Bikermouse

When I was young, I wanted to be a pilot, like the guy in "Tales of the Gold Monkey". I was going to get a Grumman Goose and live a freelance flyer's life in the south Pacific. Then I was diagnosed with diabetes and found out that it would be impossible to get a pilot's license. When I was 18, I was homeless. I worked and lived at the Fun Zone on the Balboa Peninsula, and also worked part-time cleaning the rental yachts at (I think) Newport Boat Rentals. Spending that much time up close with the complex simplicity of sailboats, I started to fall in love with the machinery involved, but never got to do more than occasional line handling. The owner told me that if I stayed working for him till the next summer, he'd let me crew and I could eventually earn my Captain's license. I was homeless, young, and relatively dumb though, so I was unable to stay there that long. Still, I was always attracted to the idea of sailing. I think a lot of it was a personal confidence that I could do something more difficult than most could. As someone once told me, "When you see a man sailing, you know that he knows his boat. He knows the wind and the water. He knows what they want to do, and he knows what he wants to do, and he knows how to find the best compromise between them to get where he wants to go. When you see someone driving a motorboat, on the other hand, you know he's at least sober enough to find the start button." Motor boating didn't seem like much of a challenge (all evidence of Duffy renters notwithstanding), in much the same way that I feel a lot more pride in maneuvering a motorcycle in difficult conditions than I do in cranking up the AC and the radio in a car. Finally, just a couple of years ago, I visited the Mariner's Museum during a vacation to Virginia, and the small craft exhibit reminded me of those long-abandoned dreams of learning to prove that I could sail. I took some classes at the OCC School of Sailing and Seamanship, and I've been hooked since. My wife got hooked too, and that has strengthened my marriage as an extra bonus! Now I really enjoy the feeling that G-d has granted me these skills, and He and I have to work together to make that sailboat go where I want it to, so that's an interesting theological exercise as well. I wonder where all of this will end up?

I was just wondering if anyone here has been following Zac Suynderland's trip? He left Marina Del Rey June 2008 on his bid to become the youngest solo circumnavigator by sail. He's scheduled to arrive back at MDR today, quite a festivity planned for his arrival. I'll be down there soon. Frank or anyone else local going? You can read all about him at http://www.zacsunderland.com And, in a small bit of shameless self-promoting, if you buy his DVD, I'll probably have a song on it. ;D

I only have one plane. It's about 6" long. Good thing it's a small boat. Of course, I hear it's not the size of the plane that matters, but how skillfully you use it. Speaking of that, could one of you super carpenters put up a thread on the basic use, care, and feeding of the hand plane. I know you slide it along the wood and it shaves bits off, but I'm sure that I'm working harder than I need to.

Well, it's now officially a vaguely boat-shaped pile of wood! As usual, the first time I try a new technique, it's ugly. Every time it gets better, though. This boat won't win any prizes, but it'll float and sail. Cool. Here's pix of the keel and stringers epoxied and screwed into place And after a bit of work with the jigsaw, hand planer, and sander. I've never really used a hand plane before, so I was surprised at how easily it worked. And finally a close up of the transom/chine log joint after planing and sanding. Out of the 8 similar joints, this is the least ugly one. I'm not going to show the ugliest one. ;-) Now on to the dreaded daggerboard case!

It's only obliquely about sailing, but right now I'm really enjoying "Jefferson's War: America's Fist War on Terror 1801-1805" by Joseph Wheelan. It contains a lot of early Naval History. For example, it tells the story of the first two U.S. Navy warships to be surrenderred, and the tale of the man who was in command of both! There's also a lot of technical history describing tactics of naval warfare in the early 19th century. All in all very engaging, but written in a style that can't be described as dry or dull!

Finally made some progress. Here are the transverse frames (bow, transom, and 3 temporary frames) mounted to the strongback.

Mazel Tov! Now stop grinning before your wife catches you being happy and you get in trouble.

It's only sacrilege if you're talking about pale, watery American and Mexican beers. Any beer through which you can read a newspaper isn't worthy of the appellation. And your fillets look better than any of my efforts so far.

I've seen 6-8" flames shooting up from a shorted starter circuit on a motorcycle. It was a YTX4-BS, which is a 4 AH battery. You sure yours is too small to start a fire?

This is probably a dumb question, but just how long is a sanding longboard? I was looking at sandpaper at the store last night, and the longest I could find was a 31" belt for a belt sander. Cut it at the seam and tack to a piece of 1x ?

I love the shop-vac mainmast. I think you should install it in a mizzen position, though. That way, if you're out and the the wind dies, you can just switch it on (in exhaust mode) and fill the main. Nice easy downwind run all the way home and no rowing! Of course, you might need a moderately long extension cord...

I use the Sticker Off often at work. I don't know how much it costs at West Marine, but check out your local motorcycle shop. If they sell dirtbikes, then they should have lots of stickers & decals, and the chemicals as well.

Can you put the sheet block on a traveler? That works on a lot of small boats, but I'm not sure about your exact design.

I got the Transom framing cut out of a piece of mahogany that my friend, a real carpenter, was going to throw away. I don't have any epoxy yet, so it's only dry-fitted.

Sorry about the pic links. Myspace is not as friendly as I would hope, due to too many problems with hackers, but it's my main public site, since I'm a musician. Here's one son measuring the bow angle on the strongback

After a couple of years of saying that I was going to do it, my sons and I finally started building our Glen-L Sabotina. After two weekends, we still haven't built anything that will actually be part of the boat, but we have the strongback and temporary frames made! I'm a mechanic, and they're both Eagle Scouts, so we're all learning how to work wood together. Still, if it was easy, then it wouldn't be worth doing, right? http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction-viewImage&friendID=149089520&albumID=2014021&imageID=31124795 http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction-viewImage&friendID=149089520&albumID=2014021&imageID=31124798 http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction-viewImage&friendID=149089520&albumID=2014021&imageID=31124804 http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction-viewImage&friendID=149089520&albumID=2014021&imageID=31124806 http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction-viewImage&friendID=149089520&albumID=2014021&imageID=31124808 http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction-viewImage&friendID=149089520&albumID=2014021&imageID=31124812 http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction-viewImage&friendID=149089520&albumID=2014021&imageID=31124814 http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction-viewImage&friendID=149089520&albumID=2014021&imageID=31124817 http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction-viewImage&friendID=149089520&albumID=2014021&imageID=31124823 http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction-viewImage&friendID=149089520&albumID=2014021&imageID=31124827

Doesn't matter which brand you get, if the carb has had ANY fuel in it for more than a couple of weeks, then you'll need to overhaul it. The new requirements that the EPA has on gasoline over the last decade or so mean that fuel has a shelf life of 1-3 weeks in a small, vented carburetor. It's not the engine's fault. Blame the hippies in our government. The good news is that a carb on an outboard is just about the simplest animal on any engine. Just clean the crud out of the float bowl, take all the jets out and clean them thoroughly (including the idle jet that's on the top on a lot of them, especially Hondas), and squirt some carb cleaner and then compressed air throughout the passages. Be careful when usin a wire to clean out a badly plugged jet as you may damage and enlarge it, causing rich running. If the idle mixture screw has a metal limiter cap on it that keeps you from removing it, you can usually heat the cap with a soldering gun and pull it off. Make sure that you screw it in until it seats lightly (many will be damaged if you screw them in too tight) and count how many turns it was out. then, when you re-install it, just make sure that it's out the same number of turns. Hope this info is useful to somebody, although I'm sure a lot of you already knew it. Just wanted to point out that a plugged carb is no reason to not buy a used outboard. Of course, if you are scared of rebuilding it, a new carb usually costs less than $100 (at least on the Hondas that I work on at work) and often requires no adjustment when you slap it on ad go.

I was singing in a coffeeshop the other day, and since I've been having such a blast sailing recently, I launched into that old song about the drunken sailor. Now, yes, I know that alchohol abuse and rsponsible boating don't go together, but it is a great old song, and people can sing along with it, so I was wondering if some of you, uh, more mature sailors remembered some more lyrics, or if different parts of the country and world usually had different verses. So far, we all know the chorus, "What do you do with a drunken sailor, ear-lye in the morning" and the "Wey hey, up she rises ear-lye in the morning" bits, but I can only remember four verses of what one would actually DO with the aforementioned drunken sailor. "Put him in a dinghy 'till he's sober" "Put him in the bilge and make him drink it" "Put him in a bunk with the Captain's daughter" and, my personal favourite: "Find another bottle and join him drinking" So chime in and share your favourite verses to this classic song. Then sing it, inebriatedly if necessary, but responsibly and loudly!

For Chanukkah, my wife got me a copy of Sir Francis Chichester's book, "Gipsy Moth Circles the World". She also bought me a $45 bottle of scotch, so I can enjoy all y'all's stories. My Mom paid for our next sailing class, so the money we've been saving for that can go to our Sailing Center membership, so we can rent a boat until I build one. If my teenage daughter could have been bothered to come up with a single handmade card, then the holiday would have been perfect. As it was, the family time and Bible teachings and traditions made it all really good!

C'mon, Charlie. Don't hold back. Tell us how you REALLY feel!

I'm thinking a series of hermetically sealed cubicles, with individual controls to regulate temperature, humidity, air pressure, and oxygen content for the room. Kind of like the Vatican uses to store its archived documents. That way each drill motor is stored in the environment where it will degrade the least. You do have a similar budget to the Vatican's, don't you?

This may sound like a dumb question, but it'd be dumber if left unasked. I was planning on building a little dinghy for my first built boat, basically a Sabot, and found one locally that I picked up at a real good price. I bought it because the mast and sail will fit the Sabotina (Glen-L design) and I figured that those pieces alone will save me hundreds of dollars. You can see pix of the boat (along with a fairly inaccurate description) at http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260175872788 Since I'm building a sailboat, and this one, with its leeboard instead of a dagger board, doesn't seem like what I want, I was thinking about getting some restoration practice in and fitting it out as a rowboat for my Mom, who's been wanting one. So, my question is, assuming that the center thwart is a fairly good balance point to sit while rowing (I'll have to float it and check that out), how far aft of the board should I put the oarlocks for comfortable rowing? Is there an accepted formula or distance, or is it just whatever feels comfortable? Having never had a rowboat, I'm not even sure what comfortable would be, and it'll get most of its use on the east coast, too far away for me to come out and make adjustments. Advice is always appreciated, even when it isn't taken,

My only thought would be that any flex or allowance for movement designed into the joints is designed to resist pressure from the outside in. By putting water on the inside, you may weaken the structure. Compare it to tryin to kick in a door from the frame side as oppesed to the outside. One way, the dor opens. The other way, the doorframe is splintered. Of course, I'm not a naval architect, so I may have no idea of what I'm talking about.

Ok, this is a hair off topic but... I finally, after about a decade and a half of talking about it, took my first sailing class today! Oh my giddy aunt! How have I not done this before?! My wife, due to a last-minute gift from her mother-in-law, was able to join me, and already she's pestering me to get a boat built so we can do this more often! RSDaKat, our instructor was Debbie Dunne. Don't know which of the Debs that is, but she seemed nice to me. I didn't send your regards, though, since I figured that your screen name might not be in common usage. Also, didn't meet a Tomas, but did spend a delightful afternoon in a dinghy with two people who actually thought that I knew what I was talking about! As a consequence, I think that they made fewer mistakes than I did. Now, how long until next Sunday?

If I do this right, then here are some pix of the first boat hull I've built. It's a 1/16 scale model of the "Zephyr" available on several free boat plan sites online. If you look close, you'll see that it's a bit wonky. Yes, I'm sure that that's the technical term. If my goal were to build a good model of this dinghy, then this would be a dismal failure. Since the goal was to give me a 3d idea of how boat pieces go together, though, I'm fairly happy with the results. It's shown me some issues that I didn't realize I'd have, and my wife is happy that my first not-so-straight boat only cost around $25 instead of $????. It won't float, but it will go in my toolbox at work, to remind me of my plan of taking irritating customers out for a sail and leaving them halfway to Catalina! Actually, considering that my tools consisted of an x-acto knife set and my measuring stick only measured down to 1/16", I'm amazed that it came out as straight as it did! Now I just need to learn to sail (starting my class this Sunday) and build an actual boat!