Leaderboard

I think I found the setting ... "give reputation points". Maybe Facebook has a copywrite on "Like" or something. Someone like more than ten things and we'll see. I'm not a good candidate for that much niceness all in one day!

That boat is really pretty but two things that keep bouncing around my head are "good sitting headroom" and "32 foot boat". My 20 footer has good sitting headroom and the 26 that I'm working on has good standing headroom. The 20 is prettier than the 26 but the 26 is faster and will be more comfortable at anchor on a rainy day. The catch is that I'm not sailing out to Cape Lookout any more - I'm sailing deeper waters so it's okay that my boat needs 3.5 feet of water to float. If I had to contend with shallow waters again I'd happily go for good sitting headroom in order to keep the draft down (EC22... ) If you're sailing deep water and you want to be able to get out of the weather comfortably a drop-dead-gorgeous sharpie-yacht may not be the best boat. On the other hand, if you're daysailing and don't need shelter down below I think you might be able to find a smaller design that is actually more fun to sail than the 32' Brewer boat. Those are just my preferences, of course - Every boat is a bag of compromises and the trick is to get the right combination for you.

The recent hurricane Matthew spared the shop at B&B. We are all fine and there was no damage to report. We saw approximately 3-4 feet of water rise which was not enough to adversely affect the shop. We spent last week preparing for the **worst. Fortunately this resulted is some great fall cleaning in preparation for this years Messabout. (**we had 4 feet of water in the lower shop and 1.5 feet in the upper shop during hurricane Irene). This week the shop is without power so far and the internet is down at Carla and Grahams place (but they do have power at least) Please send any communications to us via cellphone or business email bandbkitboats@gmail.com until further notice. Thank you for your patience. -B&B

My cheap but effective rope ladder

Howard, I share your sentiments about life. After completing a roof and slab for a work space late last year, I walked away from it and moved, too. Fortunately, my arrangement for the softwood delivery fell through before I moved so that material is still at the supplier's. I am just now at the point where I am contemplating another structure for a work space in a different location. And now, at 64, I will be constructing a new home along with the boat...so much work! I look forward to your next posts. Rex

One more trick, and perhaps this should be mentioned on the tools and tricks thread. When I started to remove the screws that held the stringers to the stem knee, the first one snapped right off. It was stainless and will be buried, so it will be left, but wanted to avoid doing that again if I could. I was using a small hammer drill, which has the torque, but does jolt it pretty good. Sometimes it breaks loose but sometimes it snaps off the screws. What to do to avoid snapping screws? To anyone who has spent much time on the boat building threads, especially woodenboat, you are probably familiar with the name Bob Smalser and his expertise with old time tools. A long time ago, I was reading a piece by Bob about the best tool to use to install or extract screws and that was an old time brace. A brace would allow you all the torque you would ever need, plus it goes slow and you can actually feel when the resistance starts to ramp up. It also turns out that modern six sided driver bits will fit into a brace chuck with no modifications needed. With the brace, I managed to pull all the remaining screws without breaking any of them. Moreover, they came out like they wanted out. It also worked like magic to set the depth of those side panel edges to allow you to align the edge of the panel to the chine edge.

Good evening sir. Its great to see you on the green side of the dirt, as they say. Not much has changed here,,,,except getting a bit slower.

Good to see your post Greg and glad to hear you're doing better too. You're not dead yet, so of course you're going to build another. It's an inescapable illness with no real cure, you're afflicted with, so acceptance is the first step. At least this is what my BBA (Boat Builders Anonymous) session keeps repeating.