Sound, we had too much sail up and I was worried that something was going to break but the boat remained dry and I have never had any water enter the cockpit.

 I am always tinkering and improving the boat, Mallard only has one battery so we have to be doubly careful about not flattening it. Interior lights suck up a huge amount of juice and a light left on for any length of time can have serious repercussions when it comes time to start the engine. Although I carry one of the those jump start battery packs I have never had to use it partly because I converted all the lighting to LEDs including the nav lights which has to be one of the best upgrades ever. Expensive perhaps but with a 50000 hour life span I am
sure to conk out before they do.

 The big upgrade since building the boat has been the installation of a swept teak deck a couple of years back. I had always intended to do this but keen to get the boat in the water initially I postponed it and instead painted the deck with non skid paint. It worked but got very hot in the summer and was the very devil to keep clean. Scrapping it off before laying the teak proved to be a trial but persistence prevailed and the teak was  eventually installed over one winter with the boat in the barn. On such a short boat there is a lot of edge set to the planking so it was not easy but the final result makes the boat look like a million bucks. In fact knowing that planks were going to be so hard to edge set I did contemplate having straight
laid planking. I tried to convince myself that west country work boats had straight laid planks but somehow I knew that's not what I wanted so a sprung deck it is.

 I have one or two other projects on the cards but the major improvement  for this year is the fabrication of a boom tent. I have had the Sunbrella fabric for a couple of years now and although I am OK with wood and other associated product I know when I am beat so have called in the local canvas shop to finish up the tent. With the completion of the tent my list of boat upgrades and improvements to Mallard will pretty much be at an end so I am thinking of starting on a new motorboat but we shall see. In the meantime I plan on continuing to enjoy Mallard which has exceeded all my expectations, lovely to look at, delightful to sail and a joy to own.

 If I do have a complaint about the boat it was the omission in the plans that came from Roger that made no mention of the fact that you have to like talking to people. Everywhere we go people come over to us want to find out about the boat, have a look at it and generally get the full lowdown. I love telling people about Mallard and feel very proud of such a wonderful craft.

 

 

 

Plywood cutting tip

 

The fact is that there are very few straight lines in the average boat, that's what makes a boat a boat and not a box but one of the big worries is making sure that everything is symmetrical. A gondola is about the only boat that I can think of that is actually built asymmetrically but that's a whole other story. Anyhow back to my point, when cutting large things like bulkheads from expensive plywood you need to make sure that the port and starboard sides are the same so a technique that I use is to cut one side out as accurately as possible then flip the off-cut over and use to trace or at least check your marking out to double check that all is well. How well this works depends on how well you cut out the first side and you will have to allow for the width of the pencil line and saw kerf. The picture above shows me cutting a bulkhead out of half inch ply using the described method.

Teak grating - Final result

Regular readers will know that I have been reconfiguring the cockpit on Mallard. The cockpit itself is complete but I was unhappy with the look of the waterproof hatches in the sole and wanted to cover these with a traditional teak grating. I started this some time back and in
between other projects have managed to get this finished up. In an earlier post I gave a brief description of how I cut the housings for the slats so this post leads on from there.

 

For most boat work you cannot go far wrong with epoxy but in this case I made change and went with PU (polyurethane) glue. This is moistened cured adhesive and I have had good results with it. Although I would probably not use it for main structural items it is great for jobs like this grating. For one it can be used straight out of the bottle and two, which was very important in my case clean up is a snap.

 

Because it a moisture cured adhesive if the wood is too dry it will not set up well. The teak had been hanging around in the warm workshop for a couple of years and the moisture content was very low so brushing on a some water to the slat before it was tapped into the glued housing made sure that the bond was good.

 

After a 10 to 15 minute period the squeeze out started to foam which is good indicator
that all is well. The open joint time is also quite short so you have to be swift with the gluing up process.

To suit my project I made up two identical slatted sections.

 

After leaving the slat sections to dry overnight a quick going over with a belt sander fitted with 120 grit belt cleans up everything perfectly. Any remaining glue can be removed with a sharp chisel, one of the advantages of the PU adhesive. You can also the tenons here which will slot into the frame.

 

The frame is made of one inch by three inch teak. Cutting the mortices with an electric morticer saved a bunch of time. I could have cut them out with a mallet and chisel but it would have taken all day. A morticer is a great tool which basically drills square holes.

 

The frame was glued up with some thickened epoxy but not before I had a trial dry run. I have found to my cost in the past that when everything is covered with sticky goo that is not the time to have to make last minute adjustments.

 

The completed grating after a final sanding up before placing in the cockpit.