Designer

Hey Chick, I am also disappointed but your health is more important. I hope that you can sort it out soon. The weather is about as pretty as it can get and it looks good through the weekend. Randy and Tom have the property nicely groomed and people re starting to roll in.

Ken, Yes, you should plug the mast at the tabernacle. Another thing that I like to do when I glue up a birdsmouth spar is to setup cleats across my spar bench like you showed in a picture of your setup. I make sure that the top faces are straight from head to heel. I cover the tops of the cleats with duct tape then choose a stave and nail it to the cleats with thin headless brads. I nail the heel, then the head. I check for straight and fasten the middle accordingly. This assures that the mast will come out perfectly straight. Yes the bottom side will be straight and the taper will make the rest of the mast curved. I just make the straight side the aft side of the spar. You have noticed how slippery glued faces become when clamping. Many birdsmouth spars end up bent because the staves near the head are very limber and with the clutter of your clamps hindering your view, makes it hard to be sure that it is perfectly straight. Getting all of the edges glued and the eight staves corralled and in place can be a bit of a fire drill, it sure helps to have a spare set of hands for this operation. You can also setup some 45 degree chocks to help keep the first two staves in the right place against the bottom stave. With the bottom stave fixed you are not chasing a moving target.

Ken, I don't have an axe to grind either way but there is one small extra step that you have to remember with a tabernacle is that the mast no longer rotates. This means that when you ease the sail you also have to ease the snotter or it will flatten the sail as the snotter winds around the mast. We have come up with a partial work-around by attaching the snotter to a line between two eyes traps attached on opposite sides of the mast. The extra hardware accounts for some of the debate on sprits being short.

B&B now has the capability to weigh any boat that you can drag to the Messabout. We are offering to weigh any boats that comes. You can drive your trailer onto the scales before launching and return your empty trailer to the scales. Alan has made up a pretty spreadsheet that we can print out and you can learn more about your rig than you ever wanted to know.

That is the mk2 that Chick built which inspired me to create the mk3. It is somewhat similar to Dawn Patrol. It is a good boat and I am pleased to see it still being used and loved.

Hi Reacher, I took the liberty of importing your track along with one of my recent tracks on Carlita. I traced each track (course made good) in blue, the red lines represent the mean wind direction and the black line represents 2 tacks tacking through 90 degrees. I scaled each red line to represent 1 mile straight to windward. The left track took 1.25 miles to cover one mile to windward and the right track sailed 1.84 miles. You can see that huge gains can be made if you can get it right. To make the point I chose one of my better tracks. The conditions were about as good as it could get with perfect wind strength and flat sea with no discernable current. That very afternoon as I beat out of the eastern channel with more wind and a steep 3' sea, my course sailed was worse than the right track. Looking at your latest picture, with that much wind: I would tighten the luff in both sails, flatten the mizzen with more snotter, sheet the mizzen in tighter, flatten the main a bit more and sheet it in until it starts to luff the mizzen and adjust the centerboard rake until the helm has about 3 degrees of weather helm. Then I would try to sail her full and fairly flat. In light airs I would not sheet so tightly. I find that a lot of skippers tend to set their sails too full and sheeted out too far, only to find that they are not pointing very well and in desperation they start pinching way too much. Remember we are chasing VMG not just speed through the water.

https://towndock.net/news/tom-lathrop

Hi Marfal, We get asked this question a lot. We have been following EP for a long time and we have seen some real improvements especially for slow speed displacement boats. There are some planing hulls that have gone electric which is exciting but at this point in the evolution it is still hard to compete with the amount energy that a liter of petrol has stored. To get a boat to plane, it is all about power to weight. Yes you can go fast for a short time and if you have somewhere to recharge you are good to go again but that is not often available or convenient. If you want range then the weight of batteries and Euros starts really going up. To answer your question, 150 kgs of batteries under the console would be no problem on the Marissa. Even 300 kg is acceptable. Some of that weight would be offset by leaving out the fuel and tank. Also electric motors are usually lighter than outboards so it would be like having to carry an extra couple of people on board. As to 300 kgs of batteries fitting exactly under the console, there would probably have to be some redesign as we do not know their dimensions. Perhaps when it is time for you to stop dreaming and make it a reality, the cost of a KW of battery energy will compete with a KW of petrol but as Dave was suggesting, we are not there yet. With the high cost of petrol in Europe you will probably get there before us.

Good sail. Now I have a homework assignment for your next sail. Put the boat on a reach and try to make her steer herself while you are waiting for the steward to serve up your meal. The tools that will have are, main and mizzen sheets, centerboard rake, rudder adjustment using your tiller tamer and moving crew weight fore and aft or athwartships. Pick a land mark to aim for. Remember tightening the mizzen sheet will bring her up and tightening the main will make her bear away. Moving the crew weight forward will bring her up and aft will do the opposite. Obviously if conditions are shifty it may be not worth the trouble. When you get her close to steering herself, the adjustments will be very slight.

Rob, Congratulations. It is definitely a S10. It was built from scratch, not a kit but it looks like the builder did a good job. We will give you the plan sheets that you need to finish her off, just email or give us a call.

Hi Andy B, We do indeed have a boat with everything that you asked for. We are currently calling it the SR20 for self righting. Hull #1 is finished and we hope that it will be sailing at the messabout in October. It was a difficult assignment and we went through many iterations to get it right. Here is a cutaway view. We previously updated the Bay River Skiff with the centerboard moved to the cockpit side and raised the freeboard to increase the down flooding angle. Travis sailed it in the Texas 200 and reported that it went very well. Here is a link to the build pictures. https://photos.app.goo.gl/74WXsZVnrM9mAXkv9

Pete, Congratulations on the new boat. I think that it is a good fit for your current circumstances. I hope that you won't be a stranger. I would love to see it at the next messabout if you are up for it.

Steve, I do not know why you find reefing on the water difficult? I find it very easy and quick to reef on the water and that I have a very efficient sail when reefed. I can only think that you do not have it set up correctly. The most important component in the system is the block on the luff. It must be a ball bearing block and have almost no friction under load. The reason is that with the 2:1 purchase in the system, means that twice as much line has to run through that block than runs through the clew cringle. If there is any friction in that block, the clew will not draw down to the boom. To reef, I ease the main sheet, lower the sail to the mark on the halyard, pull on the reefing line until the reefing clew comes to the boom, pull in the mainsheet to suit my course and sail away.

This discussion goes to show that everyone can be happy doing things differently and getting similar results. I probably drive Carlita a bit harder than most prudent skippers. I am doing it for R&D, that is my story and I am sticking to it. I have 16 square feet less area in Carlita's main than the 20mk3 and I prefer the 4:1main sheet. It is the last few feet when sheeting in hard in a fresh breeze that I need it. I might be able to getaway with 3:1 but I prefer double ended sheets on the main. I have 2:1 single ended sheet on the mizzen and sometimes I have to pull hard to sheet it in where I want it. I am using our 5/16" braid for the sheets. At 4:1 the main sheet is long but it just stacks up in two piles just behind the mizzen mast in the bottom of the cockpit. I can remember two times on our grand cruise that I had to untangle the main sheet but it was minor. If I keep the mizzen running lines tidy so that they cannot get involved with the main sheet I do not seem to have any issues. I like the pennant between sprit and the sheets. I cannot see any down side (I do not expect too many people who have sailed more than once who would sit with their head between the mizzen mast and the mainsheet) but I see a lot of upside. For me, getting rid of 6' of line for the same sheeting angle, lowering the CG of the main sheet and reducing windage, not to mention buying 6' less line. While some of these advantages might seem miniscule in the big picture, If you follow this logic throughout the boat it adds up to why some boats seem faster than others. Dennis Connor's mantra was "no excuse to lose". Another important reason why we chose that line for sheets has been mentioned but not explained; is that it is lighter. Again in the big picture, that might not seem like a big deal. It also does not absorb water. Try dunking dacron and see how heavy it feels. When running in light air, the heavier sheet sags into the water, gets heavier and drags in the water even more. I am not saying that our sheets never drag in the water but it is a lot easier keep them from dragging than dacron. If you are using our sheets and they are dragging in the water, look for one of the sheet parts that is tighter than the rest and adjust all of the parts to be of equal tension. When the sheets are eased out to 90 degrees or more, the snotter tightens slightly on boats with tabernacles, this is trying to force the sail back toward the center of the boat causing the sheet to sag, more noticeable in light air. Ease the snotter slightly.

Here is the first installment. It was a grand adventure but as much fun as it was to leave, it was even better to return. The trip was everything that I hoped that it would be. People asked me why I rushed, I could have spent a year doing that trip but you cannot just abandon your home. We live in hurricane alley and I did not want to leave Carla to have to face one alone. I was able to get a good flavor of the area and I can drive to places in the future and I can do a section in as much depth as I like. I did this trip for many reasons. It is obvious that my voyaging days are over so I made this like a mini voyage and I also wanted to prove the mk3’s as a valid coastal micro cruiser. Carlita turned out to be close to perfect for me. The only improvement that I can think of would be to have a 20 mk3. Nothing wore out or broke except for the wind indicator when I scraped it against the mizzen mast while raising the main mast between bridges. I was able to glue it back together. Note to self, watch the indicator as it passes by the mizzen mast. Beside being fast and easy to sail, navigating in shallow water was where she excelled. She covered many miles in water less than a foot deep with no centerboard or rudder, steering and tacking with just the sails. When aground I would walk around the boat, looking for deeper water. The bowsprit gave me the leverage to rotate the boat to face the deeper water. The boomkin was just the right height to lift and push. I usually got away with it, saving me from having to wait for the next tide. An electric pump for the water ballast would be handy so that you could lighten the boat quickly if the tide was falling. I tested the water ballast several times. I naively thought that Delaware Bay was going to give me a break. The forecast was SE 10 to 15 knots, I ended up with 2 reefs in each sail and still surfed to 8 knots. I broached her twice, the first time I was concentrating too hard on the chart and got way off course at the wrong time. The second, I got slammed on the starboard quarter by a breaking wave. The rudder ventilated down the low pressure side and around we went. To my amazement we never heeled past about 20 degrees and suddenly we were safely laying a-hull. Several times I deliberately rounded up to reef or to tend to some business but with the luxury of picking my time. Single handing can be hard sometimes. Another test was on the last day: There was a small craft warning for Pamlico Sound with forecast SW winds gusting from 20 to 30 knots. I was only 28 miles from home. I decided to get underway at 5 am to beat down the Pungo River and cross the Pamlico River before the wind reached full strength. The plan worked well and just before the Hobucken Cut got narrow I decided that I could afford to put the anchor down and have breakfast. I left the sails up as it was going to be a short stop. It was hot down below with the vent and hatch dogged down. I opened the hatch to full wind scoop, forgetting about the sail. It was very pleasant. Suddenly a big gust blew the bow to port and the reefed foot of the main caught on the hatch and we were laying over. By the time I got on deck and realized what the problem was we were upright and it was over. I lowered the hatch to just a foot above the deck and life was good again. When I went to raise the anchor it felt like it was fouled. It was the hardest breakout of the whole trip. I have some other ballast ideas to try but I think that it is valid as is. Steve, yes I brought the anchor back to the cockpit and I am very pleased with it. There is nothing special except that I have a cleat about 18” forward of the sheer break. I left the bitter end tied to the bowsprit tube and the main part of the 100 ft rode in the anchor locker, the rest was just flaked on the cockpit forward. The Danforth self launches because it does not stow neatly. The Bruce/ claw stows neatly but I have to give it several flicks from the cockpit before it will launch.

I was not sure what to think when Alan said that they had been working on the boat but I thought that it was a pretty good joke when I saw the wheel.

Hey Chick, You know how things never take longer to do than you hope. I have made good progress and with a bit of luck and the crick doesn't rise I will be out of here by the weekend.

Dwg, Thanks for the offer. I will be near the beginning of my cruise when I pass Lynnhaven Inlet, if I have not forgotten or broken anything critical I should be okay but it is nice to know that there is a refuge right there if I need it.

That is all good info Brad. I would love to see the Blue Angels again but I won't in the Annapolis area that early as I am intending to do the trip anti clockwise. Steve, I look forward to seeing your pictures and hearing about your trip. Matt, It is a minimum of 700 nautical miles.

Mark, This is a little off topic here but I have bad news for you. There is no magic bullet for varnish. Epoxy has very poor UV resistance. There are some coatings that hold up a little better than varnish but they are heavily pigmented and do not look quite as good. If you want a quick long term coating, go for something with a solid pigment coating, paint. Alan said the day when we looked at my aging varnish that he might add a few touches of brown paint on his boat and maybe experiment with some feau streaks.

Amos I hope to come down the Dismal swamp canal on my way home and I hope that I will see you.

Hey Cruzer , the 14th is close to my departure date so I will certainly look out for you. We are just up the Bay River from the ICW. Your 4' of draft might be marginal at the end of our dock as our tidal height is wind driven. You can anchor 100 feet straight out from our dock in plenty of water.

Thanks Brad. I have heard that Delaware Bay can be humiliating at times but I believe that it is mostly wind against tide so I will have to try and go with the flow as best as I can. I see that I can split that passage into two legs which would make it easier to work the tides. Of course being an optimist, in my planning I see fair winds and tides with sunny skies. I have never cruised the Chesapeake but I have done 6 deliveries south through the Bay where we ran non stop except for one trip where we pulled in to Solomons for the night when it started to snow.

Joe, Great picture. Yesterday if I could. Bathroom remodeling takes longer to do than you hope. I am almost done and I am flatout on Carlita's trunk and freshening up her varnish. I hope to get underway within a couple of weeks.

Circumnavigating the Delmarva Peninsula has been on my bucket list for a long time. Ever since my first road trip to the area on a cold fall day about 30 years ago, looking out across the marshes and sounds teeming with migrating birdlife, trying to see round the next bend only to be denied by the road leaving the water, I knew that I needed to come back one day in my own boat. Carlita may not seem like the ideal boat for this but when you look into it a little deeper, she may be more ideal than you might think. Shoal water abounds allowing greater exploration, being able to sail in 6-8” of water will be a big plus. Near the northern end of the Eastern Shore is the Assawoman Canal which is crossed by 2 low bridges with a listed vertical clearance of 3.9’. The canal is no longer maintained and is only used by small craft. She may be cramped by cruising boat standards but they cannot do it, compared to open boat cruising she is luxurious. Having lived aboard her for a couple of months and taken her in some pretty big water I am sure that we can handle it. The only weak link may be me. I will turn 78 in a few weeks and I have had Parkinson’s disease for the last decade and am nowhere near as physically capable as I was. I currently have Carlita in the shop and modifying her centerboard trunk to the mk3.2 location which will allow me to reef her further when going upwind. This trip will give me a great opportunity to evaluate the modification over a wide range of conditions. The large chart shows the whole voyage. See the red course line starting and finishing at B&B, lower left. The small chart starts at the southern tip of the Delmarva peninsular. For anyone not familiar with the area, the highway running through the chart is the Chesapeake Bay tunnel bridge. The soundings are in feet and it is 5 nautical miles between the pins.