Windows

Probably the riskiest part of the whole build is the windows.  I want big windows.  The biggest thing the design gives up is the cockpit and this is the best way to get some of that open feeling back and move away from the submarine/coffin experience.  I think it is also the thing that will help the most with sea sickness.  Good visibility is also a safety thing but generally small windows are considered safer from a strong solid structural point of view.   Big windows are going to add substantial weight to the top of the boat which I am particularly concerned about.  Then you have to add the choice of whether you can open any of the windows.  I do not want to give up any of the seaworthiness of the Enigma as that is core to the nature of the boat.  I just know that an open window or just an open-able portion of a window will be something I will really value.  I would like to keep the inside of the top of the cabin free from sharp edges/corners that I might hit my head on.  So I might end up settling for no openings on windows.  Matt has spec'd passive roof vent on the hatch cover.  I have a bunch of 1/4 inch Lexan which seems a little overkill and heavy but again I'm inclined to work with what I have on hand.  I will experiment with this and buy some other material if it doesn't seem suitable.  The cabin top seems solid but appears to be of very thin marine ply with a little fibre glass on one side.  I've gimped up, some window layouts some of which are outlandish but one thing I have learned working with industrial designers is to play with things in order to see where the visual appeal lies.

Stock window arrangement, Wiley windows, One particularly ugly option

The stock window layout is absolutely workable and a safe fallback option should the weight indicate smaller windows.  When I heard about Wiley windows I thought "that would work great" however in a small boat reality seems to be about as bluntly obvious as possible I think the use of internal space and the head cracking likelihood doesn't favor the design on such a small craft.

Enigma with windows maximized doesn't really look right.

 I started of drawing the biggest windows I could on the boat.  Not that I think this will work well but it is a starting point.  I will need to do some weight calculations and I can work backwards from the weight of the windows maxed out.  I'm glad non of these have major appeal although the last 2 don't look bad.  They thought is the smaller back widows might be workable as windows that open.

These are the max windows scaled down somewhat the last 2 seem close to being visually balanced to me.

I like this array the best particularly the last two.  I might have to try some slightly trimmed back versions and see how they come out.  I might need to figure out exactly how much actual window is left once cabin top overlap for mounting is considered.  Not totally sure how much overlap I will be happy with.

I did these to eliminate the concept.
 

These actually looked a little better but I hope the weight doesn't drive me here.

Sometimes pushing the limits helps to cement a direction so I pushed these a little far.  To each his own.  I suspect this could look better with slightly radius-ed corners.  I can see somebody liking any one of these but in order to choose I need to amplify the distance between what I prefer from those I would rather avoid.

Ballast

  One of the things I really like about the Enigma is the ballast is easy to remove and in fact the design is such that you remove the ballast when taking the boat out of the water.  This allows the boat to be car top-able if needed.  It also allows you to play with the trim of the boat to suit gear you have and the crew.  If designed for it you can even make it adjustable while sailing to help with rounding upwind.  When I saw the first Enigma Dave showed me the various ballast options he had.  They included a cement floor pad and sand bags which came with the Enigma and some bagged lead ingots that Dave had built and which he seemed to prefer.

Concrete floor pad ballast for Enigma

Sand bag used for ballast and Dave's green lead ingot bags

I thought for quite a while about what would be a good ballast approach. I rather like Dave's approach but don't really trust my sewing to adequately contain lead dust.  It seems the boat needs somewhere in the neighbourhood of 64 kg (140 lbs).  I worried about the other approaches because one clumsy mistake and you could damage the boat by dropping a weight from the hatch and have it fall to the floor.  I don't like being one clumsy move away a serious problem although it is unlikely I would be moving the ballast anywhere but in shallow water.  The lead bags seemed the most elegant and easiest to manage but still struck me as an awkward shape to have at the sides of the cabin.  Any of them would be a hazard if they came loose at the wrong time.  Lead had some appeal but I am over cautious about lead dust as I certainly could see the boat having kids in it at some point and it is a nasty substance.  Any container needs to form an incredibly good seal.  Another good quality for the ballast would be the ability to take on more weight as the food and supplies are used up.   That one is likely where the sand ballast idea came from.  The easiest source of lead for me is automotive tire balancing weights.  It occurred to me that a hose filled might serve as a good base ballast with another hose that can be filled with sand, rocks, or even water to allow for variability at any point in the trip.  I did my calculations thinking I could get hose with 2" internal diameter and it would work out pretty well but that is not as easy to get as I thought.  I have some 1.5" so I might experiment with that for now.  I like the idea of recycling this hose for the purpose.  The good properties about the hose weights is they lay tight along the side of the boat, are easy to secure, can be moved up and down the boat with some pretty simple mechanisms.  If they are dropped they tend to distribute the force along their length and break fall and they do the same should they get loose when the boat is tossed about.  They are also easy to carry around and to create a durable seal.  The position for this ballast according to Dave is towards the mid area of the boat to compensate for the aft weight of the captain (doesn't really have a complementary sound to it).

The Plan

Original Enigma Rudder

 Even though almost all the stuff I would have considered risky, heartbreaking and messy have been done there is still quite a bit to figure out to get this boat in the water never mind all the things I would like to add.  Here is the shortlist of essentials:

• Removable Ballast
• Floatation
• Yard/Mast/Boom
• Sail
• Control Lines
• Windows/Cabin Top
• Rudder (partially done)
• Paddle/Yuloh
• Chine runner shaping
• Seating
• Waterproof hatch install
• Internal storage

Whenever I face a list that will take me months of work it is helpful to accompany the list with the things I really like about the project.

• Small easily transportable sailboat
• Simple elegant design
• In cabin sail and rudder control
• Rough weather capable
• Beach-able
• Shallow Draft
• Sail rig Stores in boat
• Portage-able
• Lots or room for innovating
• For the moment one of a kind (good and bad)
• Ideal for weekend sail camping
• Matt Layden Design
• Great looking craft

The Journey

2212 km, 23 hours

  The trip was a whirlwind marathon tour of the highways, rest stops, and motels chosen more by necessity than anything.   A sick mom delayed our departure by 2 days which put extra pressure to do the trip in 4 days.  First leg was 15 hours of straight driving.  I have to admit it bothered me to be using so much fuel to acquire small sailboat.  Since there was no other way to end up with this type of boat in a useful time frame I accepted that this was a somewhat wasteful extravagance that I would make the best of by spending the trip with my son.  We brought a college selection of coke, chips, granola bars and water which allowed no stopping except for gas and beef jerky with one music stop to replenish our CD stores.  Wasn't hard to imagine the life of father and son fugitives as we seemed to be largely playing the part.   I have to complement the US on their implementation of rest stops and their tendency for divided highways, both of which have likely prevented countless accidents - seemed almost like dare I say it "socialist" infrastructure.  I wish we had those kind of facilities and roadwork here.  Highlights of the trip included a late dinner in what appeared to be a small town lesbian bar, amazing lightning and thunderstorms, talking for hours with my son Sean about anything and everything, seeing all the motels along the way that were too scary to get out of the van for, meeting Don the builder, ...

Don the builder

 ...watching Sean refine his tastes for beef jerky, and spending the afternoon with Dave and Mindy bolduc and their amazing collection of Matt Layden boats including the original Enigma 360, Little Cruiser and Swamp Thing.  I could not believe Dave's ability to mod these boats into show pieces without losing their character.  Dave packed the 3 hours I was there with as much information as he could to make my finishing the boat successful.  I was in a pretty deep stupor from lack of sleep and I am certain I could have been a better pupil.  Both of them are super friendly and are largely responsible for bringing Matt's Paradox to an wider audience.   I'm very happy to have met them.

Dave and Mindy

 The driving schedule had slipped from a 14 hour day to a 10 hour, 9 hour and then 7 and then I hit a wall.  The later days were filled with loading the boat and visiting the Bolduc's but I was also in decline.   Sean had been able to catch up on sleep while we drove but on the 4th night I could feel my perceptions begin to distort.  The nighttime road was level but appeared like we were driving down hill, corners required too much concentration to navigate and it felt like I could only drive another 15 minutes.  I got Sean to pick a motel on the gps and the first 2 were in the too scary category.   The next one we tried to find was based on a sign at the side of the highway and as it turned out I went right past the driveway and headed down a narrow country road about 5 km.  I was slowing down badly and when I finally found a place to turn around I had accumulated probably 80 cars behind me without seeing a single oncoming car.  I got back to the hotel with the usual plan to get my son something to eat but instead dropped like stone and slept until morning.  He was able to survive on his stash of beef jerky.  I don't remember ever collapsing like that.  Coincidentally unknown to me my mom had been admitted to hospital and was in a similar state of exhaustion.  She was over the wost of it by the next day but we had a perplexing problem.  The GPS wanted to take us through Montreal and increase the trip by 16 hours.  Nothing seemed to cure it until we realized toll avoidance was enabled.  Turns out to save about $3 in tolls we could have driven up around lake Ontario.  I'm sure we drove a bunch of extra miles because of that setting.  In Ontario we have the most expensive toll road in the world so without that setting our GPS would be next to useless around north Toronto but it cost us on this trip.  Once that was fixed we had a great trip through the West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York state and we sailed through the border after paying our duties.  The entire trip I imagined some minor car accident turning the entire boat into splinters and I was relieved to back my Enigma into my new workshop safe and sound.  Phew!

How it all started

  I recently had the good fortune to buy a Matt Layden designed Enigma 360 in an unfinished but never the less beautiful state.  I will attempt to detail my thoughts and efforts as I try to do justice to both the design and the hard work and talent of the initial builder.  This is a rare craft as only two have been built to plans with some Enigma inspired boats having been crafted by eye and intuition.  The original builder is an absolute gentleman, friend and neighbour to Matt, as well as being a professional boat builder.  Unfortunately he suffered some health issues and could not continue with the build.  After a week of trying to convince myself not to think about the boat and the drive from Ontario Canada down to Fort Pierce Florida, some 2400 km and back, I phoned the builder and had several conversations before we agreed to all the details of the transfer.  My 14 year old son and I would drive a small trailer down and pick up the boat with a 5 day window to get back.  We left without a firm commitment from Canada customs that they would let the unregistered, un-plated, home built boat into the country.