Designer

Don, I accept your shout but there is another rule. A shout must always be returned.

Being Bi-lingual, I thought that a little translation was necessary. When speaking Strine, the word "shout" means " who is buying the next round of beer". She is looking good Trev.

Dave, We have increased the bottom section of the masts to .125". We cannot find wall thicknesses between .065" and .125" anymore so we bumped the lower sections in the smaller range of boats to .125". None of the dismastings that I am aware of were caused by sailing conditions. I know of five CS20 mast failures, Dawn Patrol wrapped the spinnaker halyard around a day marker when hard on the wind. Ketchup got swept under a dock. Doug's boat got the mast stuck in the sand etc... I believe that they all had the thinner wall thickness and they all broke at the deck exit. Going up to the next size was a sensible choice. Of course if this is carried too far, instead of the mast breaking during extreme abuse, it will just tear the deck out. I have not heard of any issues with the .125" lower sections. Dawn Patrols new main mast lower section is .125" The .125" wall thickness is good for the bottom section for the Belhaven but for the second section I would try a bit harder to find .065" to save the weight aloft. On Southern Skimmer, the main mast is 4" x .065" and she has been flogged hard over a lot of years and miles and still going strong. Beside a large trailer side swiping the main mast in a parking lot and bending it slightly, I did snarl a crab pot at night doing 10 knots with a loose spinnaker halyard.

The sprit position for the BRS main is 37 1/2" up from the tack. I usually leave a 12" opening centered on the sprit position. The BRS mizzen sprit position is 30 inches above the tack.

Put the motor to starboard. I put mine to port, borrowed a motor to try the fit and found my folly. The tillers are on the left side of the motor which means that if I want to steer with the motor I have to lift the tiller to turn to starboard. Typically, you center the motor and steer with the tiller but when maneuvering, it is good to vector the thrust by rotating the motor. On these small motors, there is no reverse. You must rotate the motor 180 degrees to reverse. I decided to leave the motor to port because the transom was already cut. I rarely use the motor so it was not worth the bother to repair the transom and I will learn to lift the tiller. If you are starting from scratch it is a no brainer.

The SS half oval will easily bend around around the forefoot. Just use a vise and gently bend it incrementally and carefully until it fits the boat.

The big spar makers like Hall Spars do use heat during curing. This expands the aluminum mandrel enough for the spar to slide off. When the spar is put in the autoclave the temperature is ramped up at a controlled rate to the optimum cure temperature for which their resin was designed and then carefully ramped down at a controlled rate. All of this is usually computer controlled. For us home builders with our one blend of epoxy which has to do everything, it is better to stick with what we know. Meade Gugeon recently told me that post curing with heat for typical home boatbuilding epoxies does not contribute to the strength. Having said that, I feel that If you are going to paint your boat a dark color, it is a good idea to put the boat out in the hot sun for a couple of days prior to prime coating to post cure the glass to prevent print-thru on your final coat of paint. I have been disappointed to see the weave of the glass show through the gloss after the boat has been out in the sun for a while.

I have been making glass tubes over aluminum mandrels wrapped with plastic for so long that I do not remember where I got it or what inspired me. The problem was that it was often very hard or impossible to get the glass tube off of the aluminum tube. Tom Lathrop came up with the 1" plastic strips. This changed it from a sort of okay method into a brilliant system. Alan probably came up with drywall screws into wood plugs for bearings so that the whole lot could be rotated easily.

That is great Lotus, when I come to Malta you will have to take me fishing. Sorry about the Ok256, just kidding.

We have a Spindrift 12 with the standard rig and a 12' Amanda with a lug rig. The hull bottoms are pretty similar. I have been trying to find the time to make the rigs swap-able so that we can quantify the performance of the rigs. Just watching Alan sailing the S12 and Nat sailing the Amanda, the S12 seems to be faster upwind. We need to swap skippers but I would like to swap rigs as well.

Bob, It just goes to show that there is no one right way to do things. On a straight forward build like in Alan's video, it is best to glue all of the parts together on a flat surface and put it down as one piece. It can have it's problems though, if you get it out of square you might have a big piece that will not fit. Also as you mentioned, if space is limited or if the glue-up might kick off in hot weather before you can get it in place or if you do not have enough clamps. It is usually quicker to put it down in one piece. If you do put in large panels like the cockpit as mentioned, down in one piece, it is necessary to pre-fit all of the parts and have a way to make sure that when you flip it over on the bench that you glue all of the parts together that they are properly aligned. I do not always do things in the most efficient way. While I am building Carlita for myself, I am still prototyping. I often build both sides differently to try and find the best way to do it. In Carlita's cockpit I was building an icebox on the starboard side which was time consuming and needed multiple steps, but I wanted to try out the best way to build the cockpit coaming for the plans. I built the port side coaming and made the cockpit hatch larger than originally designed because I found that I could not fit a small 4stroke outboard through the old one. It was a tight squeeze but the hatch just clears the coaming. Alan and I debated the assembly of the coaming with all of the parts at hand so that we could try different ideas, I think that it worked as we found a better way to do it. The cockpit is more complex than on the CS15. I wanted the aft deck and bridge deck in place (so that I can board the boat easily during building) but not have it glued in. Being removable, I can rig the rudder and the bumkin without climbing into the boat or needing an assistant since I can see and reach both sides of the transom. The same for the bridge deck, I want to rig the centerboard uphaul and glue in the ballast tank top before I glue the bridge deck in.

Hi Lotus, Have you caught any fish yet?

Here are some new pics. The starboard seat is being glued down. Clamps were used wherever they could fit, then lots of weights and drywall screws for some extra force. The mirror was used to check for full glue squeeze out. The butt blocks are fitted for the aft cockpit seat and the beam fitted. The third pic shows the aft cockpit seat deck beam ready to be glued. The ends are supported by 1/4" ply U brackets.

Mick, You can add a wood plug to the top of the mast to bring the length up to what you need.

Chick & Jay. I will do the experimenting on my dodger first. I am making mine to be just tall enough for me. It should fit on the 20 mk3.

Fred, Yes there will be two hatches. I will be into that soon and will take pictures and there will be drawings. My main reason for the two hatch layout is that I can make a nice light very watertight system. I just have to duck when I go forward. The PVC pipe was run into the CB trunk to save a little parasitic drag. It is hard to have a removable plug in the bottom and have it as smooth as if it was not there.

Gary, The OB20 kit is finished. There are three levels of kit. If you email Alan he can send you the spread sheet with the options. It will be up on the web sit soon but he is currently working on the Spindrift page update.

Hi Steve, You could easily sail all three boats solo, it is just a matter of how you set them up. I have to agree with PAR that the 17mk3 would be a good choice for a mostly solo sailor, of course I may be prejudiced. I have sailed all of our boats except the 17mk3 but I think that I can extrapolate with reasonable surety and that is why I am building one for me. I have already sailed her thousands of miles while building her and I think that she will be a good fit for me. I am hoping that by next spring I will be able to prove my convictions.

Here are a few of progress pictures. I built in an icebox at the forward end of the cockpit to starboard. It drains into the cockpit. You can see the hatch framing. A picture of the port cockpit coaming. And the third is the ballast tank fill. It fills from the centerboard trunk and is accessible through the hatch. It will be glassed into the trunk and the inboard end takes a standard transom drain plug. I used 3/4" PVC which has an ID of about 7/8", the drain plug needs a 1" hole. I found a broom handle with the right diameter and heated the PVC with a heat gun until it was soft and pushed it over the handle until it cooled. There will be a large Anderson bailer in the bottom for water removal.

Here is my latest rendering of Carlita. I cannot help turning her into a micro cruiser. I have entered her in the next EC solo so I am going to try a wind vane to share the helm duties. It is a bit more complicated than usual as it has to kick up for beach launching. To keep the mizzen sheet from tearing the vane off the stern, I added a bumkin to move the sheet behind the vane. The bumkin also supports the vane. If it works like I hope, I think that I will name it Randy so that he will be on board in spirit, he shared the helm in our last three EC's I am thinking of adding 4' of B&B sail track on each coaming top aft so that I can have number of movable fixed cars for spinninaker sheets, tiller tamer, fenders spring lines etc.

As I progress with Carlita I have a number of things to contribute to this string. I have not gotten as much done on Carlita lately but I have an opportunity right now or I could spend my time here. I have made my decision, I am off to work.

Don, There is no absolute minimum bury for a tabernacle, The smaller the mast diameter ratio to bury the higher the stresses go up. I try to get between 6 - 7 to 1 when I can. The CS17 mk3 tabernacle has a 7.3 to 1 ratio. It has the same mast OD as the BRS but because the BRS does not have near as much stability, therefore much lower loads as the mk3 the mast has a thinner wall thickness. Without spending a lot of time on it I would guess that you could go down to 5 to 1 for the BRS if you had to.

Dave, The top edge of the carlin goes to the top of the transom. The inboard edge is 2' 8 1/4" measured horizontally from the centerline of the transom. After our phone conversation I have been 3d modeling the Belhaven. I have almost gotten to the carlin. The view is as far as I have gotten but it might help. Imagine that the deck was drawn as if it covered the whole boat sitting on top of the transom and the inwale. Then the carlin is positioned and the middle portion of the deck is removed.

Hi Oyster, Thanks. You can expect to see a lot more innovation. You are right, Alan has done a great job on the website as well as a lot of other stuff, not to mention our collaboration with Buck. After the completion of the cat we had to decide where the company was going. I could have carried on with Carla doing as much as we could but slowly grinding the business into the ground as we aged out. We had long recognized how good Alan was and decided to offer him a partnership. Earlier this year we formed B&B Yacht Design inc. with Carla, Alan, Beth and I as equal partners. As Carla and I age out they will take over and eventually inherit the whole business. We kept Nat on to help out and David is doing most of the machining giving Alan and I more time to create. I see B&B growing a lot more in the future. It gives me a lot of satisfaction to know that the business will live on and that the builders who had enough faith to build our designs will know that they will continue to have support and keep up the value of their boats.

Hi Matt, My Marissa has a Suzuki 30 but without the tilt trim unfortunately. She runs in the low 20's wide open. Mine will plane with four people. Here is the deck plan view. The foredeck and console is in the standard kit. They can be left out if desired. The casting platform forward has two hatches in it's deck. I did not build mine waterproof as the the locker is waterproof and drains into the cockpit. The hatches could be made waterproof if desired. You should be able to scale from the drawing. The fuel tank is under the cockpit sole below the console and holds 18 gallons. it is a standard Moeller tank. The boat can easily be customized. A number of builders have told me that they were going to customize their boats, I cannot recall seeing any pictures of them other than Lotus.