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Showing content with the highest reputation on 09/14/2019 in all areas

  1. Your boat looks great! I really like your anchor roller, I have a Ronca anchor and you look like you have the best anchor roller. I believe it would work perfectly on the Mathew Flinders. I leave the sprits with the mast, I use several pieces of pipe insulation to isolate the sprits from the mast. We have trailered our boat likely 20,000 miles with no ill effects I can see. It does make rigging ridiculously quick and I never found a really suitable spot for the unattached sprits. I made a zip on cover that covers both masts, keeps the reefing lines from becoming a big rats nest. I leave the battens in the sail and just zip the sail into the same sail cover we use......well as a sail cover.
    1 point
  2. I like how you added that piece of rub rail on the inward side of your anchor roller to prevent wear, I like the cabin lock simplicity and I like your sprit saddles. I'm going to copy all of them tonight. Not sure where to get SS tubing. I might have some aluminum around. As for launching from the cockpit......put a longer piece of light line (3/16") right to the anchor shackle. Bring it back to the cockpit. With the way you have those stops you could angle it off to port easily. Put a cleat on the top deck just like the ones to starboard. When you deploy your anchor, this tether line goes right with it. I've been doing that for years, and other than the fact that that line can get pretty grungy in some cases, it has never seemed to interfere with the anchor. When you retrieve the anchor from forward, just grab the small line to bring aft and re-tether. That is some pretty country up there.
    1 point
  3. I hadn't realized what a challenge spaghetti lines in the cockpit were til I started practicing donuts (sailing tight circles around a buoy to improve boat handling skills. Get so you can do tight circles in 15 kts of wind to build your confidence. Still working on it.) I kept getting strangled, or tripped, or glasses torn off by spare lines as I ducked under to grab the far rail. I tried velcro tabs, but switched to this - a couple of washers with a stand-off between. Works better than the velcro for me, but still not completely satisfied. Here's how I'm locking the cabin - I've sleeved the thru-hole with some SS tubing to make it a bit more durable. I really like trailering with the sprits atop the masts - it's quicker to rig and the straps tighten up the masts while we're on the road. As nice as Graham's were, the layout looked like too much work. Mine look like pook, but they work ok and were simpler to make. So, most of you will be horrified by my anchor roller, but I like it. I think it weighs something close to 2 lbs, but that's a mere fraction of the weight of 15' of chain in the anchor locker. It keeps the anchor solidly fixed in place, and I can launch it from the cockpit. I keep it tethered like this underway and trailering. And I've just run a line back to the cockpit that I can use to pop off the tether. I'll 'arm' it before coming in to anchor and cleat the rode off at, say, 50'. Haven't actually used this yet, but from the cockpit I'll be able to ease up to the anchorage and let it go. Peg and I were recently in the San Juans. It was beautiful (altho the arrangement above would have been helpful). But 10' tidal differences are common here. This lagoon actually dried out to the rock you see on the right. We moved the boat before that, but I'd beached Deluge at high tide in the new spot in a direct on-shore 15 kt breeze, and really hadn't sorted out in my head how you do clothesline anchoring. In any case, I was going to need Peg to help me anchor, and nor could I figure out how to get off the beach with her in the boat. Here's the result - water wasn't high enough to re-launch til 5pm the next day. (We had a Great time.) I did eventually get something worked out: But here's how I plan to do it from now on. This may be risky, but seems to me the risk is fairly small for over nights - to use a quick link in place of the standard horseshoe shackle. With it, I can quickly change the configuration between shackling the rode directly to the chain (for regular anchoring), and running the rode thru the link (for clothesline). Regular anchoring: and for clothesline anchoring:
    1 point
  4. As Deluge emerges from newborn to toddler-dom, it seems like time to update things a bit, with items that I haven't seen elsewhere but that seem to be working for me. She'd been in the water less than a dozen times when the CB pendant broke; an epoxy spur I'd left in the pendant path had shredded the line. I replaced it with one made of dynema after cleaning things up. I had to splice it in place, but fortunately it's really easy to splice the stuff. The challenge is the stopper knot - it's so slippery it's likely to slip off the end. The fibers, it turns out, are quick to absorb epoxy, so the solution is pretty simple. This is just an overhand knot I'd filled with epoxy inside a piece of PVC pipe. This didn't fit, so, gulp, I just ground it down till it did. I'm convinced it's plenty strong enough for the job. In fact, I don't bother with the fancy knot they tie on the internet for soft shackles, I just do this: The little rigging balls make nice 'stopper knots' and it's easier to make your shackle exactly the length you want it to be. I keep adding epoxy to the fur until it can't take any more, and I tie rigging twine at the neck to keep the epoxy from wicking down below the ball. It wasn't long after launch that I'd bashed my transom with the rudder, since I had no rudder stops. I just made a very simple set with starboard and they've worked well. These, or something like them, are now probably on the drawings: I've been impressed by how much the trailer and boat bounce around on Seattle's roads (they're often in terrible shape), and realized that the CB is bouncing around even more, secured only by the pendant (the CB slot doesn't align with my trailer bunks). So I put in a pedestal, capped with starboard, to keep the board from bouncing around when trailering. Graham used a fixed bolt to secure his main mast, and I got a couple of the one-legged nuts he uses for it, but it turned out to be easier for me to bolt the mast from the front. I can manage everything from the foredeck, and for whatever reason, it was easier for me to build. The T bolt was my first shot at silver solder - a mysterious alchemy that had long intimidated me. It was pretty much like regular soldering only higher heat. This is the aluminum receptacle - it's just tapped for the 5/16" bolt, and fixed in place with a couple of screws.
    1 point
  5. Thanks, Yo. I HAVE been doing boat stuff, too. Keeping the small, well used boats in fighting form takes time away from jumbo. Haha. And, I keep scribbling... Peace, Punt Painter (Yes, the grey pic IS upside down...)
    1 point

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