Designer

Ken, I m sorry to hear about your transmission issues. I am afraid that it was probably caused by you. Owners manuals usually say that when towing, take the car out of overdrive. The problem is that the cruise control locks the car at a constant speed, this causes rapid shifting on those rolling hills. The modern transmission has more gears to meet the demands of EPA for higher miles with smaller engines. It is a mechanical marvel but cannot be abused. Glad that you made it home. I look forward to Lula's next chapter.

The console was moved a couple of inches forward after hull #1 because I expected everyone to use a larger motor. She is fairly stable longitudinally so she can take moving it further forward. Like everything, it is a trade off. The further you move the crew forward the harder the ride. I would prefer you to keep the move under 6 inches.

On my trip out to Port Townsend with Carlita a few years ago I went through several zebra mussel inspection stations. I showed them the ballast tanks and the centerboard and trunk. They crawled under the boat with a flashlight and soon gave me the all clear.

I am so sorry to hear this, I know that he has not been well for some time. I too enjoyed his company at the messabout's and the time he spent with us at the Mystic Wooden Boat Show.

I do not usually disagree with Chic but I have piano hinges on the outboard edge my interior hatches and turn buttons on the inboard side. I always made sure that they were dogged down when underway in case of a knockdown. All exterior hatches are gasketed and dogged down.

Frank, It took a while to find your boat's file and dig up an activation key for the old CAD program. Anyway it is now up to the current issue. I drew the Datum WL at 1470 # displacement. As has been discussed above, that there are always ripples on the surface and boats are rarely in perfect trim. I drew the painted WL 2" above the DWL Which works out at 12" below the chine at the stem and 3 1/2" below the chine at the transom. If you want to put on a boot top. It is 3" high at the bow, 1 1/2" amidships and 2" high at the transom. Remember all of these dimensions are measured vertically and not up the slope of the hull

I remember my first employer telling me "the art of a craftsman is being able to disguise or work around your screw-ups. I have been where you are more times than I want to remember. I have not seen your problem but my instinct would be to trim some wood off one side and make it up on the other side with epoxy. A little adjustment with forward gunwales ends might be necessary. There may be some tweaking of paint edges. While you may not be able to eliminate the visual effect completely, reducing it will make invisible to most folk.

I just want to clarify a couple points to avoid confusion. The sides of the Ocracoke and Outer Banks designs are planked with two layers thin plywood glued together after the 4 x 8 sheets are cut into narrower strips and fitted. This is done because the sides have compound curves (curved in two directions) to get the flare. This method is called cold molding. This is not to be confused with strip planking which is a very common construction method consisting of thin strips of solid wood edge glued over the hull. The term developable means that a flat sheet can be bent in one piece to the desired shape without stretching the edges or shrinking the middle. As an example you can take a sheet of paper and roll it into a cylinder or a cone. It can be heavily curved on one axis but must be straight on the other axis. Now try to wrap that sheet of paper over a globe and it will be instantly obvious that it cannot go without crumpling the edges or cutting darts. Developed panels are used in many of our designs and by carefully manipulating the surfaces you can get some excellent shapes, coupled with stitch and glue, makes for a good quick jigless build. The downside of jigless construction is lack of accuracy. On non planing hulls it is accurate enough. When designing Marissa, I attempted to build jigless and maintain the accuracy of a jig built boat. By using the boats structure as a jig you save the cost of cutting and purchasing disposable materials. The self draining cockpit sole set on a couple boards on a pair of saw horses became the jig base. To get the performance that I wanted necessitated keeping the hull light. To achieve a desired strength you can go with a thin skin with lots of internal structure or have a thicker skin and less internal support. The latter method will be heavier. The advantage of using the cockpit as the base, means that the boat cannot be out of square as both sides are identical, we proved this later when the cockpit was removed to finish the inside bottom, putting it back in the boat we deliberately put the port half in the starboard side and starboard into port, it made no difference (that had never happened to me before). While 9 mm ply can be a bit wavy, when the frames fit into their slots in the cockpit and the bottom stringers fit into the frame slots they straighten and true each up. I would not attempt to build a Marissa upright because you would never be able to get all of those pieces to fit without trimming after the fact, losing the methods main advantage. We design our boats to a resolution of one thousand of an inch which is also the resolution our CNC machine is set to. Do we get parts cut to within .001" (.025mm)? No, there is backlash and bit deflection to account for, but we get close. For example when we cut solid wood we cut the part .01" oversize and cut it again to size. This trim cut has very little bit loading, making a more accurate part. Our full size templates are printed from the same files that we use to toolpath our CNC files from. On larger boats like Marissa they are printed on mylar, while expensive, it is dimensionally stable and will not expand and contract with changes in humidity. Therefore a home builder can build just as fine a boat as the kit builder if he or she is a good and careful craft person and has a longer attention span.

I prefer the tricolor with anchor light at the top of the main mast. Here is the connector that I am using with the female part mounted on the forward bulkhead under the deck to starboard of the mast. https://sea-dog.com/groups/737-polarized-electrical-outlet I currently do not have the masthead light and do as Dave says. It sure would be nice to just flick a switch sometimes. I once had a coaster captain tell me that he first thought that my masthead light was a star. It was 50' above the water. I will be interested in how the power works out. I have fantasies of running the electric motor at an idle speed so that you cannot hear it but it will just have enough power to unstick the boat so that what little wind that is available will keep her moving. I think that you might be able to cover a lot of miles without using too many amps. When I left visiting Ken on Salt Pond Island on a Friday morning I needed to get to Friday Harbor before the US Customs shut down for the weekend. The wind eventually arrived and I just got the rig trimmed when it died. This was repeated over and over. I had another reason to hustle, the good weather was leaving us in a day or so. I just made it in time to clear Customs. I heard a couple of locals across the dock while looking at the sky say ("this is the end of summer"). I motored and sailed through the night back to Port Townsend, hauled and packed the boat and hauled butt to the southeast. As the snow chased me up the Rockies I nervously eyed those snow chain pullouts and wondered what I would do if I had to stop. When I left home in a heat wave, cold weather clothing was the last thing on my mind.

In spite of a below average cold January/ February I have had 3 good sails so far. Last but not least was last Wednesday when Craig brought his brand new SR20 to the shop to test sail. As the weather was light there was no point in filling the ballast tanks. The breeze did fill in some after we got out of camera range. Her performance unsurprisingly felt like a CS20 but also different with her self draining cockpit and no trunk filling in the forward half of the cockpit and the motor in a well. We got to try the helm balance which gave just the amount of weather helm that I like. I could have easily tuned it out with the centerboard if I wanted. The propane outboard was fired up and tested. As it was new we could not run it hard but I liked everything that I saw, perhaps a bit noisier than I expected. I really liked the motor well. I did not initially like the tiller being that high as it has to be to clear the motor, both up and down (we all worked hard to try and squeeze it down) but after a while I did not notice it. Of course if the breeze was up I would be holding the tiller extension. Bias aside, I think that she is our best open cruiser.

Peter gave you very good advise. You cannot build a boat without secondary bonds somewhere. I am usually not not disciplined enough to coat my panels first. Do not coat the outside of the hull panels as it makes them stiffer to bend. I would only put on two thin coats, leaving a third to put on after the boat is together. Make sure that you put on even coats, I have seen good intentions go bad by slopping the epoxy on. My preferred technique is to load up the roller with epoxy, start rolling it on the panel fore and aft, about 18" long until the roller is empty, before reloading I turn my roller 90 degrees and firmly roll out my epoxy, then turn my roller 90 again and with the lightest touch, roll it out. I reload again and repeat until the panel is done. Before moving on I check that the edges are good and scan the panel to make sure that it is perfect. If there is any hint of orange peel I will tip it off lightly with a brush. I like to hot coat for the second round avoiding the need to sand and giving you a primary bond. How soon can you second coat? As soon as it is firm enough to work on. Good luck with the build.

Frank, As much as I like electric propulsion I think that you may be optimistic with your system. While it is true that you can extract 100 amps out of that battery. If you love it like need to and you want to enjoy all of those charge cycles you need to set that controller to no more than 90% and down to 25%. Most people I know set their controller even more conservatively. That is still a lot better than old battery technology. I have almost the same system on Carlita. I have a 50w Renogy panel going to a Victron 7515 controller and a 100 amp hour lithium battery. My system was just adequate on my last cruise without electric propulsion. In fairness I have the panel in a very inefficient place. I can't find a better place that will not be in the way and be secure when all hell breaks loose. I see that flexible panels are getting better and with the promise of longer life. I was considering putting a 100w flexible panel on Southern Skimmer. I was thinking or mounting it on a well epoxied panel of 6mm okume ply with 6mm ply ribs for cooling so that I can lash it down the center of the cabin as it's home position. When it is in the shade I can move it to the sunny side. The problem with doing that on Carlita is that the panel is built like a tank and it is comforting to leave it bolted down. As I write this I suppose I could rework the frame making it well padded with 4 good eyes for lashing it in place. I have only been to Port Townsend twice but from my limited observations it is not as sunny as it is here plus you have a lot of light air and big tides. What you have is certainly enough to get you back in before dark in a calm on a day sail but for a serious trip it would be nice to rev up your system. We installed lots of Victron stuff on the big power cat that we built and it worked and still is working flawlessly.

Ken, That plank line looks as sweet as the model does.

Yes you do need the limber holes. You need to be able to drain any water that can get into the bilge area so that it can escape through the drain plug in the transom with the boat on the trailer. With ventilation you can lower the humidity throughout the bilge area ang extending the boats life. Where can the water come from? It insidious, it will find it's way through poor or aging caulking, hatches, the drain plug or condensation etc. I like to store these boats on the trailer with the bow high enough to drain. The drain plug removed and cockpit or console hatches or any opening that can connect to the bilge area open. Before the cockpit sole is glued down, I make sure that any small dams are cut away or epoxy filled so that all water will make its way to the drain plugs. This is why I do not like pouring foam into the bilge. On my Marissa I made the console access door with louvers so that the console and bilge can ventilate. This also helps get rid of the slight fuel vapor that permeates through the plastic fuel tank.

Steve, Your sketch was too good, I presumed that the hatch was already there. Yes go ahead and make it for real when it warms up enough for you.

Steve, I presume that you are cutting into the partial bulkhead aft of the forward bulkhead. If so have at it. It might be a good idea mark out where you want to cut on the boat and take a picture like the one here and post it so that we can make sure that it will be okay.

There is no reason why you cannot build an equal quality boat from the plans. We use the same parts file for the full size plan sheets that come with the plans as the cut file for the kit. You do not have to do any scaling or lofting. If you are meticulous in marking and cutting, and use a good quality marine ply, you will have the same boat. You do have to do your own scarfing but you can do butt tape joints, which are just as strong but take extra fairing. The point that some have made about the huge time saving of the kit cannot be over emphasized. It all depends on your burnout index. If you have a bunch of unfinished projects in your life, starting from plans might not be a good idea. We have shipped quite a few kits to Canada but we usually get burned because the Customs finds an extra fee or two that was not in the shipping quote. The cost does go up as it crosses the border. We have shipped to an address on this side of the border and the customer has driven over and picked it up. If it can be picked up from a depot, everyone can save a bundle because they charge a lot for home delivery and the mk3 kit is so heavy that you need a truck with a forklift. The lid is just screwed down but drivers cannot wait for you to remove the lid and decant the contents. As for headroom, at 6'5" you would be much happier with the 20. I was on Carlita yesterday and thinking of you at 6' 5". At 5' 7" my head just touched the underside of the 1" deep beams sitting sitting tall on 2" cushions which squashed down to about 1/2". The extra 2" in the 3.2 version would not be enough for you, not to mention the extra legroom that you will need. After my trip to Port Townsend we brought out the updated MK3.2 version incorporating everything that we had learned. The main modification was to add 2" more headroom in both models. Everyone I talked to at the Wooden boat festival talked about headroom. Most of the the other modifications were to make it easier to build. There is not a lot more work in the 20 as they both have the same building steps. The 20 does have more surface area to glass, sand and paint.

The new pictures tell me a lot more. The centerboard pin and cap are built to the plan. The centerboard is resting on a keel roller which means that it can be raised a couple of inches. As there is only one line for raising and lowering, there must be a ballasted tip for lowering. I would pull on the centerboard pennant to see if you can raise it all of the way up. I suspect that there is no purchase inside the trunk and you just have a hole in the board for the pennant . Depending on how much ballast there is and my guess at the fore and aft position of the turning block, it should take around 50# to raise the board. As you have a crane I would lift the boat and lower the board. When the board is vertical the pennant attachment should be below the hull. You should be able to pull the board forward of vertical if necessary. The upper drawing is the standard configuration. The blue line pulls the board down, the red line pulls the board up and the magenta line is a shock cord spring. I modified the lower drawing to what I suspect was done on your trunk.

That is not the "as designed" centerboard pennant, it has been clearly modified by the builder. The standard centerboard has a handle that comes out above the trunk and has two external lines, one to lower the board and one to raise it. If there is only one line, I assume that the board has a lead weighted tip for lowering and that line is for raising. We do that on the Mk3 boards but they need a 6: 1 purchase. You should be able to tell when using it. Looking at the size of the pennant and how new it looks, my guess is that it will never wear out assuming that the builder got the geometry right.

Hi Nick, The Mk3 was never meant to be an offshore boat. Just as you rightly said about the skippers ability, the same thing can be said about the boat. For instance on Carlita's cruises all of my stores and gear was stored under the bunks and the lids were dogged down, I had a downhaul on the centerboard to prevent it from crashing down in a capsize, the hatches were well gasketed and dogged down when underway. My reefing system was well sorted out. I have not got around to a masthead float yet but I think it is a good idea. If I was planning to go further offshore I would look into adding some more ballast to the centerboard and outside on the keel. I also carried a PLB and a Spot tracker. Although I never made it to Tassie, I have great respect for the weather down there. My sister circumnavigated it a few years ago in a S&S 33. I would love to have Carlita down there for a season. The main advantage of the mk3 is that you do not have to do the dodgy offshore passages, just trail to the best places. I have found that when I do the offshore legs I never get around to cruising the new areas in depth when I get there because I am sailed out and I am starting to concentrate on the next leg. It is the reverse when I trail to the new place.

Yes, that is exactly what I meant, 1/2 full size or just under 8' long. The point was to prove that the 3d modelled planks unwrapped, would fit when cut out and wrapped back around the hull. We are pleased to report that they did fit exactly and we have half of a beautiful fair hull. Why so big? It was just right as we used 3mm ply which was 1/2 the full thickness. The parts were cut with a 1/16" bit so that everything would be exactly replicated. Here are the pics of the planking.

The Lapwing kit is coming along well. Here is the 1/2 scale model being built, almost read to be able to test the planking. At the bow is an experimental jig to aid installing the inwales. The planks are all cut , the first three have been loosely wired together to see if they will drape over the hull. Instead of a side stringer to support the cockpit seating we have tried a ply shelf. It has the advantage that it helps to space the bulkheads and transom precisely at the side. While the boat is upside down it will be heavily filleted to the planking. A side stringer cannot work well because it has to go across planks which cannot be a fair line. The first thing that everyone says when they see it for the first times is, "it's so cute".

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.