Gordy Hill

Charlie, Did I miss your in-depth report with numerous pictures on how the birders performed when they were finished? Just looking through old posts and thinking that if I ever get my new garage there would be just enough room.....

Peter, Your boat is beautiful! It looks like your mizzen is almost as tall as your main. I cut mine down quite a bit hoping to lower the center of effort a bit. It seemed to help. Then I lowered the main and found I couldn't really see where I was going until I had a window sewn into the main. Since you take your family I imagine you'd rather not sweep one into the water, but you might have room to tweek the mizzen a bit. Did I mention your boat is beautiful? Gordy

Peter, Your boat is beautiful! It looks like your mizzen is almost as tall as your main. I cut mine down quite a bit hoping to lower the center of effort a bit. It seemed to help. Then I lowered the main and found I couldn't really see where I was going until I had a window sewn into the main. Since you take your family I imagine you'd rather not sweep one into the water, but you might have room to tweek the mizzen a bit. Did I mention your boat is beautiful? Gordy

Garry, Friday is the best day to hang out and meet everyone and check out the boats. Saturday morning is great, but by the time it's light enough to see, the start happens and they're gone. I slept in my truck last year. This year I'll have my camper and dog. I'll also have my power boat, but I think I'll be committed to carrying some photo types for Watertribe. Depending on the weather, 4 is about max for my 16' CC, 3 if it's rough. If there's room you're welcome to come along.

I've never had much trouble with my masts on my CS 17. I've wrapped the main around the mast, then moved the mizzen from it's step to the mid, or reefing step with the sail and sprit rigged. It ends up looking somewhat like a rodeo event and there's certainly the possibility of an incredibly embarrassing situation, but the few times I did it there were no problems. I've done it on the water with conditions that would suggest reefing, but in rather protected water. I've dropped both masts in the Great Race to pass under the bridge, but had my girlfriend there to steer. I like the sleeve luff and keeping things simple, at least on the CS 17. I think tabernacles would be another complication.

The last two years a Sea Pearl 21 was sailed single handed and did quite well. A CS 17 would be off the beach 1/2 hour before the Sea Pearl. They're heavy. Many of the kayaks are singles. You'll still finish in a respectable time if you stop to sleep when you need to and even take time for a shower at the checkpoints.

If I still had my CS17 I'd be in this event. The Chief goes to great trouble to not refer to this "Challange" as a race. (It IS a race.) Doug is right, however, this is a race for just a few. It's kinda like hiking the Applachian Trail. Just doing it is it's own reward. I'd probably be sailing alone. However, with the modifications I have in mind, I could, of course, be well ahead of Graham when I decide to anchor and catch some sleep.......

Gee Charlie! It looks like your bow wave flows smoothly into your stern wave. Does that indicate you're at hull speed? (and NO wake...AMAZING!) Ok, so it only looks that way... My calculatron says hull speed would be around 3.42 knots. No wonder he's holding on!

Joe, I rowed my CS 17 from forward of the mizzen and it rowed remarkably well. I could maintain 2.5 to 3 knots at an easy rate. Wether or not I could do it for hours is a different story.

I agree! Why believe thousands of scientists when the oil industry can produce dozens of scientists who have questions about the data? Just keep watching Fox Fair and/or Balanced News. How can anyone believe Al Gore when we have the sacred opinions of Rush? It's nice to know this warming has nothing to do with industry and my stocks are safe. It would be foolish to use profits to clean up emissions. Why, just a few decades ago they tried to convince the American public that smoking was bad for us!

I've sailed in Biscayne Bay. Those aren't rocks, they're old Chevys.

Welcome aboard Dave! Sounds like the Spindrift will be just the ticket.

Scotty,Scotty, Scotty....They may not have LOOKED like they were'nt racing. Trust me, if they saw you closing, they were racing, and probably very uncomfortable trying to look relaxed and unconcerned while tweeking their sails.

Copy away Ray!

Sleeve luff! On the 17 the sleeve is very uncomplicated and gives an absolutely beautiful, clean airfoil. It seems to make a bit of a difference going to windward. I'm inclined to think that the halyard laying on the most important part of the airfoil has to interfere with the air flow. If you're just going day sailing and not, say, facing 300 miles to Key Largo, you can always get home just spilling some wind in the gusts. I sailed the Great Race twice in rather heavy conditions each time. I never reefed and never felt I was really overdoing it. I think Jeff has come up with the same conclusions I arrived at about reefing. I'd go with his approach. I don't think it'd be any more involved than reefing points. I've sailed with the main furled around the mast and the mizzen in the reefing step and was quite happy with the way she sailed. I didn't really experience much degredation in pointing. I had a different setup for the main sheet and was able to set it up further aft and could sheet it in quite close. It terminated at one point at the base of the mizzen. Maybe that made a difference. With the sleve luff the sail is wrapped around the mast and neatly out of the way. This makes for a very neat package at anchor. It's also easy then to unstep the masts, insert the crutches in the mast steps and stow the masts for travel. I originally broke down the masts, but found very few nice clean places where I could rig and unrig withoug getting the sails dirty. I had a long zippered sock-like sail bag that held both sails and masts for storage and traveling. With a CS 20 I'd probably consider sail tracks. It's just enough bigger to make things awkward, but with a CS17 I'd only consider sleve luffs.

Sure Charlie, any more questions just feel free. That's what we're here for.

Thanks Greg! I'm not sure what antenna covers are but maybe that's what I had. It's sure worth looking into.

Thanks Craig, I did try that and got nowhere.

Ok, 147 people have read my post and nobody, NOBODY! has come up with an idea on how to find these great mast sections! Y'all aren't trying! They're out there somewhere. I was sure one of you guys would have come up with something by now. If this group can't find a way to scrounge stuff, I'll lose all faith....

When I was building my CS17 I found tapered fiberglass sections at a surplus outlet here in Orlando. The smallest end, going from about 1 3/8 inches to about 2 1/2 inches were cut off by a hacksaw to about 9 feet. I used them for the top sections of my masts and was very pleased with them. They weighed much less than an aluminum section. I look for them every time I'm in the place and haven't seen any. I've been told they were originally antennas. Before the hacksaw they were about 20 - 24 feet long. I understand they're from cell towers and are replaced at certain intervals and can be had for free or nearly free.... if you can find the damn things! I've tried Google and apparently haven't guessed the appropriate code word. If you had the whole antenna you could take a section a bit lower if you wanted a slightly stiffer mast, or you could add a bit of carbon fiber for the same thing. I used heavier-walled aluminum for the lower sections of my masts and they worked really well. The whole main with the sail rolled on it could easily be stepped from the ground beside the trailer. The fiberglass section of the mast was very light and I never had any reason to doubt it's strength. I mention this because the chances are that one of you are much better at finding such things.

Jeff, you're absolutely right. However, I find that when I'm just enjoying a leasurely sail and I notice another sailboat behind me I kinda check my sails. If the other boat seems to be getting closer I'll take a really close look at the tell tails and tweek the sheets a bit. If the other boat looks like she's actually going to pass, I find myself siting a bit farther forward, obcessed with the tell tails, loosing track of my cold soda, and totally forgetting where I was headed....while trying to look casual and unconcerned. At this point I'm not a very good conversationist and get absolutely cranky when my girlfriend says something like "Doesn't the rear of that boat look nice?" Ok, so I was a few miles off Cedar Key and the @##XX!! upper tell tail wouldn't fly unless the lower one was messed up. A little lift on the front of the sprit brought both tell tails flying but I looked a bit stupid standing there holding the front of the mizzen sprit and trying to look casual ...and my girlfriend absolutely refused to do the same with the main. When I sat back down somehow the weight shift was all that was needed to get us up on a plane! The tell tails could do whatever they wanted... we were flying! We went past that skinny little sharpee like she'd thrown out an anchor! Unfortunately, we were well out in the Gulf heading more or less in the direction of New Orleans and no one else around to see how cool I was. What was my point?........

OK Guys, I don't think I made myself clear. If you have your snotter tight and you're all ready to sail you'll notice the sprit hangs a few inches below where the snotter attaches to the mast. If you reach up and lift the front of the sprit you'lll notice you can lift it 5 or 6 inches, changing the angle of the sprite. When you're sailing and you want to make a small adjustment to the sprit angle you can heave to, run forward, loosen the snotter and adjust the location of the snotter attachment, tighten the snotter, and run back to the helm. OR....you can rig a little line that will move the front of your sprit up or down a few inches. Just a thought...

Charlie, I found that even with the snotter rather tight the sprit hung a few inches from the snotter attachment point. I tried a 1/4 " line from the sprit to a small block above the snotter attachment on the mast. With just that little line I could adjust the front of the sprit about 5" up or down and it was very easy to fine tune the sail. My 'snotter attachment point' was a 'D' ring lashed to the mast and I had to unload the snotter to move it up or down.

Jeff, I wasn't too impressed with the 1/4 round spray rail I used. It helped, but if I were to do it again I'd want something a bit larger and designed to send the spray down more than outward. I'd consider 3/8 inch plywood cut to follow the line of the chine and the top inside 3/4 inch or so planed to a point with that much again standing proud below the chine. I think the spray rails should start much farther forward, say where the chine break first starts.

Yup! I put spray rails on my CS17. After trying to make them look a little nice they ended up looking a lot like 1/4 round molding. They were about 3/4 by 1/2 inch and not a 90 degree angle. This gave a kind of sharper angle with the bottom in order to catch some of the water rather than just divert it. I think they were much too gentle an approach. It seemed that at slower speeds where I expected to start getting some spray I was dry. As I went faster I started to get wet and, although I feel I wasn't getting as much spray as usual for that speed , there's no way to be sure and certainly I wanted to think they were working. My 16 foot welded aluminum center console had exactly the same problem. On a lake it was wonderful, but off shore it could be terribly wet. I wanted to have spray rails welded on and then saw exactly what I was thinking of on a flying boat in a museum! I got some 3/16 x 1 1/4 aluminum bar,and after some time trying to work a machine with two wheels that bend the bar along the width, we came up with two pieces about 4' long that matched the forward part of the chine while slanting down to about 30 degrees off vertical. We then used some 3/16 x 5/8 and kept tacking it while we bent it into shape. It ends about 18 inches short of the transom because that's how long our bar was. Not only is there a marked decrease in spray, but the boat rides noticeably better. My theory, totally uncomplicated with actual data, is that a boat displaces water in a direction 90 degrees fron the section of hull displacing it. If you picture a horizontal flat it would send the water off horizontally, however, if you had a vertical flat, or dam, it would catch the water and actually give some lift to the hull. This is free lift. The water moving up doesn't remember it was displaced by your hull. It's just moving up and runs into your spray rail. Also, the water moving toward the sides of your hull farther back would be caught by the shorter spray rail and may actually let you plane at a slightly slower speed. Then again, maybe it wouldn't....who knows. I do know that if I still had my CS 17 it would have spray rails that would look a lot like the ones on my aluminum boat..... which I would have pictures of if I could learn to work my new camera.