Alan Stewart

Quite a few midnight toasts were made and tears shed for him around the late nighter table last night. We didnt know him well but he was still one of our own. Everyone knows the risks but no one expects to not go home.

An epirb is required to be attaced to your pfd and its number is checked at the start to verify registration and that it is current. It is very unfortunate that it has not activated for reasons we may never know. A drysuit is not mandatory but maybe it should be. The pfd was not with the boat but we dont know if it was on him or not. He was sending ok messages on his spot tracker regularly until about 10am Monday morning is my understanding but already very far off shore. Then the cg was called by his shore contact person when the ok messages stopped. It was not assumed that he had capsized since hitting the ok button on the spot requires a manual button press and it could be assumed he was maybe overly tired and just pulled the sails down to try and sleep and just kept hitting oks so as not to alarm anyone. Its happened before. Still cant believe it. Yes i also think we need mast head floats and centerboard downhauls for these events.

We recently re-launched hull #1 with a 50hp Etec outboard. See our results here and the video below. We would like to hear from the other OB-20 owners out there. Let us know what numbers you are getting. Let us know.... -Motor -Prop size -Max RPM and top speed -Best cruise speed and fuel economy We hope to get some more accurate fuel consumption numbers soon. Right now our consumption data is based on published data from Evinrude.

Looks like pretty work from here. Nice job.

Mark, See here for the answer to why https://youtu.be/kn-gPOonXS0?t=561 Recommend is a strong word. I haven't seen how this holds up over time yet but I do have experience with the wooden keel strip. On Dawn Patrol our CS-20 it worked well. We took the extra step then of potting all of our screw holes for the stainless steel strip and I think that helped it hold up (meaning not get water in the wood) here are some pictures of that keel strip after 10 years of I would say light use (mostly just the annual everglades challenge but maybe 2-3 other regular annual trips) https://goo.gl/photos/GAfPCXY1yCaTj7ok8 On Graham's CS17 Mark 3 the wooden keel strip is in rough shape because the few trailer rollers broke down and put a lot of pressure on the keel which over time caused the epoxy to crack under pressure and then water slowly got to the wood. Part of the reason it was so hard to launch and prompted him to build the roller bed which works incredibly well. See below. So basically I wanted to try a solid glass option. The other reason for the keel strip is to add some directional stability primarily for rowing which I don't plan to do. I did notice that without the keel strip the boat is affected by a crosswind more when motoring with the outboard which is expected but a few inches of CB down will solve that. There are no disadvantages to a well made wooden keel strip with a stainless hollow-back cover. One that is well coated and any and all holes put in it for a stainless rub strip are coated. I think this is generally proven to be low maintenance and durable provided enough trailer rollers are used. 4 minimum i'd say. The only advantages I can think of at the moment for what I did is that it is lighter weight and quicker to do.

Indeed! GPS has spoiled us all and I for one am fine with that. Very thankful for that little arrow! If i had to use a sextant then i'd have to put down my drink all the time! Eww But seriously, situational awareness has no doubt suffered as a result.

I think it still matters a lot because the earth is divided into (360deg x 60min ) nautical miles and that hasnt changed. I use knots and Nm on my gps always. If talking the average powerboater it seems many prefer mph just because thats what they relate to on land. I dont see many charts divided up into mi or km though. Also, I guess I knew this but a Nautical mile is 1,852 meters exactly so we're really splitting hairs I guess. And of course the original meter was..."the new measure should be equal to one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator (the quadrant of the Earth's circumference), measured along the meridian passing through Paris." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metre#Meridional_definition Also a nice site here. https://www.marineinsight.com/guidelines/nautical-mile-knot-units-used-sea/

Nice pictures. Looks like a great little dink.

Mike, Thanks for the heads up. I'll be correcting this soon. Some of the images slipped through the cracks.

Graham will probably chime in here but go ahead and beat him to it since I know what he will say. He prefers to simply sands the back of the flange and glue it to the bulkhead with thickened epoxy. I haven't seen this method fail yet and it makes a perfect seal. You could add bolts after the fact if you wanted but why bother. Probably just as good would be to just glue it on with 5200 and no fasteners. I can speak with experience that with this method the plywood will rip out before the hatch does so screws or bolts seem pointless in that case also. If you DO want to be able to remove the hatch then bed it with butyl rubber caulk and then use bolts or srews. DONT use butyl rubber tape, it is far too thick and you'll never get it to squeeze down.

Thanks Steve for that heads up! I think i got the Spindrift page looking a lot better at least for now. We'll be adding the kit options soon. https://bandbyachtdesigns.com/spindrift

Chick, Thanks for the reminder. Yeah there are lots and lots of logs i'll have to add over time. Dale, a quick call to customer service and I was able to get the SSL certificate pushed through. No more warnings!

Dale, Thank you for letting me know. The new site comes with a site wide SSL certificate (the thing at the beginning of the url that says https) but it is still "pending" on our domain since we just switched it. I expect this to resolve itself the next 24 hours.

We are pleased to announce the unveiling of a brand new website which we hope will serve us for many years to come. We are still in the process of adding all of our kit options for our designs and that will take a few weeks but since we're already way ahead of the old site we decided to go ahead and make the switch! So, what is the same? Same url. www.bandbyachtdesigns.com/ Same simple to navigate format. Links to forum, you-tube, classifieds That's about it actually. What is different? Some of the new features of the site that we are so pleased to offer all of our valued family of builders. Search the whole site by keyword. Results show products AND articles. Create an account and purchase our products! Imagine that! See current pricing and availability. Imagine that?! New products coming soon section. Buy a gift certificate they make great gifts!!!! Articles and easy to search blog posts. Frequently asked questions section. (ongoing) Upcoming events calendar and new easy to navigate events signup page. Archive of links to builders build logs for all of our designs (this will be an ongoing project) feel free to send us links to your thread so we can add them! Easy to navigate stream of B&B Past projects. Testimonials (send us yours!) B&B has also jumped on-board the Amazon affiliate program band wagon and you will see affiliate products throughout the products categories of the new site. If you use these links to buy a product on Amazon you pay the exact same price! BUT B&B might earn a small commission. It's a win win. If you are not a fan of Amazon then just ignore these. I wish we could stock everything. Unfortunately we just can't but we CAN still find you some good deals.

Hey Mark, I bought a 50watt flexible panel for my boat. They are plentiful on amazon which is where I purchased mine. Prices are about the same as when I bought. I've linked a few options into our new website which you can see here! bandbyachtdesigns.com/hardware-and-accessories/electrical/solar-power-system/ As for batteries, it is still hard to argue with the price of lead acid but we are really liking the LiFePo4 (lithium iron phosphate) batteries these days. much lighter, more energy dense, and far longer lived than AGM but they are about twice as expensive even if you build your own pack from cells. I plan to have an electric aux motor so i'll be saving up for a 24v battery bank of about 2.5kw minimum to start with. A very small battery should run that bilge pump no problem.

There is some more explanation of the ramp at the end of this video from the sailtrack page. There are quite a few ways to accomplish the ramps that we have used. -Multi layers of fiberglass molded over the mast. as I did on the CS15 I built. video below. -UHMW plastic strip shaped into a ramp. Like from a cutting board. -Simply using thickened epoxy as shown in video below starts at 8:10

soap and water is good. Just a wipe down with denatured alcohol is what i typically do. Soap and water is pretty easy for the bottom through because it all sheds off. The inside is harder since you have to sponge everything out and rinse repeat. A scrub like comet and water on the outside would be good too but probably unnecessary unless you like spilled or splattered oil on the boat.

Don, Short answer... the CG requires foam not air for powerboats. If you don't use foam, you're putting the required USCG capacity plaque saying the boat is CG certified for this many ppl but you're really not technically in compliance. I would argue that the BRS is a sailboat and so it is not bound by this requirement BUT if you're using it mostly as a motorboat and leaving the sailing rig at home for example, you might have a hard time convincing the CG that you're not a powerboat (like if you didn't have the capacity plaque installed). For a more longwinded reply see earlier in this thread. Here...

I am loving these pictures thank you so much for taking the time to share. That is going to be stunning.

I've done that a few times. That is, pushing the mothership with the dinghy lashed behind against the transom not beside. I am skeptical that lashing along side is feasible but have not tried it. lashed behind works great BUT. It's fairly difficult to get setup and all steering is done from the dinghy since there is so much leverage. We would call back to the poor sap sitting back there to make course corrections as they couldn't see worth squat. I think I would just mount a small outboard bracket (perhaps a quickly removable one) on the main transom and if you ever do need a kicker, just take the small outboard off the dinghy and put it on the back of the mother-ship and perhaps have a connecting rod setup ready to go OR just be able to tiller steer it somehow. It may be hard to do that if there is some rough water but I'd say it's easier that than trying to set up the pusher configuration and deal with 2 boats bouncing around. Other options I could think of would be an electric backup. Could be a bolt on trolling pod like the kind that clamps to the outboards leg or cav plate. just bolt it on and your good to go. Probably not much umph or range but might be just enough to get the boat tucked away and on the hook so you can wait for a tow or work on the mechanical issues of the main motor.

We recommend Douglas fir or pine for the keel. I would definitely coat it in epoxy but not fiberglass. The keel is bound to get scraped up and then the glass will make it a nightmare to repair. This was certainly the case when I refinished our CS-20. The glass was just totally useless. This keel was doug fir and held up well for 10 years despite scrapes and cuts etc. I did not replace it just cleaned it up, filled in some spots and re-coated it.

Very nice work. That is shaping up to be a very nice dink.

This video is the best. Thanks Steve

I think our primary thinking for painting my "locker" (singular for now) was as you said, to make things easier to find plus it makes the space look bigger. We plan to paint the entire inside of the cabin white also.