Dave R1

As my almost 2 year old son, Ian would say, "Job!" The "good" is just assumed.

Brit, prior to launching my Weekender I thought I would go with a cutter rig and to that end I added some length to both the mast and bowsprit. After sailing the boat with just the stock jib, I've decided the rig is fine as is. Even with the added length to the bowsprit a Genny set like you're talking would be hard to tack unless you remove the inner head sail altogether. Besides, with the peak and throat halyards lead aft and port and starboard jib sheets in use, there's plenty of lines already to deal with. I do have a roller furler which works great especially with the longer bowsprit. I would highly recommend that. With the added height of the mast I raised the boom up so I don't have to duck under it when tacking. It also allowed me to spread the hardware at the top out a bit. Shrouds clear the jaws better and the angle on the peak halyard is more efficient. So adding the height was still a good thing in my opinion.

What a great guy. Top notch customer service and fair prices to boot. Could you ask for more? Just had to make a little post to say how pleased I am he and sandra are doing what they do.

Neat little boat. Do you have any other views besides those shown in the drawing at the top of each page? I'm curious about what the cockpit area will look like. What sort of sailing rig will you use? Are you planning to run lines inside ala Paradox?

Good luck with the repair. At first I was going to suggest a new bowsprit but I think you could use the weight forward anyway. As PAR said, an acetone wipedown before expoxy will help.

Pepe, (the Newfie/Bordie) is 85 lbs of hair. Here's the best picture I could find of her. She's usually asleep. Somewhere I have the picture of her head sticking out of the forehatch. Sorry for the hijack, Adla. Doc, glad the sails came.

Adla, I'm just guessing it's from a mouse. I love your ballast, too. My dog, a newfie-border collie cross managed to crawl through the forward bulkhead into the forepeak one. I was afraid we'd have to take the boat apart to get her out. ! :shock: :roll: Doc, did the sails arrive? Are they alright?

Thanks for those additional photos. I sure appreciate seeing them. My new sails are ready to go on the boat. The gaff jaws just need leathering, the mast has a new coat of varnish and I just need to get the boat out of storage and clean out the mouse poop.

Looks like fun even with a dripping nose. I'm going to go and watch the video again.

Looking good. Thanks for posting the update. Is it your bowsprit that is delaminating or the stem? I'm guessing the latter. I had a little bit of delamination on the stem of my keel. It didn't appear until last year--third summer after launch. To fix it, I put a guide on the base of my trim router and cut a groove centered on the seam. Then I filled that with thickened epoxy. It seemed to work. We'll see how it wintered. Unless it is a large opening, I wouldn't try to pull it back together with clamps. Just fill the opening. If you do try pulling it together, the wood will be trying to fight it and might break the joint again.

This would be a bit odd on a boat but perhaps you could work out some parallel arms that would allow the hatch to lift as it moves forward. You'd need to figure out a way to dog it closed at both the fore and aft edges but that could be done. I could see about making a sketch to work out the geometry if it would help.

It's a skinny table. Maybe a behind the couch or along a wall table. I thought I might invert it and hang an Evinrude off it and see if it will plane?

Just saw a table that inspired me to draw this one. Looking for opinions. Legs have a sort of an isoceles triangular section with the base of the triangle being curved. The legs taper toward the bottom. Table is drawn 59.75" long, 16" deep and 33" high. Might narrow the table up a bit to 12" deep. What do ya think?

Af Florin, good to see your trident and good to see you back. As far as the Duckworks sails, ordering is easy, you just put in the area of the sail and enter the type and so. If there are any special requirements, put them in the comments section when you order. Chuck will get in touch with you for more details such as the dimensions. I made an electronic drawing of the sails showing the dimensions as shown in the plan and one using a couple of dimensions and angles as given and letting the program figure the others. There was a bit of a difference for the Weekender. I imagine though you can give Chuck the dimensions as a list and his sailmaker can figure them out.

Nice work Joe. Hope the pump doesn't quit before she takes up. Can't wait to see pictures of her under sail.

Doc, mine is a 47 lb thrust motor and it works pretty well even in windy conditions. Last summer I had to run about 5 miles down the lake into a pretty strong head wind to beat a storm. I did it in about an hour. This was with the sails down but I thought it was nice to have the power.

Tony, it was in the neighborhood of $550 for the sails and shipping. One row of reef points in the main. And they are same color as the one in the pictures Charlie posted. I wonder if there is a market for slightly used polytarp sails?

Just thought I'd put in a good word for Duckworks sails if I may. I decided this year that I want to replace the polytarp sails on my Weekender with dacron sails. There's really nothing wrong with polytarp except I didn't like the way the jib looks after having been rolled up on the furler. I looked at Sailrite and thought about sewing them myself from a kit. I even got a quote on them. Problem is, I don't have a lot of time to be sewing sails along with the other stuff I want to do to prep the boat for sailing. (Not to mention the huge monitor installation we have coming up this spring at work.) The Duckworks sails worked out to about $50 more than buying the sail kits from Sailrite. These are properly made sails, too. The seams are straight and everything. Anyway, the DW sails arrived on Saturday, about 3 weeks before I was looking for them to come, and they are beautiful. I ordered tanbark which should make for a nice look with the colors of my boat. It'll also make the boat stand out a bit from most of the other boats on the lake. Well, except for John Metzner's happy yellow sails. He must have the most cheerful boat out there anywhere. So, if you are thinking about ordering sails for your boat, Weekender or otherwise, give Duckworks a try. And Chuck's customer service is unsurpassed. Now I need to figure out what to do with my old sails. They only have 3 seasons on them. I wonder if I should use the main to make a bimini?

It's not a flaw if you don't care where the wind and tide take you.

Andrew, I imagine you're right about them being too thick for that. Actually they're sawn out of a laminated stack of wood. The laminations are vertical; two pieces of oak, a piece of maple and two more of oak. I did a quick drawing of the jaws in SketchUp and rotated the pieces to figure out how small a block I would need to saw out the parts. I even printed templates I could glue to the block. I didn't think about it when I was gluing up the stock but I noticed after cutting the parts out that the top and bottom oak surfaces show the rays of quartersawn wood. looks kind of cool. BTW, when I laid the jaws out for cutting I did it assuming no space for the stick. That left me with flat faces I could use to clamp the pieces together for shaping and sanding. This also allowed me to make sure it would fit around the mast without having to clamp the stick in there, too. After I got the jaws shaped and the stick made and turned to diameter, I trimmed those inner faces and then shaped the jaws to fit the stick. I cut out most of the waste with the tablesaw and then sanded to shape with sandpaper wrapped around the spar. I turned the birdsmouth spar round with a router and the ornamental mill which had to be modified because it wasn't long enough. That's given me an idea for a spar lathe I could build in my shop that would handle up to about 20' between centers.

Thank you all. The new tanbark sails came on Saturday and look great. I can't wait to get it all together.

As part of my preparation for the coming sailing season I'm making a new gaff for Julie K. I thought I'd put up some pictures. The old gaff is visible as is the bowsprit which is getting a new coat of spar varnish. The jaws on the new gaff are laminated from oak and maple. They are epoxied to the birdsmouth gaff with brass rod driven through instead of using bolts. I chucked the rods in the drill press and filed grooves for epoxy. There'll be no getting those rods out again. Although they don't show, there are a couple of maple fittings on the underside of the new spar. One at about the midpoint will get a small strop to hold a midspan halyard block. The other fitting is close to the end and will get the end of the peak halyard as well a length of line from the peak of the sail. I still need to get a piece of leather and install it in the mouth of the jaws.

All you guys stand around watchin' adla do the work looks like a county highway department crew. All you needed were some shovels to lean on. Actually I'll bet you were saying, "I didn't quite get that, Adla. Could you show me again?" :D

Charlie, I know that I could have gotten a longer pin but I had the bolt and nut on hand. Seemed like it made more sense to use what I had. FWIW, I did look and I used a stainless bolt. I guess I'm saving the titanium bolts for something else, though I don't know what. :roll:

Chad, that's what I have. I did end up replacing the pin that holds the arms with a 1/4" stainless bolt (or maybe a titanium one but I think I used stainless) because the pin was too short for my boom even after routing some flats on the side. If you do that be sure to use a stop nut and spacers on the inside of the arms. I scrounged some spacers that go between the bearings on roller blade wheels for that.