Brian Matthews

Yes Barnacle 5 we sail with pets! A 95lb. Lab/Pitbull cross and a 60lb. Lab/Boarder collie cross. Lots of mutts. They both have yellow lifejackets, not because they can't swim but because when they fall overboard you just can't see their black fur. The lifejackets also help keep them clean as they love to roll in dead fish at the first opportunity when going ashore. Dead fish are not welcome in the cabin of our weekender and so we just take the soiled jackets off and leave them outside for the night. Clare and I are debating on how to make some sort of safety railing from the cockpit forward, about dog height. The dogs are also have some problems getting past the shrouds on their way forward. The lifejackets make them extra wide and they get hooked. Another concern is traction. Their paws and claws need something more than texture. We are thinking of laying down some sort of wood stips to help them get a grip. We used to have a seagoing ships cat, but he got eaten by a fox in the yard. Too bad, few cats are tolerant of boats. Any good pet stories? Brian.

Nice job on the bracket! One problem I am having is that the motor vibrates the boat at wider throtlle opening. Idle and about half speed are tolerable in the cockpit but inside the cabin is quite noisy with all that thin plywood. To try to fix this I made some rubber pads on the mount to try to isolate the vibration. Outside the cabin it worked well and the vibration that could originally feel on the wood was almost gone, but in the cabin it was worse! It seems that the rubber isolation changed the vibration freaquency giving the interior a terrible low pitch drumming. Would a second set of rubber isolaters, perhaps where the bracket attaches to the transom, reduce this?

Good news about the polyester!! It's best to grind the paint off for the epoxy. Even if it sticks to the paint its hold on the wood is only as strong as the paint... One thing to note is that if you go back to using polyester, keep it away from the area where the epoxy is as the epoxy tends to stop the polyester from hardening! I found that out the hard way.... Love the pool shots!!

Last year I went through this whole exersize to mount a 2.5 Merc on my weekender. I ended up with a home made fixed bracket and made the mistake of making the motor mount itself verticle instead of at transome angle. It seems that most outboards asume an angled transome and as such have an angled clamp that won't except this. Now the Merc leans slightly forward even with the angle stop at its limit. Just a thought after seeing your drawing...

RRB; Your resin is not epoxy and will behave differently. The polyester will eventually harden in the preasance of even the smallest amount of hardener. The normal amount to add is only 1% and if you squirted only half that in it would still kick eventually. One problem you may be facing is one of moisture in the joint after your leak test. Moisture slows the cure of polyester. We have had problems with curing on damp days and so you can imagine what damp wood will do! Try warming the area with a hair drier before grinding it off. Heat always speeds the cure.

Great news Tom, My wife Clare comes from a family of 6, all born on the farm. Cheap labour for boatbuilding! You should enlarge the Vacationer bow hatch into a proper cockpit and assign at least 3 of them tend to various nautical tasks: swinging the lead, looking out for rocks not marked on the chart (in Georgian Bay), and of course distributing seasick pills. As kids we always spent time riding the bowsprit of my dads cutter, the bow would plunge down into a wave getting our feet wet then whoosh, up we went over the wave. He could always keep an eye on us up there, and if it was rough enough we would start getting sick, but it sure was fun while it lasted.

Ray, I saw those casting photos, nice job. We have done some lead casts here in the shop, mostly for model sailboat ballast bulbs. They are always small and we used plaster as a mould. Our cast iron melting pot is too small for such a large amount of lead. I suppose I could weld up crude steel box with a spout. Robert, I have seen those soft rubber mooring bouys and they look like just the right size to squeeze in there. You could put a rope through a ringbolt up in the corner and a attach it to the bouy and you could pull it right up tight!

Ray; Your calculations are amazing. The freeboard was reduced by just that 3". We already have sealed air tight seats running all the way back to the transom, with O ring hatches. Your idea of sealing the forward compartment is good except that's where we put our feet now that we sleep with our heads toward the stern. I think a layer of 3" blue foam under the fore deck would'nt reduce storage significantly and perhaps a piramid shaped block pushed right up in the bow would work as well. I wish I had done this before the sides went on... I have been collecting old lead water pipe in preperation for casting a lump to play around with. Perhaps a mould made with 2" C channel would work.

Phoebus currently has a rub strip of steel running stem to stern to protect the keel. The area we sail is all rock and this helps protect that soft wood. If I were to add ballast it would be in the form of a long tapered cast lead bar along the bottom steel. We use a dinghy to go ashore mostly and a few extra inches draft will only be a concern on our trailer. Interestingly, when we dumped our 20" Trawl dory (just a test) the bow and stern were actually just above the water as she lay on her beam ends. In this case, floatation added to the gunwhales amidships helped pull her upright but also made it tougher when she turned turtle. I ended up cutting hand holes in the bottom of the hull to help with rolling the boat. Naturally the centerboard retracts in this upsidedown position and so there isn't much to grab! We used large inflatable dock fenders for floatation in the test and attached them at different locations.

Hello everyone This is my first post here as I have only just discovered this most interesting forum. I see many members of the BYYB here and lots of good subjects. The ballast subject is fasinating. Recently on our week long Weekender cruise we had quite a bit of gear and food and the result was a sure footed feeling on deck. The total load, acording to the bathroom scale, including crew and supplies, anchors etc, was 780lbs. With the exception of the anchor and small outboard, everything would float in the event of the unthinkable. If you are going to put 250lbs of lead on board how much floatation are you going to need to keep her from sinking?. Several cubic feet of foam takes up a lot of room in the already small cabin and if you went on a cruise as we did the combined extra weight might reduce the freeboard to uncomfortable levels. At the moment I am concerned with our own boat as we have very heavy canvas sails that will soak up water like a sponge and weigh a ton when they are wet. I feel we should dump just to see if it's possible to right her with two of us standing on the keel. I would like to see some sort of emergency self inflating bladder that would fill the cabin at the flick of a switch. Hoping no one is inside of course...