Florin {VACATIONER}

Thanks Craig, Do you think we're a bit snap-happy???... we've been taking pictures of pretty much anything lately... gotta love these digital cameras. Cheers

We bought a Danforth anchor designed for 17-20' boats... I'm assuming it is sized for plastic heavy boats and should do us quite fine. About how much chain length and link size do we need, and what kind/size of rode should we use and approximately how long... Thanks

Any good ideas where to mount the burgee? The Admiral is working on making a Jolly Roger burgee and we're now wondering where is the best spot for it. Some ideas/help would be appreciated. Thanks

I am assuming the line just sits there diagonally on one side of the main, right? Thanks

And the other one... [attachment over 4 years old deleted by admin]

We've also bought some 1/8" cable which we used for steering cable and made the mast hoops out of too. Here's the hoops princesses in action. They threaded the beads on the wire and I crimped them together. It was really easy. Now we'll have to cut them up and make them larger. [attachment over 4 years old deleted by admin]

For the Vac ve've bought 3/16 steel cable. We bought it @ HD and they call it aircraft cable but in small print they warn you "Not for aicraft use!!!"... go figure. I'm not sure what type of core it has but it crimped really well. We bought 100' I think because our rig was modified a bit taller than in the plans. I think we've got about 6' leftover. Good luck!

Since we've raised the cabin roof by 6" and we haven't got the foam seat cushions made yet, the best spot for the skipper is sitting up by the helm. This way you get a full view up-ahead and have all controls at hand. We haven't had her healing good yet 'cause we haven't really had any wind to speak of. Strongest we've encountered so far was about 5-10kt. While beating to windward in very light aires she seems to have troubles tacking... she slowly goes though the wind and then sometimes she doesn't have enough speed and momentum to get to the other side... so she falls back off on the initial tack. And then she drifts. Any trick to this? Thanks Florin

The admiral decided to be a skipper while I fished. Turns out she did really good for not having sailed since junior high. This is soooo relaxing. I think I'll take the rest of the day off and we'll go for another sailing adventure on our local lake. Cheers [attachment over 4 years old deleted by admin]

Thanks guys, I think I got it now. One more question... Do you think it is really necessary to have the topping lift line go all the way to the aft of the cabin top, or could I just cleat it off on the mast for simplicity... Just trying to avoid the lines clutter on the deck/cabin. There is a lot of tripping mess there already. Thanks

This was breathtaking a couple of nights ago while sailing on the lake. [attachment over 4 years old deleted by admin]

Good idea Dave! Actually we were planning on installing a topping lift in a little while too... we really wanted to be able to get the boom and main sail out of the way when fishing at anchor.... I guess now I have no excuse to not get the thing done right away. Do you have a sketch on how you've rigged yours? Thanks a plenty mate!

So I think we've solved the problem with the clubfoot. It turns out we were using too thick a line (3/8), even though the blocks and fairleads are 3/8". So I bought 5/16 boat line and repalced it. It seems to be working fine now. We went for another sail yesterday to take advantage of the nice weather. Sailed and fished for about 6 hrs and had a hard time getting off the lake at 10:00pm... I wish they had lights so we can sail at night :-). Caught some pikes too. It's cheap to troll without a shtinking motor, and the air is clean too. How tight is the foot of the jib supposed to be tied to the clubfoot? Are we supposed to leave a bit of belly in it or should we have it as tight as a banjo string? Figured out the gaff problem too yesterday. Due to the fact that the foot of the main is cut at an angle pointing upwards towars the aft of the boat, all we had to do to raise the boom the last foot or so... so I got the admiral to lift the rear of the mast to take the weight off the sail while I hauled up the throat halyard... then she went up the mast all the way... Did you guys experience this? I still have to make new hoops 'cause the ones we have now are too tight. Other than that everything is good, the steering with steel cable still works very good, didn't have to tighten it at all yet. We're happy with the fact that we've installed the boom higher on the mast too... lots of head-room and won't have to wear a helmet>>>boom awareness days are over :-) I just have to finish the mods on the trailer this weekend and we're off to more distant lakes. Thanks

Congrats Fintan on your launch!!! Actually I beat you :-) ... We launched Friday at about 6:00 PM. We wanted to beat the crappy weather forecast for Sat. and Sun. Cheers

Thanks Adla For the linkage. Florin

We overlapped as well. Our cloth is 60" wide I believe, but the Vac is larger. We overlapped about 5" on average. I was told if you overlap wide it'll be easier to fair the "bump". I seemed to work faily good. Since we used poly resin, we were lucky to have the option of buying the unwaxed resin which is meant for layups because it doesn't cure 100%. This way you don't have to sand between layers. The last coat of resin was the waxed kind which makes the lower layers to harden like concrete. You could put 57 layers on this way and never have to worry about sanding between coats. It worked out well for us. Most of the builders are against using poly resin though... So I'd better shut up on this one before I open another can of worms hehehe. Florin

Marshall, we've used auto-urethane paint as well. It was sprayed on, so of course you'll need all the necessary equipment to boot, and a bit of experience unless you have a buddy you can invite to spray it for you. We are really happy with the paint and it seems very durable. We tried to scuff it in a couple of spots where we wanted to blend the white into the green. We used scotch-brite scouring pads... didn't even touch the paint, so we've had to switch to sandpaper...So I think rubbing against the docks won't be a problem. The finish came out almost showroom like and we've got a lot of compliments on it. This was expensive... We paid slightly more than $700 for 2 gallons of paint and 2 gallons of non-sanding epoxy primer/sealer. This is not including the compressor, spray gun, hoses, respirators etc. If one wants to go the more economical way, probably the rolled-on latex would be the way to go. Disclaimer: since we've never used the stuff on a boat I couldn't reccomend it. I've heard good and bad comments about it. My personal experience with outdoor latex isn't so good.... everyone I know who painted their porch/decks with the stuff had to re-do it two years later due to the stuff peeling off. I'm not sure if it would do the same on a boat. Either way you decide to go, if you've used epoxy don't forget to was the amine blush before your final coats. Good luck Florin

Thank you ladies and gents for the kind words! Our weather here turned out nicer yesterday late afternoon, the rain stopped, the sun came out but it was too windy. This morning its raining... no wind to speak of. Hopefully it'll get better in the afternoon. The forecast changed for the rest of the week and it is supposed to be nice and sunny so we are hoping to maybe do some sailing in the evenings. As far as the clubfoot goes, I did some thinking yesterday.... Any of the bolt-eyes that we have installed, we've had to install a quick-link between the eye and the block because every time we've tried to open the quicklink, the darned thing would break when we tried to close it back. So after 3 broken ones I decided I should just install them with quick links. Maybe I was doing something wrong, or opening them the wrong way, maybe someone should chime in here (hint, hint). So now the block sitting on the foredeck seems a bit too high. The jib sheet fairleads are on the portside. I am using 3/8" HD poly-rope. It seems like when we are on a port tack, the block tilts to the starboard side and the jib sheet starts rubbing on the bottom of the double block body. It seems like it makes too sharp a corner there and it scrapes against the block. Maybe someone could post a pic of this arrangement in detail so that I could maybe make comparison and spot the error. On the mast-hoops we have the distance rope just as in the pic posted by Frank. The top end of the rope is tied to the gaff throat so that when the sail starts going up, the front of the hoops go with them spaced out evenly and parallel. Trouble is that when the angle of the gaff changes the front of the hoops angle changes with it and thats when they start binding. It seems like the top ones give us the most trouble. By changing the gaff angle we can get them unstuck most of the way up, but as you can see in the pics, the second last hoop at the bottom only comes up a couple of inches. In other words we lose about a foot of main sail. Thanks Florin

BTW, I've uploaded some pics in my album but still don't know how to link them here. Maybe someone would be nice to tell me how. Thanks Florin

We did it! Yesterday we got the last things done and took her to the lake last night. We got there at about 6PM. The trailer works just fine, it tows really nice and is balanced well. When we got there it was overcast but it didn't rain and there was a 5kt breeze. I took us 15-20 min. to get her ready for the launch. We shoved her off the trailer and tied her off to the docks in irons so we can raise the sails. Those hoops are still sticky but they didn't give us as much trouble as they did in front of the house. After we got everything ready we shoved off and turned downwind and then the wind died down. We were now drifting towards the shore very slowly. Lucky that the wind picked up again in about a minute and we were able to avoid beaching. The wind picked up to about 10kt and she started to heel just a bit... this was very nice.We sailed for about 2hr and then came back to the docks because the girls had to use the restrooms. I didn't get a chance to install the potti you see, and we can't pee in the reservoir because its our drinking water... only fish and ducks are allowed to do that in there. We were all surprised how easy she sails. We decided to pack it in for the night since the weather started to look like a storm may blow in.The steering behaved very well with the mods I've done and didn't have to re-tighten at all... I think the steel cable is the way to go. The clubfoot blocks kept getting jammed and I think we'll change that to regular two jib sheets arrangement 'cause this ws annoying to say the least.It was very exciting and we still have that silly grin pasted on our faces. I'm sure most of you know exactly what I'm talking about, and it's almost impossible to explain. Loading her on the trailer was a breeze. The rain started just as we pulled out of the water and we were glad we decided to get out when we did. We've got a lot of compliments and got to chat with a few nice people. The sailing club school class just put out while we were sailing in front of their docks. Everybody stopped and stared... I'm sure they were all wondering what type of boat this is. The sailing instructors ran in and brought their binoculars to take a closer look. They all stood there gazing until we sailed around the peak. We wanted to go again today but the weather doesn't look so good. Hopefully tomorrow... We're lucky to have this lake in the middle of our city. It takes fifteen minutes from our house to the boat launch. We'll have to do it again really soon. Now I haave to go install the fishfinder on the boat 'cause we'll be fishing next time. I would like to thank the Stevensons for making this wonderful boat available to us all, it's a great design, and to all people on these forums for all the great help and support over the past 3 years, I'm glad to be part of this family. Cheers Florin

I did that Mike, but I think we made the hoops too tight. I will make some more this weekend which are larger. I stole someone's great idea and made the ones out of beads and aircraft wire-rope. They look really nice, but they don't work very well. I'm sure it's because they're too tight. Thanks Florin

Btw. Many thanks to Frank for fixing my screwup on the link, and to Roland for the color crrection on the pic. It looks much nicer this way. Me gotta learn to link the pics properly. Cheers Florin

Thank you guys and girls. This was just a test photo actually... to see if my uploading works. And I guess it did. The "hump" on the cabin... Well its another mod I've done to increase the living space in the cabin.... Ok, I'm lyin. You see, I forgot to make a mast/boom crutch.... so we needed to support them over the top of the cabin when folding them down over night. So we've used a blue plastic milk crate with a piece of carpet leftover from covering the bunks. And since the rez. is very low in this shot, you can't really make out what the heck it is.... hehehe. There are a bunch more pics, and some of her coming down the steep driveway as well. We'll take a bunch more this weekend 'cause the weather is supposedly going to be good, but I aint gonna hold my breath on that one. Gotta go to woik now. Cheers Florin

Thanks guys!! Unfortunately we couldn't go yesterday due to the weather turning on us just as we finished wiring the trailer. It stormed for 1/2hr and then stopped. It remained very cloudy for a couple of hours and then it turned sunny. I know.... only if we knew... So..... we may go today after I come back from work, again depending on the weather. We've had 3 tornadoes touch down within 1/2hr of eachother in the surrounding areas... This is abnormal here. Yesterday while checking the rig I've noticed the hoops getting stuck on the mast when almost at the top... I think I have to make them larger. Also, the jib sheet is getting jammed in the block on the deck. I think I'll throw away the clobfoot idea and stick to 2 jib sheets arrangement. Cheers! FLorin

This is what she looked like before finishing the trailer mods. [picture link edited by Frank]