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Ambler

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Ambler last won the day on July 24 2014

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    Port Alberni, B.C. (Canada :))
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    Home veggie gardening

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  1. All really good points worth noting, Howard. Fortunately I've been rowing for about 65 years (ouch - but not continuously!) so I was generally wise to them and made sure things fit me before they were cast in epoxy. And I made the footrest adjustable for shorter folks. Anyone doing this be aware the vertical sides of the flotation compartments are not fore-&-aft parallel to each other. The lighter coloured backing to my "over the waves" rack is actually a plywood piece planed to a taper; a detail of which as an inexpert woodworker I'm quite proud.
  2. Good information PAR, thanks. I'm pondering the relative pros & cons of the tiller "stick" vs a straight telescopic extension; would be interested to hear others' thoughts & - especially - experience. I guess the size as well as the use of the boat would have a bearing on the which to choose.
  3. Ha! Half the time my tiller is too short, the other half it's too long. Who's got a good design for a telescoping or folding tiller on a small sailboat? What are pros & cons of different types?
  4. 11 minutes is pretty impressive. What boat have you, & what did you do to make this possible? Do you keep it on a trailer or what? Conditions at my local ramp - congestion and lack of a dock where I can rig the boat - make things awkward. Luckily a friend lets me moor at his dock for most of the summer, plus I'm retired and can avoid sailing at the weekends with their mobs of not-always-considerate powerboaters. "People understand me so poorly that they don't even understand my complaint about them not understanding me." (Soren Kierkegaard)
  5. Ken: This is puzzling to me; a complete misreading of me and a misinterpretation of my post. It happens on forums I guess. Ken & Tom151: If the "sig" and Tom's comment on it were directed at me - as they pretty obviously seem to be - they'd be just about the worst example I've seen on this forum, of deliberate personal insult. Too bad. Way too bad.
  6. Ken & Frank: This is puzzling to me and pretty sarky-snarky; a complete misreading of me and a misinterpretation of my post. It happens, I guess; too bad.
  7. Charlie: Fair enough is fair enough! My reasons for going with an external pivoting board were several, probably including some I've forgotten. Chief among them were: - Desire for more unobstructed room in the cockpit (heavily influenced by my age and increasing lack of agility. In fact I would do away with the centre seat if I didn't need it for rowing.) - Past experience with a leaky C/B case that I never managed to cure. - Concern with the possibility of damaging the hull/case if striking an u/w obstacle with a dagger board. Please be aware that I have no interest in competitive sailing or in squeezing the maximum performance out of the boat. It was built solely for my own uses and my own satisfaction. I enjoy experimenting with it and utterly reject any notion that .... well, I'm getting wound up again but you probably get my meaning Difficulties with the board have been in recovery after knockdown – discussed elsewhere but again involving agility issues – and with the system for lowering/raising the board. I've been using ropes but it's hard to get an efficient arrangement that never gets tangled or snagged. I think a straightforward lever would be better and I may try that in due course.
  8. My reasons for buying Graham's plans, and my use of them, (unless I violate some copyright) are my own and are personal; private unless I choose to share them and not subject to anyone else's assumptions, definitions or declarations. (In actual fact I didn't buy the plans; they were a delightful present from my loving wife but that's irrelevant and equally no one else's business.) I do hope to hear from folks with details of mods & adaptations they have made; whether those changes achieved the desired result, and what was learned in the process. I'm not so interested in splitting hairs about what amounts, or does not, to a "design change" or interested in what anyone "would never think of doing" unless a) they've actually tried the change and in consequence have decided never to do it again. or (b they can show specific and valid physical reasons for dismissal of the idea. I have great admiration for Graham and Carla and for his design of the little Spindrift 12 (which I am proud to own) as well as for their helpful advice when I was building it. Please DO NOT - anyone - try to suggest otherwise.
  9. It would be interesting to hear about members' modifications, adaptations & departures from the detailed design of boats they have built or acquired. What changes were made, to what extent did they achieve the desired result; what was learned in the process? I'm talking about sharing actual experience with real changes to real boats. Personally I'm specifically interested in Spindrift 12 but I believe any & all shared experience is potentially useful.
  10. I started this thread so that we could share information on a specific issue. I ask that people stick to the subject which is knockdown recovery. Please do not sidetrack this discussion. However interesting they may be to you and others, different issues deserve, and belong in, their own threads. Here; I've started one: http://messing-about.com/forums/topic/9205-design-modifications/
  11. I suppose people who adapt designs generally do it for their own reasons, but this is off topic (knockdown recovery.) You could start a separate thread, which might be quite interesting.
  12. Thanks for your input, Ken. The water is now warmer but newer issues prevent me sail-rigging the boat for some time - maybe till next year. (I dropped & damaged the mast.) Meantime I'll use it for a little outboarding & try some fishing. The suggestion that by hauling on the mainsheet I was holding water in the sail seems very probably correct. I still pormise to update this thread as soon as I can get back to recovery experiments.
  13. I don't know where it was manufactured. It's marine Okume and was advertised and labelled - but not stamped - as "BS 1088." That standard was already "no longer supported" by BSI; but some manufacturers claimed (and still do?) to produce material that adheres to it. I think mine did not quite measure up, as the face veneers looked thinner than the cores; and I partly blame that for the fracture, which propagated straight along a line of the face grain. If you're interested you can read the whole sorry thread at: http://messing-about.com/forums/topic/1926-spindrift-12-setback-plywood-fracture/ (although the ugly photo attachments have been deleted.) I found no evidence of core voids although one sheet had a kind of slight hump across it, possibly at a splice in one of the veneers. I think my repair is brutally strong. After several years of not-so-gentle use It hasn't shown any sign of distress. Nor have any other areas of the plywood.
  14. Striperick, I don't know the details of your boat but I had an ugly fracture near the stem when building my Spindrift 12. Tried sandwich-patching etc but it broke 3 times! (I blame it on substandard plywood.) I eventually rough-shaped a wood block to fit the inside face, bedded it in thickened resin and screwed it in place through the plywood - pulling the broken edges into approx where they should be. Finished by filling & sanding outside. The wood block is inside the fwd flotation chamber so no one but me knows about it Maybe that approach isn't an option on your boat but I thought I'd share the "technique." Good luck with your boat and I hope you enjoy both building & sailing her.
  15. Well the local water got cold and I'm not into more recovery experimenting till it warms again in spring, but meantime the boat is hanging quite high in my workshop (so that I can play with the leeboard controls.) Trying to figure out how I can right the boat if knocked down with the board retracted and on the high side, I've concluded that the best plan would be to never retract the board except in shallow water. Yes I'll have more drag than necessary going downwind but so what? I'm not that interested in absolute max performance anyway. Any comments?
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