Ken_Potts
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Posts posted by Ken_Potts
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We arrived at the boat ramp at 7am and as I was transferring gear from the truck to the dinghy I realized that I had forgotten to bring the oars. Normally the oars live in their locks on the dinghy which lives on its trailer out by the shed, but my brother-in-law recently borrowed the dinghy when they sailed out for a week at Rottnest with his wife and his ex and her something-or-other (that's a long and entertaining story but it's not the story I'm here to tell). When they returned the dinghy after their trip he sheepishly told me that they had broken an oar so he was giving me his. I tried to talk him out of it because the broken oar was kind of curly at the business end from a long hard life with not enough routine care and its mate was a bit longer so it took a conscious effort to not row in a circle and I had been intending to replace the pair anyway but I was just waiting for one to break (and we had gotten them for free, too, which is yet another story that I might write up later). In the end, he insisted and now we've got a lovely pair of oars that are not currently in the dinghy. I was momentarily dismayed when I realized that I had forgotten the oars because I don't like to rely too heavily on a motor for alternative propulsion. Small sailboats are great because you can use sails, motor, oars, paddles, etc. for lots of redundancy and I can get pretty paranoid sometimes, so I hesitated about going out without oars just long enough to remember that I always neglect to transfer the oars from the dinghy to the sailboat anyway so I always sail without oars (oops, I need to put a permanent paddle on board or something).
Having solved our first dilemma for the day, we chucked the dinghy in the water, fired up the Honda 2 and motored out to the mooring 100 meters from the ramp. We transferred the gear to Witchcraft, our 6 meter sloop (that's 20 feet to you folks in Merka
) and switched the Honda from one transom to another because for once we were going to seriously burn some fuel. I was chomping at the bit and the plan was to motor 
down the river and through the harbour so we could get the miles behind us and only set sail once we were out in the ocean. Don't get me wrong, I like to short-tack down the river but we had to cover some ground (water, really) so as soon as the motor was on the transom I told Anthea I was going to fire it up and drop the mooring line. She casually asked me if I'd like to hang the rudder first and I said something like "well, yeah, that's another way to do it..." A few minutes later we were underway with a fully functional rudder.
Off we went down the river, motor chugging along, while the gear was stowed, the cabin top, deck and cockpit washed down and the sails bent on (but not yet set). It was a pretty morning and there wasn't much traffic. The forecast for the day was a light South breeze in the morning swinging to SSW in the afternoon and picking up to 20 knots or so. This is a fairly typical pattern for summer since we've got the Indian ocean to the West of us and a vast desert to the East. As the day heats up inland, the air rises and sucks cool air in from offshore so we get a nice, reliable (and relatively cool) onshore breeze in the afternoon that is known as the "Fremantle Doctor". Fremantle is the port town here - It's where we lost the America's cup (Yes, I'm an American). The nice thing about this pattern is that the gentle morning zephyr from the south allows us to sail our course of 295 to Rottnest on a broad reach and in the afternoon when the wind shifts SSW we can sail the reciprocal course back to the harbour with the wind on or just a little forward of the beam.
I'm smart enough to refrain from predicting the speed of the current on our tidal Swan River so I wasn't sure how long it would take to get to the ocean. Although I refuse to try to predict the speed of the current I've lived here for almost five years so when I predict the direction of the current I can be almost 100% certain that my prediction will be... Wrong. We had to buck not only the light headwind, but the current that was flowing up the river, so our progress was as slow as the morning was pleasant.Anthea disappeared into the hold for a well-deserved nap while I watched as the scenery tried very hard to not slide by. Eventually someone (I can't remember who) decided to go from 1/4 to 1/3 throttle and the pace picked up a bit. There are lots of very impressive boats on the Swan River, some have 4 decks and a squadron of PWCs hidden behind the transom, some have mostly-undressed young ladies and DJ's aboard, I'm sure more than one has a helipad, but our boat has something the finest mega yacht could only dream of - An air-draft of less than 7 meters (with the mast up!) That means we don't have to go through the normal ritual of lowering our mast to get through the bridges (while wringing our hands and gnashing our teeth about boat wakes trying to destroy our suddenly very wobbly rig) - We can just cruise on through.
The photo shows our approach to the second and lowest of the three bridges. In the photo it appears that the right-most of the three spans is the lowest. That's because it is the lowest. Until last year the middle and right spans were reserved for down-river traffic. These days the middle span is closed to all traffic so we are forced to use only the right (lowest) span for our travel downriver. our boat was designed in the 1970s to clear this bridge but I don't know if it was designed to manage the lowest clearance or just the middle span so I always hold my breath when I go through the right span when the tide is high. Fortunately this morning the tide was just past low so instead of holding my breath I took pictures.
Made it again!
More to come...
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A boom tent can be any height you want with a sprit-boom rig (assuming you have halyards). If the booms are too short, alternative 3 might be to use oars as a ridgepole between the masts.
Unstepping the mizzen mast when there are any waves about will likely be an uncomfortable experience. I moved the mizzen on my CS17 to the reefing step while on the water a number of times (which was not the designer's intent) and it was always a bit iffy.
Think carefully about how long it will take to set up any given tent design. The harder it is to do, the more likely you'll end up sleeping in a bivy bag instead
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Does it have anything to do with porpoising? And was the dead man's throttle really to protect the driver or was it to protect the motor from running inverted in salt water? A dead man doesn't care much if his motor is toast but a live one surely does
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What? You just "happen" to have aluminium spars lying around just before the holidays? It's a Festivus Miracle!!
Chick - The song was the Eagles singing about Robert's Core Sound ("Ol' 55").
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There's still that Core Sound over there I dumbed into.
And this. Also dumbed into.Know anything about refurbishing old boats?
Old?!? Belafonte was built in like 1984! She's a new boat! She's only... Oh. Now I feel old.
Every time you mention your Core Sound, the song starts playing in my head:
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Every time you get one spot smooth you'll see three more bad spots until you just can't stand it anymore and then you'll start building boats from sticks and cloth again
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I epoxied mine in with the hope the boat could be lifted by it if necessary.
Wait - Now that I'm thinking about it I'm not sure whether I epoxied it in or not. Nevermind...
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I should mention that the CS17 in the side-by-side photo Don posted has a relatively small cockpit for a CS17. They can be built without the rear compartment and if you look at the front of the coaming you'll see there is space under there. The curve of the coaming takes up quite a bit of room at the front of the cockpit, too. The foredeck could be squared off and made almost 3 feet shorter to increase sitting room at the front of the cockpit. With the extra space fore and aft the cockpit would be huge.
That boat was built for solo daysailing and camping for two. It has in the past carried a shocking amount of food and gear stowed in the lazarette, under the foredeck, under the raised floorboards and under the tiller. One labor day weekend we were camped at Cape Lookout and a sailing club stopped at the beach for a pot-luck. All the sailors from the big boats brought salads and cold cuts and other portable foods and my friend and I provided the hot food because we had the stove and cooler and table and chairs and lantern and...
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You'll only sand until you can't stand it any more and then you'll give up and paint. The sooner you surrender, the sooner you sail.
Don't listen to my advice, though - I build ugly boats knowing that I won't be able to see the paint while I'm sailing.And yes, in my opinion yellow is the only proper color for a yacht. Unless it's yellow with light blue accents.
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I knew it had to be something low-tech like that. Can't fool me.
I'm off to bed now so I can sail to distant shores tomorrow (weather permitting).
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Wow! How'd you get the aerial photo? You keep telling us you're technologically challenged and then you go out on aerial reconnaissance missions!
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I'll echo Dave's suggestion to put a drain on any trailer boat.
I keep our dinghy on a trailer and there was one time (yes, only one) when I forgot to open the drain plug in the transom after using the boat. There was, of course, a downpour that day here in the arid southwest and by the time I remembered the plug, the boat and trailer had tipped back like they were trying to get up on plane. Fortunately all I had to do was take out the plug to let the bow back down to the ground.
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Hi AJ,
Welcome to the forum! You're project is looking really good. I don't have any information about the Vardo design but I wanted to let you know that you will probably get more responses if you post in the Kudzu Craft forum with this particular question since people who are interested in this design are more likely to pay attention to the Kudzu Craft forum than the main forum.
I love a good skin-on-frame boat.
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Cool. Will there be a keel/centerboard/daggerboard?
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But don't be afraid to post pictures here for those of us who don't do facebook
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My project boat is a 3000kg 26 footer that was originally equipped with a 6hp inboard when it was built sometime around 1980 and it was still in the boat when I got it last year so it was probably sufficient before the boat sank (I'm replacing it with a motor of equal or less power). The current can run a few knots at places on the local river and there are routine 20+ knot breezes here in the summertime. I think your 5hp motor will be about perfect for a P26. It'll probably push you to somewhere close enough to hull speed and I agree with Sonke that you only need to be able to buck the current. If you're local current is much higher than hull speed I think you should be looking at a 30hp motor instead of a 10 (or a planing hull).
If the wind is blowing you can either sail or motor-sail. If the wind is not blowing you have only the current to bother with.If you're in a hurry put up more sail
And if the problem is too much wind, a storm sail might get you through the gales of November better than a 10hp motor... If you've already got a 5hp motor I say keep it and give it a try.-
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Robert, if the EXIF comment and eye roll don't scare them away just look at the monitor with a concerned look on your face and say "Wait! It's not the EXIF after all, you've just got your monitor sideways!"
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Robert you're having too much fun and making the rest of us look bad. Please continue.
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That boat is really pretty but two things that keep bouncing around my head are "good sitting headroom" and "32 foot boat". My 20 footer has good sitting headroom and the 26 that I'm working on has good standing headroom. The 20 is prettier than the 26 but the 26 is faster and will be more comfortable at anchor on a rainy day. The catch is that I'm not sailing out to Cape Lookout any more - I'm sailing deeper waters so it's okay that my boat needs 3.5 feet of water to float. If I had to contend with shallow waters again I'd happily go for good sitting headroom in order to keep the draft down (EC22...
)If you're sailing deep water and you want to be able to get out of the weather comfortably a drop-dead-gorgeous sharpie-yacht may not be the best boat. On the other hand, if you're daysailing and don't need shelter down below I think you might be able to find a smaller design that is actually more fun to sail than the 32' Brewer boat.
Those are just my preferences, of course - Every boat is a bag of compromises and the trick is to get the right combination for you.
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I think what Paul was trying to say (and I trust he will correct me because I am probably wrong) is that a sharpie is a descendant of sailboats that were used for fishing in inshore waters a couple of hundred years ago and a dory is a descendant of a boat that was used for offshore fishing just as long ago and as the two designs have evolved as pleasure craft they have drifted together so far that the new designs resemble each other more than they resemble their respective heritages.
Or in short - the names dory and sharpie are just two words that today's designers use to evoke a feeling of connection to the past.
Sorry, Greg - I am not an expert, but from what I understand, a sharpie has a high length-to-beam ratio and (usually) a flat bottom. They were fast boats with big rigs that were used for fishing inshore waters (and the boats were big, too). I think a dory was more of a small boat that had a lot of rocker and flaring topsides for riding the waves and for stackability. I have read that they were carried stacked one inside another to the fishing grounds by a larger and faster mother ship so they didn't need to be as fast as sharpies because they weren't racing to market, they were just doing the fishing.
I'm looking forward to being corrected so I can learn something
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Count me in!
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It sounds like you've put a lot of thought into it and you'll end up with a very fun boat - And my hat's off to anyone who makes their own sails (I've done it too, but not very well).
As always, I'm looking forward to the pictures.
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I built my CS17 before kits were available and I was happy to lay everything out and cut and scarf the parts myself - I really liked that part of the project. But if I did it again now that kits are available I'd definitely get the kit. From what I've seen on this forum the kits really go together well.
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Looking good!
You mention using a little graphite to make the bottom grey. If you have to touch the paint up sometime it might be hard to match.
A quick trip to Rottnest Island
in Boating & Crusing Stories
Posted
"Michael" is so formal. Most people call me Ken