kydocfrog

Well,while dodging high nineties heat and humidity, Charlie Girl II progresses. Here she is with her first finish coat on. Gloss white rustoleum over two base coats of primer. Hopefully another coat later today. Scheduled for a deep green sheerstripe. The blue is that marvelous new painter's tape. Great stuff. Working on rudder, motor, and mast construction planning simultaneously. On another front, finding a trailer I can afford is proving to be a rather more difficult proposition than I thought. DocA

Rain the face -- good. Rain on the wet paint -- bad. :cry: Doc(who has no good covered work area for painting)A

Can't spell motivation. How can I be motivated if I can't spell it... DocA

Bluejacket is a super package indeed. I like it because it manages to hold something of the feel of the absolute benchmark old Elco standard 26 footer (now updated and listed on Duckworks) in more contemporay construction. DocA

Actually got on the water this weekend, although obviously not with Charlie Girl II. Out on a new lake here in south central KY called Cedar Creek Lake. Really a quite nice small sailboat lake; very uncrowded, nice rolling country to be open to steady breezes. Sailed with Barnacle Bill in his Sam Rabl desiged Titmouse; a wonderful steady little boat. Also gave me a chance to play with a jb, since Charlie Girl I was a traditional New England Cat. And, I'm fired up to keep painting and fitting. Now if it will stop raining... DocA

Question for Tdrown: Nice picture; I gather that is the lengthened mast you refer to on your website. What did you end up with as a final mast length, and is you bowsprit design length or longer? Thanks DocA

Man, I'm going to go look up wallknots. Those are great! DocA

Idaho is probably one of those stores where hardware stores are still hardware stores instead of decorating centers. sigh... :? DocA

I know. We will find one of the approved plastic playground boats. No splinters, no pointy things, lots less fun and imagination. We really don't have room for a very big boat anyway. (We are in central Kentucky, which is big, but the fenced area is small... right ...) But thanks.

Quite agree. I have gone back and cut out blisters in glass and sanded and redone the fuzzy parts. But I have reached the point, after a very long year in a very small garage at this, that I'm not sure that some dribbles and bits or a striving for absolute perfection of fairing a tape edge to invisibility is worth keeping me out of the water for another year. Perfect is the enemy of good in a boat that would last longer than I will anyway if I just put her out in the back yard as a sandbox. (The day care center on my college campus is looking for a boat for the playground, but I refuse to talk to them...) I think I have dealt with the major non-appearance flaws including some rather alarming delamination of the keel when I turned her over. I think the delamination was simply a result of heat and the very long time from the previous owner's original build to my getting her bottom up. That ate a rather significant portion of my epoxy supply.

I will confess that I am approaching the smooth is relative phase of construction. I think the phrase "30 yard finish" has been used in a way analogous to either close enough for government work or "a man on a galloping horse at 50 meters would never notice." Kind of like "its a learning experience..." Anyway, I am proceeding even with a few hits, a few runs, and a few errors. AD AQUA! ZUM DER WASSER! DocA

He's just up here to harrass me to work harder on Charlie Girl. I will vouch for the fact that the grandkid is cute as a button and bodes fair to be a handfull some day. DocA

Well, I'm just here to say that while progress on Charlie Girl has been slow, it was relatively steady. At least it was relatively steady until the "Okume and Epoxy" thread started. CG is made of very nice okume, thank you, and until that thread started I had had almost no problem with epoxy (if you discount some really seriously yuky application mistakes that were simply my fault.) Once that thread started, Katie bar the door. I've had bubbles, orange peel, funny bloom, odd colors, little soft spots that wouldn't cure, blisters, and Captain Kidd knows what else -- every single problem described on that thread. The thread of doom, I say. Now, can someone start a thread with a counter spell in it.... DocA

Just finished putting two coats on most of Charlie Girl II, pretty much in the sun. I didn't get too much bubbling, but then her okume has cured for a couple of years at least. Did get some pinprick size bubblies in some places that I attribute to too vigorous appliciation of roller. Did find some serious delamination along keel similar to what has been described on some other threads. Poured in a lot of epoxy and put a single sheath of 4" fiberglass tape along the keel. We'll see. Need a year out of the keel before I bob the whole thing anyway. DocA

Well, I guess I started something with this thread... Charlie Girl II is upside down, so I can't go out and fool around with this, but I've got a question about all this I'm reading. Given that the Wkndr mast is set in a pretty deep, rigid sleve and the whole thing has this gate hinge in the rig smak down near the deck, just how much adjustment can you get with wedges or flexing it by cranking down on the forestay. I wouldn't think there is a lot of a) room to wedge one fore and aft or a lot of potential for flex without really stressing that hinge. (I know I'm way ahead of myself here since I don't even have a mast.) And, speaking of slide rules, as an oldf.rt, I still have one of those in a big blondish leather belt case too. But if you really want think on something that has gone obsolete...consider the drafting studio. As a design student I didn't use the slipstick near as much as all those wonderful compasses and dividers in their fitted cases and parallel rules and drafting machines and leroy letters and tech pens and 8 different shades of grey markers and racks of 6 different grades of pencils and scum bags. Sigh. They don't hardly use those things any more either. Witness some of the drawings that get posted on this site. Cheers. Going to try to fillet and tape seams this weekend. DocA

Do not be taken aback here by replies. Weekender is one of those designs that inspires, if nothing else, a lot of "...what if I just sorta did..." thinking. Even though I'm a new guy on the list too, I suspect that just about everyone has thought that and has their favorite reply or idea or model or whatever right to hand. Not only that, apparently, the Morningstar project and the open Weekender being two cases in point, you really can push, poke, and prod the design in all sorts of ways. DocA

Weekender is flat bottomed. The BB14 as a solid, traditional New England Hershoff design and really is an entirely different hull form. A more interesting parallel to Weekender may be Scruffie and Stornoway Weekender. Both can be seen at www.scruffie.com. They are both v-bottom, but essentially still developed flat pannel designs. Another close relative is the Atkins design Red Onion. It can be seen on the Atkins co. web site. Also a shallow v design. And Tim D's mods are really effective. I'm a big fan of both the Scruffie designs and Red Onion, and everyone is probably tired of me talking about them, but then you're a "new guy"... That's good, because it means now I'm not. DocA in KY

What's up with the photo gallery? It's gone blank and gives a "you don't have permission" message. Did I miss something? DocA

I've always been impressed by Tim's mods to the keel and the daggerboard. I'm still seriously considering similar ones. I'm also seriously worrying about how long it will be till I can get CGII wet...not to mention how much longer I can consume the garage. I might end up putting the major keel and through hull mods off until after at least one season of getting the bottom wet. mumble mumble mumble....hemmm....haw.....stall....mumble.... DocA

As an expert in working in a drastically minimum garage space, there is another gotcha here. When I turned Charlie Girl II bottom up, I lost all those flat places in the cockpit where I was lining up tools and sandpaper and boxes of hardware and all that. Real bummer trying to figure out how to replace all that counter space... :?

I haven't checked in detail, but I suspect the 93 degree figure from the plans will be right on for Charlie Girl II; the previous owner who did the work on the hull was a right good craftsman. But it is, as Barry notes, relative to the hull bottom and the deck. I'm working on sail plan, and I'm cosidering going to either a boomless gaff or a standing lug. The 80 degree corner at the tack on the sail plan looks a little odd to me, like the clew end (or boom if I do one) will be angled up in the air instead of set out pretty much perpendicular relative to the mast.

Does anyone have a figure for the actual mast rake, relative to normal wateline, for the Weekender? DocA

I drive about 50 miles each way to and from work every day, and have become addicted to audio books. Just finished listening to a book called Proving Ground, the story of the disastrous 1999 Sydney to Hobart race. Absolutely riveting, if a bit our of my league. DocA

Dagnabit, I got the pictures backwards from the story again! DocA

Another milestone. Charlie Girl II went bottoms up, intentionally, this weekend. Absent the ability to assemble a large crew, I decided to roll her over with her new cradle in place. The cradle, massively over engineered except in one detail, was set in place and strapped down. The front cross member has a small stub that fits into the mast well. The stern cross member fits into the cockpit right behind my truncated spash coamings. My strong son hauled the roll-over lines on the up-hill side and my better half and I handled the control line, and over she went. Rub rail / toe rail landed on the prepositioned mattress and, with some sweat and nervousness, over she went. It almost worked. The cradle worked perfectly, but the stern caster wheel on the pivot side blew out. I ended up putting the whole rig back up on the moving dollies I've been using. That was a bit of a disappointment. She is still awkward to push around in and out of the garage. Now, on to sanding and deciding exactly how much time and expense to invest in glassing. Cheers DocA