ray

Sounds like a fun time Dave, and as a tech junkie, I must say I love the map.

Thanks for the thoughts on the CS17 Ray. I'm definitely taking a second look at the boat. Kind of torn because I have the plans for the WE already and I was almost to the point of buying wood for the keel. Oh well, I'll go away this weekend and see if I can find the answer at the bottom of several beers. Also...I just notice that your a fellow Mainer..and also a Ray. Eerie.

woops

Looks like a great time. Makes me want to go home and start sawing parts

Looks like a great time. Makes me want to go home and start sawing parts

I did take a look at the Belhaven 19. It looks like it's pretty much a CS17 - CS20 with a cabin. But the weight scared me off. It's about double the weight of a weekender. Again, not having sailed before I'm not sure how important that is on the water but it struck me as being a lot more to work on and off the trailer. I'll take a second look at it. I think I'm pretty much settled on having something with a cabin so I think the CS17 would be ruled out. One think I did notice about the Belhaven is that it doesn't have any deck on the sides of the cockpit. I'm wondering if you could do away with the deck on the weekender and arrive at a roomier cockpit. Is it there for structural support? I'll have to look over the plans when I get home. Excellent point Mike. But I think I need to lead the way so to speak. If you build it...they will..er..well probably want to go for a ride.

Hi Dave, Those are nice looking seats. Looks like it gives you room to tuck your feet under. Charlie, Thanks for that information. Was the boat a problem because of headroom? I'd imagine the cabin would be pretty low for someone over 6' but I'm sort of used to hunching. What about a pocket cruser? It looks like it's just a bit bigger then the weekender. But, it also says that it's slower. Not being a sailor I'm not sure how much of a problem this would be or how much slower. I'll be honest, the vacationer seems like a lot ot take on. If it's the right boat to build I'll do it. I'll just have to make more room in the garage :shock:

Thanks for all the replys. I think the point about the vacationer being harder to trailer and setup is going to make me stick with the weekender. I'm pretty sure it's going to be just me and the dogs for a lot of my sailing. But I am expecting to have 2 couples on at once so maybe I'll try to do a small modification to get just a little bit more seating space. Is it feasable to narrow the deck at the back of the boat to make the seats closer to the hull? Even getting another 6" of space between the seats seems like it might help a lot. Plus, i'm 6'2" anyway so anytime I can get extra leg room helps out. I do like the look of the boat without the cabin but I'm also planning on using it to camp and the cabin is part of the boat that initially drew me to the plans. Now, a removable cabin.... BTW, forgot to mention that I'll be doing both ocean and lake sailing. We have 2 very large lakes in Maine that I'm looking forward to playing on. Also, Casco bay here in Portland is filled with islands which both shelter the waters and provide camping locations.

I'm new to the board and just wanted to say hello. I've been lurking for a couple weeks now but I just got registered. Lots of great information here and reading the posts definitely makes me more excited about starting to work on a boat of my own. About a month and a half ago I found a link to the Stevenson web site and I was instantly fascinated with the idea of building my own small sailboat. .....and now on to the questions! I've got the plans for the weekender already and I'm doing a lot of reading on building and sailing. I've never sailed before. I've owned a jet ski so I have been out on the water but it's obviously an entirely different experience. My biggest concern at this point is whether the weekender is really big enough to have 4 people on it. From the pictures the cockpit looks a bit small. I'm pretty sure this is the boat I'm going to build but I'm wondering if it's worth it to just go ahead and build the vacationer instead. I have a feeling this hobby is going to balloon anyway and I may end up with a bigger boat in a couple years if I don't just build it now. How do you who have weekenders do with 4 people? (gah, that's an a sentence my english teacher would cring at) I'm going to resist asking the rest of my 100's of questions now so I don't frighten everyone off at the beginning I look forward to the building and discussing to come. Ray