DYI
Building The Red Sled

See detail for the pole and fore stay lashing

When we featured this little dude under build and then sailing, we got a number of inquires from people about how they can build their own. Builder Ulf Tjernberg tells the story.

Red sled started out as a day sailor for me and my girlfriend - it may seem easy to buy one from the great selection that exists. Or maybe not, I’m have great experience and have raced a lot I  have sailed since I was a child, I have sailed dingy’s and offshore racers, I like my boat to be a challenge to sail with an edge and sail fast.

On the other hand, my girlfriend doesn’t have too much experience - she is more in to cruising even if she does race sometimes. She is learning to sail but didn’t feel that our 38` offshore racer was the best learning platform for sailing.

If the boat was going to satisfy my demands in performance and hers, it had to be a boat that will be fun to sail but easy enough to learn in. Other then that we wanted a boat with lifting keel for easy handling, it should be dry sailed and have a dry storage for sails and gear. Last but not least the boat should not be too expensive.

Keelbox and bulk. Also trim lines inside the cockpit

A quick scan of the market led me to find that there were boats that might fill our needs but they cost about 25,000 eur, far more than we wanted to pay for our daysailor. Other than that I wasn’t satisfied by there layout or design. Since I design boats of my own I felt that I could do better, therefore we started to think of building a boat that should fit us.

Design
One important thing for me was to be able to sail the boat next summer, this was august 2005. Early in the design work I was looking at VO 70 movistar, then I came to think of building a boat with a chine, fast to build and it gives the boat great stability. Now you all think, building with a chine in 2005 - are you crazy? Perhaps not. Several of the world's most used boats are built with a chine, Optimist, Stare, Snipe and the VO 70 Movistar how has a small chine in the transom. It might work for me too. I wanted the hull shape to be as modern as possible with a straight bow and flat sections in the transom. The longer I worked with the hull I saw how it became a small VO 70. And it all made sense! A pretty slimed hull with canting keel, but without canting keel. We use the crew weight instead. When I came to the rig I found it easy and cheap to use a rig from an existing class - the 606 is a large class in Sweden and became the donator. This boat is one meter longer then ours and weighs more then twice, just what I needed, I then fit the rig with a fathead main and a masthead gennaker.

We called the boat name Hurry 500 from the beginning and added chine when we decided to build in plywood, later on she become known as Red Sled on SA. Hopefully there will be other Hurry´s in the future.

Carbon tiller

Building the boat
Because it is possible to use several methods to build a Hurry 500 I will not dig deep into the details here, but this one worked for us. I designed the hull for easy build using ply or foamboards therefore all surface is designed for ease of bending the material, however when I designed the bow I could not let the ease of building  come in between me and the beauty of a nice hull. Therefore I made an exception and made the first meter of the hull double bent in their lower part.

The easiest way is to build is to use plywood and join the ply with fiberglass, a well known method. I wanted the hull to be light and have great resistance against water therefore I decided to protect the ply with epoxy, and if I would use epoxy all over I could use some fiberglass for strength as well and use thinner ply. So I decided to use 4mm ply and 500g/m2 of fiberglass on the outer side and 100g/m2 on the inner, and also gave the hull some extra fiberglass reinforcements around the keel area and around the shrouds. (Approximately 5x600g/m2 fiberglass) Inside the hull I kept the stations I used when I fitted the plywood, this gives great support for the flat panels of the hull. Another option would have been to use ariex or similar material as a core then fiberglass and epoxy or polyester for the skins.

Carbon rudder blade

I placed a bulkhead to support the keel and the shrouds as seen in picture 3 I also placed a longitudinal reinforcement beam to spread the keel loads and to place the mast support on. All this reinforcements and the keel box are made from 12mm plywood together with the mast support they are laminates in place with fiberglass.

The deck is made in the same way as the hull but for the cockpit floor I used 6mm ply for added strength. This floors are concave  for longitudinal strength and they keep rain water in the center when the boat is not used, rainwater is drained through an opening through the floor into the keelbox.

Both the keel fin and the rudder are built from inside using a shaped core, the rudders outer skin uses tow layers of carbon 300gUD and 200g carbon vacuum bagged in place.

The keel is built using 4800g/m2 of fiberglass together with polyester. In this part of the building I decided to use polyester because I had a lot on store and I was in a hurry and did not have the time to use epoxy. At the end of the fin I placed 80kg led fastened by two M12 bolts.

Sailing
First time we sailed the boat the was about 3 knots of wind and calm water, perfect conditions for the first time. We had to hoist the gennaker right away, it felt great all and was worth every hour of work. It was time to go upwind and now it was getting really interesting, how would she react? The tiny foils did their job very well! The boat was a success so far. After some time in the boat she feels very safe, she sails dry and behaves good in seas. When sailing  you might hear some splash from the chine upwind, downwind there is no question that a chine boat has its  benefits. You can feel the wide bottom lift the boat for a sled ride with the masthead gennaker.

Reflections
Was she worth 500h of building and 4000eur? YES. Now doubt this is a lot of fun sailing for the money, especially if you like to build on your own. And one of the most important things she fortifies all our wishes that we started out with.

Would I have done something different?  I might have built the boat with a sandwich laminate in fiberglass and divenycell if I had had more time and a larger budget, but so far I can't think of anything else.

Build it your self
I will offer serious interested builder a pair of drawings to build their own boat, it´s not especially difficult but it takes some time. Choose a building method that you feel works for you with your experiences. Take some time to do the details - it will pay off when the boat is finished.

The designer doesn´t take any responsibility for any injury or accidents that may occur building or using the boat!

• Shroud fastening, lowered into the hull gives a nice look, lower shrouds lashed
• Trimlines comes out from the main bulk , this gives a nice clean look, gennaker in opening
• Trimline for mainsail, lowered into the side.
• Carbon shroud for rudder reinforcement, hatch for fittings
• Clean deck
• No place for the gennaker to get caught on
• Cockpit floor with mainsail sheeting.

06/29/2006