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Jknight611

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Everything posted by Jknight611

  1. Awesome, a fleet of MK3s. Chick, you are invited too, as you are a MK3 alumnus.
  2. Hi Chick, that was part of the original plan, let’s see if Florence has made any big changes. I hope Portsmouth and Ocrocoke’s damage is minimal. On the 16 Messabout we anchored several days in the various bays and creeks on the Neuse River, Carol caught some beautiful speckled trout. I am sure a good time will be had by all!
  3. We might. We “planned” to go to Orakoke (probably not spelled right) after the Messabout, gona play it by ear cause of the storm.
  4. Congratulations Amos! Beautiful boat! Hope to see you and your boat at the Messabout! We planned to arrive early an sail the area but Florence beat us! We’ll will just play it as it goes
  5. Back to anchoring a CS, it takes so little distance between the top of the water and the bottom of the bay, we just anchor anyplace out of the way or if the bugs aren’t bad put it on the beach. Very easy boat to handle. My wife can pack enough groceries on our boat for a week under the berths and the big compartment aft of bulkhead 1 and 2 for the sleeping bags and clothes. At the Messabout we will R&D (research and duplicate) the ice chest option!
  6. Hi, my wife and I have spent about 45-60 days on out CS20.3 since completion. It is a small boat, but that is it’s beauty. We have a larger boat with dingy etc, but our CS we jibe around and step on the beach, the worst we have done is wade in a foot of water. Dingy definitely not needed. We have a electrical ballast pump, we generally fill the ballast tank and never give it a thought till we reload on the trailer. We have had 6 people on the boat with some regularity, never noticed a problem when day sailing ( look on the B&B site, we had 5-6 aboard for that picture) We kinda rely on a fresh trout for dinner, 2 people for 3 weeks wasn’t a problem, never had more for overnights. On the gulf coast we are never more than a day sail to a spectacular restaurant, which is part of the fun!
  7. Hi guys, we “plan” to be there with Southern Express! We missed last year because of some minor work that went into overtime, but have every intention of getting there a few days early to enjoy the local sailing area. Hope to see everyone there!
  8. Yea, put some ballast water in, we have slept in a few rolly anchorages in the Mississippi Sound, never noticed the board making any noise. A full ballast tank and the boat is pretty darn stiff!
  9. Hi Steve, and the rest! We have been on the road a lot lately so a little late to this party but.... we built the centerboard cheeks as per plan then eliminated the extra slop with several coats of Graham’s epoxy with West System barrier coat additive to shim the board to very little slop. I pulled the board out several months ago just for a look-see and all was well in the center board area. But laying under the boat on the trailer and bench pressing the board up while Carol tried to reinstall the pin..... grrrrrrr Jay
  10. Super awesome! Fun to watch the birth of your boat!
  11. Super awesome! Fun to watch the birth of your boat!
  12. Hi Steve, I built my trailer out of light 4 inch C channel, I wanted the axle far enough forward to balance the tongue weight and I wanted the trailer to protect the boat from Buffy in her SUV so my trailer frame is all the way to the transom. I used a 4 inch drop torsion axle rated at 1500 lbs to give the boat a softer ride. It is a 8 ft axle, so the boat sits between the wheels and the fenders become boarding steps when on the trailer. I used 14 inch rims because we seem to drag the boat around a lot, I calculated we have pulled Southern Express over 22,000 miles since we started sailing her. (Notice I didn’t say finished) . My plan was to build the trailer and tweak it till perfection when have the frame hot dipped galvanized. We have/had several places along the gulf coast that had huge vats of hot zinc because of the oil industry. Some success some failures. The environment concerns have made galvanizing business has just about become to expensive to have my trailer blasted and coated. I currently have it primed with primer and paint fugitive of the offshore industry and top coated with bed liner. Call that 38% effective. The full perimeter frame has done a great job of protection, at the expense of easy loading. 43% effective. 14 wheels reduce bearing speed and with the soft riding drop torsion axle mid trailer, 78% success. I have gotten almost 4 years and anticipate 2-3 more before I replace the entire trailer. Pulls great! 92% success. There is a firm that builds or assembles aluminum frames in Waveland Ms that I plan to have an aluminum trailer assembled “next” year. Looks like a mondo erector set! Aluminum with stainless hardware with dissimilar metal protection might be the most cost effective over a longer period when used in saltwater.
  13. You will really like the dodger. Our other boat has a dodger and I wouldn’t want a cruising boat without one. I have considered it, we have taken green water over the bow at times in our cruising grounds and a dodger would be nice then. I breakwater is a nice addition. But I am a tall guy, with “big bones”, a full dodgerwould restrict my access to the cabin. Sailing season son on the south coast, ya’ll come on down!
  14. We trail our boat quite a bit, and one of the biggest problems was the rigging chafing the mast and attached sprits. Been rainy the last few days so I can’t go outside to play so I used some scrap Sunbrella, mesh and a 22 ft long #10 zipper. Once the masts are lowered into the cover is tossed over both masts and both sprits, all the reefing lines, reefing hooks and zipped up and a twist lock around the main tabernacle. It has a mesh sewn into the underside to prevent condensation. Helps rig quickly and on a test run nothing chafed or otherwise misbehaved!
  15. Hi Don, our CS20.3 sails all over the place when we rig the “Breeze Booster” in the forward hatch. Snatches and jerks all around. Moving it to the main hatch, life is good.......hotter but gooder! Interested to see how a boom tent effects Local Honey.
  16. Looks good, beautiful design. We live right up the road from you. We sail our CS20.3 from Kessler and go to Cat Island a lot. Lets hook up sometime soon.
  17. Good idea! I had a spacer in the centerboard trunk. Started off as a good idea when we lifted the module into the hull, but some time in the build, some stray epoxy bonded the spacer into the trunk. That was a heck of a mess!
  18. Hi All, I tried a 2 pin plug for my mast, pretty corrosive area with the salty anchor rhode and stuff, in 2 months it was useless. Chic has the right idea, I removed the plug, next time I pull the boat (mast up) into the carport I’ll worry about the wires then.....
  19. On the solar panel issue we bought 2 flexible solar panels and used rivnuts and #8 screws to attach them to the deck. They have a few control lines shading them but doesn’t seem to affect the output much. Light, relatively inexpensive and work good. Instructions said not to walk excessively on them.......Still work fine must not be “excessive “!
  20. Hi Steve, sorry for the delayed response on sail covers. I R&D (researched and duplicated) Joe an Sally’s sail covers their EC 22. I continued to monkey with it and now I have a #10 zipper at the mast and along the bottom. When using it as a sail covers I use the tradition twist locks and snaps including the sprit. When I trailer the boat I just zip the zipper along the bottom of the sail ( excluding the sprit) and remove the sail from the mast with the battens installed. And lay the now neatly bundled almost tube bag in the cabin. We can bend the sail on the mast without removing the cover by unzipping the mast and sliding the hanks on, then unzip an remove the sail covers. Good protection for the sails, quick an easy. Part of my program to expedite the rigging process. Now about 10 minutes from arrival on trailer to departure under sail.
  21. Our boat is “pretty active “ at anchor in anything but a swimming pool, anything that was sticking out on our boat has been remodeled by my forehead. I sewed up 2 fish type nets that attach outboard sides between bulkhead 1&2 to store our clothes and such. She really sails brilliantly but at anchor you can have your drinks “shaken not stirred “.
  22. Looks great! You will love the tabernacle! We can rig in 8 minutes tops and be underway with our tabernacle.
  23. We have a friend that swears he had his anchor light on, and he was in a charted anchorage hit by a large pushboat pushing 4 barges in the middle of the night. They survived but his Chris Craft Apache didn’t. He was somewhat backlit and his anchor light blended into the background light field. On our CS20.3 we have a anchor light and a tiny blue LED light in the cockpit. The little light gives the boat some “definition “ from background clutter. Both because it is blue and lights up the cockpit a little. Odd color makes it notable too! We have “sneaky” barges here! Painted black, barely lit and the pushboat is 600 feet back you just hear a shushing sound from the barge bow wake and they are on you!
  24. Steve, here is the Nasa light I have on my boat. It only has 2 wires (reverses polarity to select anchor or nav) so the installation and deck plug is simple. Very economical on power consumption with a nice bright light. You can see the glow of the lights on deck! We have trailered the boat 4-5000 miles in 3 years, if that doesn’t break it, it is pretty robust. Jay
  25. Hi all, Carol myself and both our pups were really disappointed that we didn’t make the Messabout! But the good news, the Dr got his new Audi! We have been very happy with the NASA Supernova Combi masthead (not that NASA! ) light. 2 # 18 gauge wires ( switched ground, not grounded to the mast) eliminate additional weight high and the unit is the anchor and nav in one unit. It has a 3 position switch to select off, nav or anchor. We bought ours from Amazon. It was about $250 but the price is supported by the convenience of installation and use. We have 2 flexible solar panels which aren’t that effective and a AGM series 24 battery, with lots of lights and we have never had any problems showing our anchor light after 12-14 hours of use.
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