JeffM

I have the aft deck and I like to perch there while sailing. On the other hand, when I have both younger boys out overnight (which is at least half the time), I sleep in the cockpit and the boys get the cabin. I can almost fit my 6'2" if I go corner-to-corner across my raised floorboard. With the seats going all the way to the transom, I could rig a nice berth and have plenty of room.

Found I had just the right amount of 9mm and wanted bullet-proof. Made it pretty tall, as well. Laminated-in-place the curves of three layers of 4mm (which I admit was massive overkill at the time--but now it anchors my cabin). I can stand on my coaming, though I don't do it too often. a single layer of 4mm (which, for attachment purposes, it is) seems awfully delicate to me, but probably Sukie is more delicate!

Here's a better knot than the bowline, tied any of these ways: the double figure-of-eight. This link has replacements for traditional knots that work better in modern synthetic cordage. http://www.geocities.com/imabushie/knots.pdf I found this collection when I was trying to solve the problem of my rode threatening to part ways with my anchor--anchor bends, bowlines, buntline hitches all worked loose. I am, needless to say, no great hand with knots, but this one is doing the job beautifully.

Cool, Greg! Now I'm thinking of throwing my light cord from the box store into a drawer and ordering a spool of MTW to go with the Duckworks fuse panel I'm gonna get. I confess the rest of the discussion seems a bit esoteric for my little application.

Uh...yeah, Ray: just yankin' your chain. By the by, these lights draw maybe a quarter amp total, so what should I look for in a fuse? I don't expect to use DC for much else on the boat. and thanks!

After 3 seasons with a little detachable combination dingy light, I got me shiny new 6-LED side lights from Duckworks. Duckworks has a nice article on aligning them, but now to hook them up... Um, I figured to hook them directly to one of my deep cycle batteries, simply disconnecting them when I want them off. Am I right in thinking I need nothing else-- no fuse, etc? Also, how do I connect stranded wire (which the lights have) to solid copper wire?

I'm with Ken on the reefing. Sails wrapped around the mast, I can't point past a close reach--nearly useless to weather. After several attempts to make that system work better, I now take down the mainmast and lash it on the side deck (it adds a lot of windage, else), and move the mizzen. Perfectly safe with both masts on steppers, but I only do this at anchor, and I try to anticipate. Because of (unrelated) major problems pointing with the regular rig, I am now experimenting with replacing the main altogether with the balanced lugsail from my Piccup Pram (Michalak). That sail is rigged to jiffy-reef--a faster and safer process than either of the above.

The cb horn and rigging does interfere a bit with my sleeping space, and (because I routinely leave the starboard floorboard up and store my inflatable under it) also interferes with sitting. The cb design innovation not only solves these, but also eliminates the open slot in the trunk, which can be a fountain at speed, wetting sleeping bags, etc. Even so, the possibility of losing my lever in a capsize is a serious thing.

My new reading passion, the Aubrey/Maturin novels of Patrick O'Brien, are full of these, all from the great age of sail. How about "the cat's out of the bag"?

Okay, I could have kept my mouth shut and bought a new one. But what would be the fun of that?

Thought I'd let folks know how things came out. I tried Peter's idea first: silicone sealant. This hadn't cured at all after 24hrs (might acid have prevented this?), so I wiped it off as best I could and then wiped again with acetone. Then I scuffed up the plastic and applied a big globe of epoxy thickened with silica and slapped on a leftover piece of xynole (to resist abrasion as I slide the battery around) and kneaded the whole and dropped the battery onto a piece of builders plastic to flatten things out. I refilled the cell with fresh electrolyte the next day, worried by the two full days the plates had not been submerged in electrolyte. The charger went green immediately when I hooked it up, which worried me still more. Even so, the battery propelled my boat last weekend at 2.5kt for about 10 minutes during a calm--by no means an adequate test, but still reassuring! I'll take an hour's fussing over giving up on a $90 battery any day! Now if only my clothes didn't all look as though they'd been hit by buckshot...

Thanks, Peter and Paul. I hope I haven't let the plates dry out--we'll see when everything is cured and I can put the electrolyte back. If worse comes to worse, I'll have a rather expensive 50lb of ballast. Fortunately this was my backup battery.

Don't deep-cycle batteries make just excellent weights on boat-building projects? Like for holding down the seat extension you're putting on to make a comfortable cockpit berth? Especially when you're drilling holes for the hinges? Well, DON'T drill upward WHERE THE BATTERY IS. Now that you've all finished laughing your ___ off, answer a question I have: how do you plug a 1/8" hole in the bottom of a battery casing? (Right now, a piece of transparent packing tape appears to be keeping the rest of the cell from emptying into the bilge.) And another: how do you replace several ounces of lost electrolyte? (The battery was about fully-charged.)

Lane, if you don't mind my asking, what is it about the Little Darling design--among all the designs readily available--that's led you to try to track it down?

I want the hatch reasonably weather-tight. That seems doable--at least in the weather I'm likeliest to see. Keeping the sea out, on the other hand, is a job for hatch placement, which is why I'm a bit nervous about my off-centerline companionway. My hope is that the port edge will be above the water in a knockdown, and that a closed hatch will at least slow water sloshing in via waves until I can get back upright. This is guess-work, since I have only my one capsize test to go on, and that in sheltered water with the boat empty and configured quite differently.

Paul, thanks enormously for taking such pains! It's all crystal clear, now. As it happens, the slope of my cabin top will make it unlikely the hatch would close unexpectedly. It also happens I'm much better at slop than at close tolerances. (I knew there was a good reason for my indifferent woodworking skills!) I'll immediately go looking for the right sort of HDPE.

Thanks, Paul! Just what I was looking for. Let me see if I've got this straight: in the attached image, you would put an HDPE strip on the cabin top beneath the slot for the metal slide to ride on? Also, in what sense are these grooves in the coaming tapered? Are they deeper forward to make more slop when the hatch is open? I can't figure out why you wouldn't want them parallel (with adequate slop built in) their whole length. Aluminum for the slides screwed to the hatch edge would certainly be easy and cheap, but I picture the aluminum corroding, getting crusty, and eventually jamming. I suppose they could be replaced easily, though.

Scott, I agree with everything that's been said. With my boys, I also try to keep in mind the need to get ashore regularly. At least one prolonged stop a day is my rule. I can stay afloat for days at a time if I'm trying to cover distance, but the kids need more opportunity to stretch those legs.

Okay: camera is down, don't have paint. Spent a loong time fussing with the "draw" functions of Word, and here is the best I can do. Top is cross section through cabin top at main hatch looking forward, so you can see how hatch cover hugs outside of hatch coamings (which are ash). (I made an attempt to show one version of ledges meant to hold hatch cover down, best visible on the right side of the hatch cover.) Next image is profile of roof showing how main hatch cover is higher, and can ride over fore hatch cover. Last image is plan view of roof without hatch covers, so you can see that main cover will ride outside narrower fore cover. (Dotted lines show beams supporting roof; these are centered about a foot apart.) All this is rough and eye-ball proportioned, but near enough to get concepts across. To help get bearings, main hatch is 24" across and about 22" fore-and-aft, while fore hatch is about 17" fore-and-aft. Fore hatch cover slides back until it bumps into coaming of main hatch (I only realized the necessity of this after my last post). Main cover slides forward to overlap fore hatch cover. The question is this: what holds hatch covers down? Best I can come up with off the (hardware store) shelf is some sort of ledge sticking out from edge of hatch cover and riding under a ledge screwed to roof. This would be easy (though ugly) in aluminum, but I guess would corrode and begin sticking very quickly. The ledges could also be of wood, but I don't know how they'd last and be dimensionally stable with all the wear and tear. Jeff hatch.doc

My latest order of resin was from a new supplier: smelled different, looked different, but seemed to work fine. Reading about warming and melting crystallized resin led me to put a sample of the cloudy stuff into the microwave for a few seconds--cleared right up. I, also, hope it was okay to use the crystallized stuff. As long as the resin--crystallized or not--was homogeneous, I expect it will be fine. I'm using fast hardener, and the mix clears as it warms up.

Thanks very much for the info and recommendations on the lexan--oops: polycarbonate! My wood-and-cloth top (now defunct, since I canibalized it for some of the parts for the new roof) had a full-length slot top. Needless to say, it wasn't strong enough to put significant weight on, though I could safely lean on it for balance when coming off the foredeck or walking round the sidedecks. I closed this opening with two overlapping hatches--aft over forward so they would shed water properly--that fastened to the slot edges with tabs that rode under the edges. Because the aft upper cover needed to almost fully overlap the lower forward cover, it had only two such tabs rather than the more secure four on the lower. (I had a provision that could secure both hatches firmly when closed, though I never used it.) In the new roof, these tabs wouldn't work, since the slots are no longer than the covers. My best idea so far is to run a single rail on either side of the hatch openings the whole length of the roof. The rail would be a "T" in cross-section. The lower forward hatch cover would have a ridge that would catch under the inside of the "T", while the aft upper cover would have a ridge that would catch in the outside of the "T." The fit would necessarily entail a certain amount of slop in the cover overlap, and between hatch edges and coamings, but the old version did. too, and it kept rain and spray out pretty effectively. If I can figure out how to post drawings, I will.

I want to put simple windows in the cabin I am building, so I am considering Lexan. But it's pricey stuff, so I don't want to experiment too much. Has anybody here worked with it? How much of a thickness do I need for sturdy windows that could be as much as 10x18"? How is it cut? How fastened? How sealed? While I'm trolling for advice, here's another question: what should I make my hatch slides out of? My main and forward hatches will both slide, and will overlap, with the main sliding over the forward. My best idea so far is to have one set of double-edged rails, with the forward hatch using the insides of the rails and the main hatch the outsides, so they can be moved independently without interference. I'm thinking the durable, slippery plastic (UM-something-or-other) that I've heard of used for bottom protection and whatnot. Ideas?

Ray, thanks for the invite! It's too far to go for a lark, but if I ever determine to look seriously at production boats, its a likely way to get a closeup look at lots of boats at once. I should have known that all boat shows are not created equal, and that "big" is not the same thing as good. Paul, what are the 26 and 6 models of trailor sailers you're familiar with? There's a nice list of little cruisers on Shorty Pen's site--do you know any he doesn't have? Age is no obstacle, as long as it gets me good value. Thanks for the big picture, Jeff and Frank.

Took in the New England Boat Show in Boston yesterday afternoon. Never been to one before. This is supposed to be the biggest in... I don't know, the NE maybe? 1000+ boats on display. I figured I could usefully do two things: get ideas from what I saw, and maybe crawl around in new versions of boats that might be available on the used market. I knew sailboats would be far outnumbered by powerboats, and I knew I could expect little but sloops, but was depressed at what I found. If manufacturers follow the market--as you'd expect as a matter of simple competition and survival--and if the manufacturers were fairly represented (which, come to think of it, may not be true), then here is what I found out: Powerboaters have money to burn and like muscle: one fairly modest-sized powerboat sported 250hp 8-cylinder outboards--THREE OF THEM! There are about 20 times more powerboaters that sailors. Yikes!! Sailors come in two flavors: most are fabulously wealthy (I could have bought my house twice for the price of one of the larger yachts), whereas a slightly smaller group are very small people i.e. plastic dingy sailors. When I first walked in the hall, I headed in the direction of masts until I found the owner of Stuart Marine, who was displaying some nice boats: the Mariner, a trim cb sloop-rigged weekender built on the same hull as his Rhodes 19. I asked him, in all seriousness, if there were any simple way to find all the trailer-sailing weekenders in this huge assortment of boats, so I could make my time useful. He replied, "what do you consider a trailer-sailor?" I said, "20 feet or under, easy set-up." He said, "you're looking at them right now." I thought he was being a good salesman and joking, but after 4 hours of wandering and poking about, I discovered he was completely truthful. There was not a single other trailerable cabin sailboat in the entire show! And even the nice, reasonable boats were priced out of my range. After a few minutes, I stopped looking at prices, except to count the digits. It's easy to see why so many of us build our own boats: our boats don't exist in the (new) boat market, and if they did we wouldn't be able to afford them anyway.

Paul R, I like the idea of drilling holes--hadn't thought of that. I would use the curve of the ply as you suggest, to help avoid air pockets by beginning on cl and adding screws gradually. As far as materials go, if I were starting from scratch I might entertain the idea of a foam and ply sandwich, but I think I'll stick to the materials on hand. As far as attachment goes, I don't need to be too clever, since the top will stay on semi-permanently. If I widen the hatches at all, I will go to stbd where I'm still close to cl. Thanks for all your expertise! Paul S, You've read my mind pretty well: I don't want to make irrevocable changes only to discover I don't like the result; but also I have in the back of my mind that I might someday want to advertise her as a cs20, rather than a "cs20, BUT..." As far as cabin mockups, I already have almost two season's experience with my wood-and-cloth roof, so I have a pretty good idea what I want, within the limitations I will live with. (I had considered every possible level of mod, right down to ripping out part of the fordeck and/or lowering the starboard forward seat and ripping out the coamings and fixing everything to the carlins. --the first to get me more knee-room lying down, avoiding the trapped feeling; the second to also get me sitting headroom. In the end, I'm not nearly enough of a craftsman--your work on Dawn Patrol left me drooling--to rip into a perfectly good boat like that, and it would keep me out of the water for an entire season.) My temptation right now is to find a way to get just a couple more inches of head room, either by modifying the placement of the mainsheet block on the sprit, or by raising the foot of the mainsail itself. The issue of separating cabin and cockpit soles seemed to make sense given the design of boats with self-draining cockpits. But the only time I think it would be a safety issue is if pooped. The cockpit is already so big and open that closing off the cabin would probably be pointless. Also, I find I make frequent use of the storage under the thwarts: I keep an inflatable kayak, fenders, waders, and sometimes even the trolling motor, under the stbd berth. Some of these can be accessed by pulling them out under the thwart. So what I'm doing is putting in cleats under the thwart for the express purpose of fixing my deep-cycle batteries in place as ballast, but the cleats will also keep the little stuff (spray, rain) confined to the aft cockpit, and also serve as attachment points for closing up the spaces to keep the interior warm or bug-free.