Building Falcon 6

Building Falcon 6

I thought long and hard before coming up with the retro pattern and shape instrument cluster. I had to keep trying things over
and over until I had something that I thought, not only worked correctly and logically, but fit Falcon's design and character.
People don't notice the resemblance to a 1920's Bugatti racing dash, or an old Fokker Biplane, but I kind'a do. It suits me to a
'T'. A little artistic and all. These are all Teleflex 'Lido' gauges.

I run the hot leads from my batteries to the center post of the battery terminals that would normally be the output. Then the
numbers on the face of the switches are to select 'Battery 1', 'Both', or 'Battery 2'. In my system, power comes in through the
center post and can either be routed to 'Buss 1', 'Both Busses', or 'Buss 2'. Buss 1 is the engine buss and buss 2 is the house
buss. Those buss bars are 2 inch by 1/4 inch solid copper.

A lot of things had to be happening at the same time here and I wasn't diligent enough with the camera to get all the pictures.
I had to redo the whole 'stuffing box' layout because it would be next to impossible to work on once I redid the battery box and
installed it, which I had to do to fit the batteries - 3 8D and 1 4D - into it and make them secure, so I could measure, make and
install all of the 40 or so huge battery cables and mount and wire in the battery switches, which meant that the cockpit seats
had to be designed, built and installed so the last of the switches could be mounted, and the cockpit center hatch had to be
worked out prior to mounting the seats because I'd have to get at the bottom of those seats to set up the hatch, which would
also be impossible with the seats and batteries already in place. If you think that sentence was long, imagine the work and
solutions it describes. The cover of the battery switch box is Ipe, and epoxied, but sealed below with 5200.

Okay, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, 'Wut, wut, wut ...' I can't help you with that, but I can say this: This girl is
Lace Rose Alenius. I'm on the dock here, at Falcon, doing my work on one thing or another (you can see the Sailrite sitting
there) and she comes out on the dock with her boyfriend and starts fishing. They don't have any luck and she comes and
asks me if there might be a way to improve their luck. I tell her to fish right at the end of this dock, only because I saw some
fish feeding there a little while ago. They fish, then she comes back to me and says that they seem to be feeding the fish
rather than catching the fish. I tell her to let the fish eat instead of snatching the food away the second they nibble. They start
catching fish. She comes back again. It seems her boyfriend can't get the hook out of the fish he caught to release it. Sensing
the need for needlenose pliers, I go out to him with her and a pair of said tools and gently extract the hook, assuring them that
careful removal does not harm the fish and it will be just fine. Then I recognize him and ask his name. It's Matt Dillon, the
movie star. Well, batter me and fry me up. We talk for a couple of minutes and I notice that the girl is a little 'antsy', and talks
right into my face. "Oh, no", I'm thinking, "I'm supposed to recognize her, too, but I don't."

They leave, and she comes back a couple of days later with her Mom and Dad, they live in Bradenton here, and I talk to her
again because she stops by and says 'Hi'. I have found a way to make it right for her, and claim I recognize her, but can't
remember from where. She was greatly relieved and explained that she was in 4 issues of Playboy - the 'Coeds' and 'Lingerie'
and whatever, and I made believe I remembered, though the truth is, I haven't bought one of those magazines in 20 years or
so. I got to know her very well and she stopped by often. She is a very smart young woman and very pleasant as well. Here,
she is autographing photos of herself to send to a wounded Iraq War Vet who is recovering in Texas. She dated Randy on
the next boat briefly, then moved to New York for a journalism internship.

In the school of 'If it's perfect, fix it anyway, because you might be too stupid to know if it's perfect and besides, what if it
breaks?' I began watching the props for sale on EBay. I finally saw one that I thought might be 'more perfect' for Falcon - well,
okay, I'm not a moron - the thing is, early on I'd deduced through both calculation and trial and error that the biggest wheel
Falcon should swing and still have better than 10% tip clearance, is 18 inches. When stopping, moving at slow speed (when
would Falcon ever move at anything BUT slow speed) accelerating, and powering over lumps or pulling back away from a
grounding, the bigger the prop you can power, the better. It doesn't do any good to try to load up a big wheel on an engine
that can't deliver the horsepower and torque it needs, but if you've got the grunt, you'll never get it to the water if you don't
have enough prop to take advantage of it.

So, I saw one. An 18 inch diameter with 15 inches of pitch, to replace the 16 by 16 powerboat unit I'd been running with
excellent results. I checked with the best prop shop in the state, General propeller, right here in Bradenton, and they quoted
me about $650 for a new prop, just like the one on EBay. I waited until the very last second and submitted a bid of $201.59.
In a flash, a bid of $201.00 showed as the winner, then my bid of $201.59. SCORE! I knew someone out there was doing the
Homer Simpson DOOHH!! as he watched me take his prize for only 59 cents, but that's life in the big city. $25 shipping and
the prop came with nuts and a cotter pin. Brand spanking new Michigan Wheel.

The other thing next to it might still be a question mark. Originally, I was going to build in my water tanks, making them all of
fiberglass with vinylester resin and 1708 biaxial fabmat, blah, blah, blah. Recovering from Hep C and the impact on my liver
from exposure to all that, not to mention the difficulty of the construction itself, and the potential for leaks, well, forget it. I was
going to make 3 water tanks, 2 fuel tanks, and a holding tank. Now, I've bought and installed 2 50 gallon fuel tanks, and I've
bought and am getting ready to install 2 52.5 gallon and 2 31 gallon flexible Plastimo water tanks. It sounds like 167 gallons
of water capacity, but think with the spaces I'm putting them in, I'll be happy to get a solid 100 gallons total.

The manifold is to allow me, from the galley, to select which of the four tanks to draw water from. The fifth valve, without the
white button, is water coming from the Village Marine Watermaker. From this manifold, I can also select which tank to put
Reverse Osmosis water into.

I took this picture right after making the white handles for the wheel.
They will never be don until I find a suitable button to fit in the
outboard ends of each handle that will not be annoying or chafe a
blister into the palm of my hand like the old handles used to do.

The little furry guy is a stuffed orangutan that I somehow got
somewhere, wearing an old leather hat with a feather band. I think
they are sold in tourist stops in New Mexico. Anyway, I liked the look
and since I like that show 'House', I named the ape 'Harry' and would
sometimes say, "That's some bad hat, Harry."

That Harry, always with a smile and a helping hand. I gave him
away. I have enough stuff on board that doesn't do anything already.
Somewhere, he's sitting in a room staring thoughtfully across at an
empty wall, wearing that bad hat and being some kids ugly friend.

Meanwhile, a dozen or more complex fixtures needed to be supported and incorporated into a console of some kind that
insisted I construct NOW around the Edson Steering Gear. Back when Reagan was getting lost in the White House, I bought
a special steering shaft support bearing and a wheel brake that I carried around for years and occasionally took out to look
at, sigh, and put back away. Along with the Autohelm 6000 autopilot, I got the chain and sprockets to connect the drive unit to
what? That's right - Edson 1 inch steering shafts. How cool is that?

Now, I began experimenting with placement, direction, spacers and fasteners until I settled on the only 'right' way to install
everything and have a nice 1/8 inch aluminum plate hanging down to mount the Autohelm drive unit on. I made starboard
spacers and one bronze collar and put all this together, leaving just the right amount of space for the wheel. As a sidebar, I
can shorten the collar behind the wheel any time to allow a thicker wheel. Next, I used a heavy fiberglass angle, with a bit of
shimming for alignment, to support the Type 2 drive unit for the autopilot, and shortened the chain a tad before clamping it up
and drilling the holes.

Everything was tried and adjusted again and again to make it steer smoothly and easily - the Autopilot drive unit adding a bit
of drag, but nothing significant - to keep the chain and the gears in perfect alignment, and on and on. Lacing the control
cables was another one of those chores. I got it done, but it means that one small area of the storage locker needs to be
protected with a panel so fenders or docklines or whatever can't wrinkle the engines control cables. After a few years of
looking at the excess plywood beneath the quadrant gear for the steering, I finally marked it and cut it off. The side panels for
the console - yeah, that's right, you heard me, I called it a console - were pretty tricky and I made patterns out of cardboard,
then thin plywood, before cutting out the real pieces. Even then, I must have taken them off and on a dozen times to grind
here, file there and shave here, until they fit right. Each side was slightly different.

These two side panels were attached in every way and with all the strength I could build into them. I have been out in Falcon
enough in heavy weather to know how desperately you sometimes hold onto that wheel to keep from being tossed around.
After battens on the inside epoxied and screwed to the rear of the cockpit, and a batten across the top, I fiberglassed the unit
in.

I shortened the wheel lock handle and made a special starboard bearing for it where it goes into the console. I also had to
make special clamps to mount the throttle and shifter cables inside. The ignition key, of course, starts the engine. The first
pull switch turns on the instrument lights and the rotary dial behind the wheel is an instrument light dimmer. The second pull
switch turns on the compass light.

As you can see, it got fairly congested inside the box and it has become a bit of a pain to work on things in it, but, what are
you going to do. I like it. I'm mounting the cockpit VHF Radio in the bottom of it, but I'm still not sure where to mount the
compass. I'll think of something. I'd carried the two compasses below for a long time. I actually had three, but sold the least
desirable a couple of years ago for $100. Then a few weeks ago, I gave the one on the right to Eddie and Sandy for the top
station on their trawler 'Tarquin'. Someone knows what the name means, but nobody cares. Eddie and Sandy didn't name the
boat.

I've kept the sweet Constellation compass without the cover. It has the only magnetic compensator and it's tight and has a
great card. The other compass I gave Eddie has the same card, but the oil was a mixture and would turn red if left in the sun
for a couple of days. I told Eddie to get new oil and drain this stuff out completely. It's the oil in the other compass that makes
the card look yellow. It's actually as white as the one on the left.

With the instrument panel installed and wired and the console wired, I finally mounted the stern light properly and ran it's
wiring forward to join the harness coming from the console and heading forward over the port fuel tank. I wired the fuel tank
pick-up and joined those wires into the bundle as well, then ran them all to the main bulkhead at the aft end of the cabin. I
also wired the starboard fuel tank pick-up and ran that wire into the engine room. In the past, I have wired things from cars to
boats to houses, where I ran bundles of wires with only a minimum of identifying tags and sorted them out when it came time
to connect them. This time, however, I made up my mind to label every wire properly so that later on I might still be able to
troubleshoot wiring if I really have to. Or at least, I won't cut out an essential circuit simply because I don't know what it is. I
opened Microsoft Word and began a session of typing a word, copying it, then paste, paste, paste until I had tons of wire
labels waiting to be patiently cut out while watching football. I used clear packing tape to attach them to the wires. It's a bit
tedious, but I'm happy with it. There's going to be a lot of wiring before this whole project is over.

My introduction to proper operational systems wiring was as an autopilot and compass systems specialist in the Air Force. I
worked on the big cargo planes from old C-97's to C-124's, 130's, 133's, and 141's. Most of my time was spent on C-141's.
These planes had huge electrical junction boxes with dozens of rows of terminal strips and thousands of skinny little white
wires with numeric codes on them that looked like phone numbers. After a little while, you could find any wire anywhere,
separate it at a terminal strip and check it in one direction, then the other, and determine where the problem was. For this
reason, I still like terminal strips and intend to use them wherever practical.

The main reason for the terminal strip above is because it is the only way to remove the whole instrument panel in one piece
if I have to replace an instrument or repaint the panel. It is also a convenient way to gang grounds and connect a few other
devices, such as the two fuel tank sender units.

This was a great time for me. For years, this cockpit wasn't even a vision in my mind. I could never get it to gel into something
that would work the way I wanted. Now, with certain elements solidifying, not into some abstract concept of fantasy cockpit
configuration that will later on be twisted and contorted into something that the new owner can fit his various cruising
necessities into somehow, but evolving into the 'right' battery switch box, the 'right' console with everything fit into it that I
wanted there, and finally, full length seats that I could stretch out on if I wanted, or even sleep on during warm summer nights.
The two round holes in the instrument bulkhead are for speakers, and it wasn't long after this that I installed the Autopilot
control (with Velcro, by the way, so I could pull it off and sit anywhere) and on the opposite side, the depth sounder.

This was my first try making cushions and covers and I used what materials I had. At first, I wasn't all enthusiastic about the
material, but I had it and it matched so I found a way to cut it out that seemed to work. I used scrap light blue for the edges
and some scrap dark blue for the bottoms. It's all Sunbrella. The bad fit and wrinkly look were a disappointment, not to
mention that the edges around the bottom didn't come out right and all puckered up a little and made me go 'ummnn' and
frown. Just as I was scratching my head and wondering how to fix it, along came Ray Glover from Sunshine Canvas who
does all this for a living. I've known him for years and we've always been friendly. He always has good things to say and this
day was no exception. He told me the 'cushion and cover' secrets and told me how to make the covers tight and make them
sew up perfectly without mismatched edges or unwanted puckers. It involved gluing on extra foam and stapling the cover
together, inside out, over the foam, going end to end, side to side, a little at a time, until it's perfect, then unzip it and remove
the foam and stitch it up, removing the staples as you go. The excellent results are below. I am SO the cushion making man.

As unbelievable as this may be, when I am not posting to the website it is not because Kathy Bates has me tied to a bed
somewhere with broken ankles, but almost. What happens is that I am pulled away from the boat by other things. I was
careful just then not to say 'other interests', because I am not always 'interested' in what takes me away. Sometimes I get
involved with helping someone else - a problem with forcing a big, fat 'NO' out of my mouth (something I'm getting better at),
or I have to complete an obligation I'd begun eons before that is haunting me like Mrs. Miurs Ghost.

Sooner or later, I always get back to the boat. One of the things I'd been avoiding was the shortening of the Rudder Post so I
could put a cushion on the aft deck and steer Falcon in relaxed comfort. It is two inches of solid 400 series stainless steel,
solid, and as you can see by the scarring on the deck surround the cut off shaft, it was a long, grueling siege in the sun. It
took about five hours to complete. Now I have to grind the top off smooth and repair the deck, then fashion an emergency
tiller and a cover. Believe it or not, the hard part is over.

The stainless Boom Gallows that supports the main boom was a long, slow thought process coupled with trial and error, until
a suitable structure was arrived at. It started with a discarded tow hitch for water skiing, and ended up as you see it here.
Originally, the thick legs bent backwards 90 degrees at the bottom, and the thinner legs went straight down to the deck at a
45 degree angle. Unable to simply weld and bend at will, I made do be fitting internal sleeves, using 3M 5200 and pop rivets,
then covered the joints with high-end electrical shrink tubing. I also wired the gallows internally and into the boat to facilitate
possibly moving the stern light up for better visibility. I finally installed the little flag mast I've been carrying around forever.

Once I was back to work, I emptied the cockpit of everything, including the seats, and cleaned and coated all the raw wood
with epoxy. After that, several coats of single-part poly paint were applied to all surfaces, including the steering console. Well,
except for the aluminum plate - I haven't done that yet. It needs special primer.

Below is the sunshade I made for the cabin top between the masts. I cut it from an old sail and sewed good webbing around
all the edges before installing the grommets. I also sewed two old seat belts together and sewed that into the center as a
vertical rib. It works great and is tough as nails. We'll see how long it takes for the sun to rot the threads. Here, it is hanging to
dry after a good scrubbing.

I'd decided on the deck positions of the mainsheet blocks some time before, sorting out many other items in the process. I first
had to decide on where to attach to the boom, and I had to position the Bimini for swing clearance, and locate the beams
below the deck, and blah, blah, blah. Make believe I said everything.

I used the stainless Wichard eyebolts that were once assigned to secure the lower ends of the inner shrouds. Since those
shrouds were eliminated when going to the heavy masts, the parts were there for the using. Plenty of support above and
below, as well as sealer.

After more thought and anguish than I'd care to talk about, I chucked the idea of a nice, stainless bail with which to attach the
mainsheets to the boom, and instead opted for a sewn and sealed, bolted web hoop with two heavy stainless rings. This
allows me to drop the cross side sheet when the boom goes over the opposite side of the boat.

Someday I may find the receipt for these deck organizers and clutches and know for just how many years I carried these
pretty little desk ornaments around before enlisting them into service on Falcon. However long it was, it was a good deal
cheaper to buy them then than it would be now. Everything is Garhauer, and so far, I like it just fine. My friend Espin pulls out
the remaining wisps of his hair as he declares how much needless friction I am deliberately inserting into every action I have
to take on board. Well, what can I say. He's right. But I CARRIED THESE THINGS FOR 15 YEARS AND BY HOMERS
GHOST, I'M PUTTING THEM ON! Besides, Espin also warns of a 'White Whale' and a long drop off the edge of the World if
you sail too far. Food for thought.

The pictures above are for the gear handling the four halyards on the foremast. They are the throat halyard, then the peak
halyard, both for the foresail, then the jib halyard and the staysail halyard. Below are the three line for the mainmast. From
right to left, they are the foresail gaff vang, the main peak halyard and the main throat halyard. The fore gaff vang is to take
twist out of the foresail. There are all new lines installed.

Yes, it's true. That's a TV antenna. I know. I know they didn't have such things back when boats like this were being built, but,
... but, never mind. It's now at the top of the foremast. I swore I would never do that, but it's so easy to take off that I don't
mind it. I now have a new digital flat screen TV and the new HD digital antenna broadcasting is great.

Above and below are two pictures of the new Lazy Jacks. I used high-tech dingy line and installed small stainless rub strakes
beneath the booms to allow the line to slide easily. They are much less apt to chafe the sails and stretch.

By now, or perhaps long ago, people are saying, "What about INSIDE the boat? What's it like INSIDE the boat?" There is
nothing inside the boat. The only thing inside the boat is shelter from the rain. There are no floors, no doors, no counters or
cabinets, no head, no sink, nothing. You can be sure there is a good, logical, long and boring explanation why, but let's not
do that, except to say, 'first things first', and that I do what I can when I can. You might also recognize that I LIVE inside, and
to do anything in there requires that I empty out the boat and put everything on the dock. Not a happy thought. But progress
is being made

After finally collecting most of what I needed to install the four flexible water tanks, I made four super heavy duty safety bags
out of salvaged heavy nylon material. I also came up with some secure methods of attaching the fill and draw lines to the
tanks, and securing the tanks to their locations below the floorboards and beneath the fuel tanks. I'd previously installed the
three deck fills and also the holding tank pumpout, so I bit the bullet, emptied most of the boat, and began installing the tanks.
Naturally, the 'Law of Dominoes' intervened and has not relented yet. You see, waiting for me on the floor was a stack of 1/2
inch plywood panels that I'd previously prepared to install in the ceiling of the galley and the head. These needed to go in
before I could finish installing the deck organizers, and they were so easy to install, I figured I might as well do them now
instead of putting them outside and putting it off again. So, I did. Then I started working on the galley counter seen above,
because I had to have the sink in place before mounting the water pressure pump and accumulator, and I needed to have the
counter built before I could install the sink, and it would be a stupid mistake to let food or grease get on the counter before
fiberglassing and epoxying it, and since my neighbor, Kim, had a batch of extra Awlgrip white she was going to dump if I didn't
need it, I might as well prep and paint the counter. Dominoes.

Counter in, epoxy, fiberglass, paint. Install sink.
Install fresh water manifold, pressure pump, and
accumulator. And it's getting hot in the closed up
bow under the Florida sun, so outside I go. After
all, I have the ceiling in the head done, so there's
no longer any reason to put off finishing up the
deck organizers, the clutches, the mainsheet
blocks, and the Boom Purchase.

Okay, that's it for this section. Anything else I do
on Falcon will now be included in the Cruising
Log section. I've waited long enough - too long -
to drop the lines and go.

2006

2007

2008