jmatheso

Z, In the same "boat" as you (pun intended) except I sat on the plans for 20 plus years before getting started. Building it now with my son and having a blast! My wife is kind of helping as well. (That's if you can count "Close the damm visqueen on your side of the garage. You're getting dust all over my car!!!!" as help!) The folks here are quite a bit of help and the archives are EXTREMELY useful. Every time we run into confusion on the plans or some other build aspect I come here and search the archives to find out that someone else has "been there, done that" Good luck to you and have fun! John

Thanks Maligno! Your photos are great and provide lots to think about. A couple of questions for you. Did you raise the height of the boom as well as the cabin then? Any concerns with that? Also, I just happen to have a good Suzuki 4hp that I was thinking about throwing on when its finished. Are you pretty happy with the way the 4hp you have is working? Is it not too heavy to hang back there? Did you custom build that motor mount and how did you reinforce the transom to handle the weight? Thanks in advance! John

Sorry so long without updating this. I check in regularly to search old posts and ideas though. It's been a long winter up here in Alaska and between Gall Bladder surgery, a blown out knee in a skiing accident, and my son injuring his ankle in basketball we have not progressed as far as we had hopped. He did manage to get it 3D this month though and that was the goal for the school project portion of the build. He is busy documenting the work and putting together the presentation now but we will soon be back to moving forward on the boat. When not injured progress went well. Only needed the moaning stool a few times. Mostly when he followed dad's advice rather than doing it the way he wanted in the first place! We somehow managed to get the stern blocks on with a few more degrees lean back than we had originally measured which of course makes the top deck a bit short. To resolve we moved the whole top deck backwards a couple inches and put an additional deadwood up on the front of the stem under the front deck to give it the lost support from moving the deck back. We kept the front bulkhead angle measured where the mastbox will go at the 93 degrees by moving the front bulkhead's bottom stringers back about 3 inches and leaving the top of the front bulkhead against the joiner panel if that makes sense. It seems an easier fix than remounting the stern blocks or adding on to the deck. Reviewing old posts makes it sound like its ok to have that front bulkhead back a few inches provided the mast angle remains correct. Do you concur? The other change we are making is to move the cabin bulkhead forward about 10 inches to give a bigger cockpit and we plan to build the seats with open bottoms instead of cabinets due to his RAPIDLY increasing leg length! We wont need the cokpit space for camping just getting out of the rain and gear storage. We are going with a tiller rather than wheel so we can seal up the lazarette as well as the forward areas with floatation. The water here is only about 43 degrees in the summer so along with sailing in dry suits the extra flotation is a must. I can't seem to attach photos from work so I'll try again tonight from home with some progress shots. Thanks John

Thanks Frank. we have indeed spent many hours reading throughout the faq's and archives. I can't imagine dealing with "station 13" without following the advice we have seen here. In fact we almost bought hemlock to build the keel before learning here and at BYYB that we might as well use cardboard as hemlock. Now we have the most beautiful supply of clear doug fir to work with. We will continue to peruse all the great info here as well as appreciate your offer of help.

Just want to say thanks for all the good advice we have already gotten from this website on building the weekender! Over 20 years ago I read the Popular Science article and purchased the plans. I got as far as buying the screws and plywood before life entered the picture, the plans went into the back of a bookcase and the plywood became part of a rotted kitchen floor in 84! After two kids, too much career, and too much time having gone by my 13 year old has fallen in love with sailing. After a couple of summers taking sailing lessons and crewing on a local racing sloop he found the old plans and decided he wanted to build it for his middle school project. So, off to the net we went to discover this whole community of Stevenson fans. I ordered him the new video and plans from Stevenson (actually got them quite fast in September so don't give up on them yet!) and off we jumped into the project. He will be building it on his own with me providing cash, moral support, and bandaids until his "school part" of the project is complete. (He is trying to get it 3D for the school portion of the project by May 08) After that I will become more involved and it will be "our" project instead of just his. So far he has lofted and cut the keel and he epoxied the first two laminations. probably not going to win any awards for quality of cuts or cleanliness of epoxy application but its straight and looks quite strong so far. Looking forward to moving on to the next steps! John Juneau, Alaska