From Latitude 38
April 2003

Seayanika's Sole Man

There’s nothing quite as eye-catching as a beautiful teak deck on a sailboat -- unless it’s the fit and finish of a stunning cabin sole.  Many production boats today try to emulate a hand-laid teak and holly sole with thin, pre-fabricated plywood veneer.  Somehow this loses something in the translation.  My husband Erik, never one to settle for 'good enough', has been putting in many hours laying a traditional cabin sole on Seayanika, the 49-foot sailboat we are building from a bare hull.  But, instead of teak and holly, he has opted for a combination of walnut and beech, which to my eye is even more striking.  The dark richness of the walnut nicely compliments the mahogany interior we have chosen.  Months of painstakingly measuring, cutting and fitting small pieces of hardwood to install our teak decks gave him both practice and knobby knees.  But the results are worth it.

  Boatbuilding 101- above, 'Seayanika' is looking more 

 like  a finished boat every day.  Below, Katriana test   

 rides the cushions.  Next column above, the finished 

     product.  Below, Erik hard at work installing the     

                                cabin sole.                                  

Each sole area in Seayanika, as in most boats, is full of angles and curves.  If that doesn’t make the job complicated enough, add the numerous access hatches and floorboards which have to be installed, requiring each vertical strip of walnut and beech to be lined up exactly to match.  A veritable jigsaw puzzle!  Speaking of hatches, how many does a mid-sized sailboat have?  Seayanika’s count so far is 44, including 5 stainless steel interior ventilation hatches, 3 companionway hatches, 4 deck access hatches, 17 bilge compartment hatches and 15 hatches under berths and settees - almost all of which Erik had to fabricate from scratch.

While Erik is busy making hatches and laying the sole, I have been sewing the upholstery.  Since I’m also  starting from scratch (i.e. no pattern available to make my job easier), I first make a pattern of the area to be upholstered with butcher paper.   Because of all the unusual angles in boat upholstery, I’ve had to learn how to calculate angles and determine their effect on the finished product before I make any cuts. 

Since I'm using 4-inch foam for the seating, the material for the tops of the cushions can differ as much as 3 to 4 inches from the bottom, depending upon the amount of angle.   And then, of course, the foam has to be cut at an angle (an electric carving knife works perfectly!) and any boxing pieces have to be adjusted accordingly.  With all the notations, drawings and chicken scratch on my patterns, it looks more like a geometry lesson than a 'Home Ec' project.  But, in spite of all this brain-bending, I've managed to whip up 14 pretty fine-looking cushions so far.  Only have two more to go.

While Seayanika is looking better all the time, my house is suffering the consequences.  It’s beginning to look like a cross between a boat chandlery and a flop house.  What was once our bedroom (miniscule as it may be) is now the storeroom for nautical books, appliances, electronics, galley gear, medical supplies, and containers of every size filled with miscellaneous boat items I’ve collected over the past couple of years.  A quarter of the living room has become the ‘upholstery shop’, full of bolts of material, bags of Dacron stuffing and polywrap, foam pieces, sewing boxes and scraps.  What will soon become our berth mattress and nav station seat -- a king-sized piece of Temper Pedic memory foam -- is spread out (unmade) in the middle of the living room floor.  (Hey, we’re sleeping on it now because it’s the best bed in the house.)  Playing hide-n-seek in all this clutter are dust bunnies large enough to name and cunning enough not to be caught, and a sufficient amount of dirt brought in from the boatyard to start a vegetable garden (if I only had the time).  Housekeeping, never one of my favorite activities, has dropped perilously low on my priority list, and I no longer make excuses to our visitors. 

Meanwhile, we’re getting pretty excited about the upcoming Pacific Sail Expo in Oakland this month.  Not only will we be investigating and buying our ‘final’ boat purchases, Sail America has asked us to conduct a couple of boatbuilding seminars and relate our experiences with Seayanika’s construction.  We’re hoping to meet past, present, future and even aspiring boatbuilders to compare notes and agonies.  And to affirm that, if building your own bare hull into a cruising boat is part of the dream (as it was for us), that it can e done.  We also invite all of you who have enjoyed reading these Latitude updates, which began with the delivery of a Cal 2-46 bare hull to our build site back in October, 1999, to stop by one of our seminars, listen, and say hi.

Editor's Note -- The Vaders' seminars are scheduled for 1:30 p.m. on Thursday, 4/24, and 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, 4/26.  For more on the show, see the Pacific Sail Expo program included with this issue.