Knut

Very nice work indeed and I am sure dimensioning and attachement to the spar will work fine. One very different consideration from my side is the overall stability of the boat. If you are alone in the boat and there is no special weight or ballast involved and a normal weight adult person moves all the way out on such a grate, the bow will dip quite deeply. The stern will lift and the sideways stability will be seriously reduced. Not to say that it cannot be done, but personally I would definately not go that far forward in open water (which you may have to, with a roller furling device at the end of the bowsprit).

Hi, great details on the sideways swing of the boom at the gooseneck end. I just wonder about the vertical movement of the boom :?: Have I missed something, or are you adding a feature to allow this :roll: :?:

Bruce, hilarious :!: :!: :!: :!: I laughed so much I had to stop reading so I could get the tears out of my eyes to continue reading. It all reminded me a lot about the tricks my brother and me invented, sometimes with the good help of our friends. Thanks for the laugh

I had in principle the same arrangement as Phil, with a cleat on the underside of the boom just behind the block. I used a normal straight jam-cleat and the sheet tail would jam sufficiently that it could hang straight down from the cleat by the friction in the cleat. Advantage being that for a quick release I only had to give it a very small tug in almost any direction with a down-component and the sheet was immediately free. There are lots of situations and conditions where this arrangement is good and safe. During a few hours of sailing I can promise that there will be many necessary tasks to perform that are easier to execute if you do not have permanently one hand on the wheel and one on the main sheet. Like scratching your back, drinking water, finding your sunglasses :roll: and handling your sandwhiches.

Jan, if you have a lapper jib (large enough to reach back to aft of the mast) you may well go sailing with jib alone if there is a decent wind. With the stock jib you will quickly get bored since the driving effect of this sail alone will feel like close to nothing. By the way, sailing on jib alone will NOT increase the weather-helm and force the bow up in the wind. On the contrary, the tendency will be the opposite. On mainsail only, the weatherhelm will be more pronounced than when you also have a jib set. If you feel uncomfortable with the wind conditions (too strong for taste and experience), the best approach is to reef the main one or two steps and keep the jib up. The boat handles much better with a jib and you get good speed with very limited heel even in strong wind. Especially going upwind on mainsail alone gives lousy performance. Congratulations on the beautiful boat and thanks for the action pictures.

Stump, my WE had raised full length coamings, but this was not enough to allow bailing after righting. Also, if you have the standard wheel steering, the hole in the transom will be under water and you will not be able to bail faster than the inflow through this opening. A standard WE is as close to impossible to bail in the water as you can get. In my opinion, this is by far the single most important negative aspect of the WE design since it has to do with safety. (Basically, there are no other negative aspects at all!!). What to do? Build in floatation and full length coamings (and mount a watertight jacket on the tiller transom opening if you have one) to ensure that the righted boat floats high enough that you can bail it in the water. Watertight compartments in the bow (with a tight fitting hatch!) and behind the seats + the lazarette (with tight hatches), is probably the simplest and best solution as described by Ray. Without the ability to bail the boat in the water, the only safe way of using it would be by severely limiting distance to land or by making sure that external help would be available if needed (especially at low water temperature). Even with tested and verified bailing capability, you have to consider where you go, who is in the boat (kids, not so fit persons etc) and you have to practice the recovery under real conditions. As a note in this respect: Even with very good added floatation, there will be a limit on wave height above which bailing will not be possible. Don't take this as an attempt at scaring anyone or reducing the fun of operating a WE or Vacationer. However, there is no substitute for being realistic and prepared once you are on the water. Have fun

Great story Tim. One of those posts that make me come back here all the time. An unpleasant knot in the wrong place on the main sheet could really turn into a nasty surprise, especially with a fresh helmsman. Good to hear that you saved the situation. You mentioned that further reefing would have been good to have when the wind was piping the most. No surprise to me that such an idea crossed your mind. A thunder squall had me in similar conditions for a short while and reefed main and the jib dropped was still too much sail. One further step you can take in a pinch (as you certainly know, but did not mention) is to lower the peak and scandalize the upper part of the main. This would even work with a knot in the mainsheet! Thanks a lot for the story.

As one of the "lost sons" now operating a plastic :oops: boat I have to say that I still enjoy following what is going on on messing-about.com I also see that I am not the only one bringing up issues outside of Stevensen Projects boat design and building, even discussing plastic boats and we all know that the subject spread is quite large when all extremes are taken into consideration. I don't personally feel there is anything wrong with that. If there is something posted of minor interest, I can always skim quickly by and look at the rest. The name of the site "messing-about" is also quite wide, even though I imagine the name was not meant to be indicative of the scope of subjects that can be discussed :?: :?: (There are too many ways of messing about) In any case, the Main Forum today gets almost all the postings. Why, because that is where the action is :!: :!: A different forum may, or will end up like the other Forums, dropping out of the public eye because everybody is gravitating back to the Main Forum again. I would very much support what Tim said about properly using the Subject line. It may be wishful thinking and there may be no good way of nudging people in the right direction here: Stay with the subject at the start of the string and add a new Subject if you feel it is needed:!: If we could succeed in making that happen, we could keep it all in the Main Forum and it would be much easier to sort what you want to read and what not. It would also help tremendously in later searching for specific information. As said, I don't know how to make it happen, but with all the clever souls attending, may be some good idea may pop up :idea: :?:

Tim, thanks a lot. I was on to it, but found that it did not work if the picture reference was to my own harddisk! So, find a website where the picture can be deposited and then it should work That was not so difficult after all. It is easy when you know how :shock: as they say.

I know this has been covered before, but I am too slow to grasp the details. :oops: How do you do it (in detail please, and NOT a picture attachment, since that is working fine)?? :?:

I meant to include a picture, but forgot. Here it comes as a late bonus. I don't know if this works, so I use attachment as well?? [attachment over 4 years old deleted by admin]

Actual size is 96 sqf or a 112% jib.

As most of you know I built and sailed FreeAtLast and established that the Weekender was not suitable for my use around the Florida Keyes. I then sold the Weekender in Nov. 03 and bought a Balboa 20 (plastic :oops: ). Executed restoration covers the deck which now looks like new + re-embedding hardware and filling some old holes etc. Next step is repainting the hull, but not until the Florida temp. drops a bit. Otherwise, I am sailing as much as possible. This report from 6 August was sent to Barnacle Bill and is copied for information: Today we had quite a good sail, going 24.3 nautical miles in total with an average of 4.5 knots. Going from Matheson Hammock to Soldier Key we had a nice broad reach and good wind and made from 4 to 6.4 knots. Very nice going. Returning upwind turned out to be quite a task. The wind picked up and with the main reefed to the first batten, the jib was still too big. We got overpowered. I had to improvise a reef by lowering the jib and tightening down the lowest hank with a line. Far from optimal since our upwind pointing was as much as 60-70 degrees to the wind. We could go higher with the main alone, but then with very little speed. Later on, we had to get the jib up full again and we had 1 to 2 hours of sailing close hauled with the rub-rail in the water to be able to get back to our launch at Matheson Hammock. Great sailing for 5h 30 min. I see that I need a smaller jib to balance a reefed main when the wind gets up above 20 knots. For practical reasons and when the wind is strong but less than 20 knots I think a reef point in the jib should work well. I am going to install and see how it works out. The boat behaves very well in a seaway and she is quite fast. It may be possible to squeeze out 6.5 to 7 knots, but today 6.4 was maximum. Going upwind, she is not so stiff, so sail shortening will actually give more speed (or the same) with much less heel. Especially when the wind is gusty, like today, this will be a good approach. Thunder squalls are quite unpredictable, so it pays off to be a little on the safe side to avoid being knocked down. (Reef point in jib now installed, 65% jib ordered. Testing remains ).

The plastic rubrails I used were fixed directly onto the existing upper wood rubrail. Unless you have narrower than normal wood rubrails it is easy to find a dimension slightly narrower than your existing rubrail. The advantage of mounting on top is that the contact point between dock and boat moves away from the hull side by the thickness of the plastic rubrail. This gives added margin against direct contact if the boat is heeling and bobbing in passing waves or for whatever other reason. It will be no problem to fix such a rubrail along the keel and I am sure it will work as an excellent protection. What I am not so sure about is friction if the boat rests on the keel against rough ground or for that matter on the trailer. Probably this will be no problem, but without experience I would not promise anything. The simple and reliable solution for the keel is one extra hardwood batten. I used 1" thickness oak screwed to the keel using 3M5200 in the holes to avoid letting water into the keel. The oak-batten was only treated with deck oil. Because of the oil it was always sliding easily on most substrates and the wear was quite limited. Upkeep is also very simple: Just brush on some oil once and a while. If the protection becomes a little bit beaten and "hairy" it is no problem at all. Does not show anyway when the boat is in the water. The plastic rubrail sinks and will contribute as ballast (marginally!). The one I used is 1" wide, 1/2" thick and had a 1/8" lip along one edge that I let go around the upper edge of the wood rubrail.

Craig, I let go of my binder with the boat with all materials catalogues and other documentation, so I don't have it at hand any more. But it should be pretty easy to find in the West Marine website or in their catalogue. Probably also other sources available. Basically their rub-rails consist of a main plastic strip with a number of different profiles (thickness, width, symmetric, assymetric, with a lip on one side etc) that you fix to the boat using SS wood screws. They have all a profile groov where you enter the screws, which is also the channel (groov) where you insert a smaller plastic hose (about 1/2"). This hose is often in a contrasting color and it covers the screws so they don't show and more importantly, they don't hook into anything when the boat slides along a dock. They come in a range of dimensions, colors and contrast colors and by the foot, or in sets for boats of different length. I found the plastic rubrail easy to install and I did not have a single scratch in the paint afterwards. Before, there would be a patching point somewhere after every trip. Well worth the cost and effort in my opinion.

I quickly came to the conclusion that using fenders on the Weekender was a waste of time and effort (at least the fenders I know about). This because I had no lifelines and stanchions where I could fine adjust placement of fenders and because of the sharp curve of the rubrail (a small angle adjustment of the longitudinal boat axis and the fenders would quickly be in the wrong place). Especially when you come to a dock with vertical pilings as first contact, it becomes impossible to handle fenders without one person per fender (which will tip the boat). I installed a commercial plastic rubrail in addition to the stock wood rubrail (slightly narrower) and in full hull length. This took completely care of all worries. I never touched anything any more with wood, only the plastic thing and the stuff is tough and durable and shows no damage at all even after some rough contact with wood and concrete and barnacles etc.

Sailing on jib alone is quite feasible if you have a lapper size sail, you may even be able to inch upwind. The stock jib is simply too small (and I know that I am extrapolating from Weekender here, but it sure sounds like exactly the same thing). I would install a slab reefing (Jiffy reefing) single line system and place the first reef point about 20" up with the second (and may be the third) additional 20" up. Roller reefing is clearly very comfortable, but I would be much in doubt installing one on a Weekender or Vacationer. Main concern from my side being the fact that it all has to be disconnected and stowed for mast down and transport and opposite for going sailing. Admittedly, I have not tried it, but sounds complicated to me. That is why I used the lapper as my standard jib and when necessary I did all the reefing on the main. If you have three reefs on the main and you play with the main sheet, you can weather very strong gusts and wind with the lapper up. As a safeguard, in case it gets real ugly, a downhaul system for the lapper jib is simple to install and you would be sure to be able to dump the jib without going forward or climbing out on the bowsprit. With the reservation that you may have to secure it to avoid flapping and catching sea on deck. Just some input for your thoughts. Your choice of course and good luck.

Hi, I am sure the shock cord works well and for sure, it is safer than a rudder fixed by a strong line. At the same time, the pull-down force of the cord will cause a pretty tight contact with the bottom, may be while the boat is still moving, and some abrasion will be unavoidable. I bought a self-release jam-cleat that worked very well. It would release at a certain load (could be adjusted both on the cleat and by the rope angle entering the cleat) and the rudder would be completely free to move. Very easy to reset after a release.

Florin, as you know I was on a Weekender and the properties may not be exactly the same on a Vacationer. Still, if you are experiencing a clear weather helm this could be an indication that improvement is possible. A weather helm tendency is OK and preferred, but if it is strong, the system is not well balanced and you are loosing speed because you need to use the rudder too hard. The simplest way to reduce weather helm is by getting more sail area forward. I changed to a lapper jib with two sheets and it was like sailing a new boat. Much better speed and only a weak weather helm. It will also help if you can tilt the mast forward (in relation to current angle). Free bonus is better headroom under the boom. If the wind was piping up with the lapper jib set, my first step was to reef the main and I would recommend two reefs in the main before changing the jib (or shortening by any other means). A larger jib also provides techniques already described to improve on tacking. Another aspect to be aware of when tacking (I believe not mentioned) is to watch the main. I don't know exactly where in the sequence of things you experience the problem, but with a small jib and a dominating main, the main will always try and bring the bow up into the wind. If you have managed to get the bow across the wind with a very close hauled main, the main may take wind on the new tack very early (and probably before the jib) and thus push the bow back into the wind before the jib gets a chance to catch the wind and push the bow off the wind. If this does happen, make sure to release the main sheet as soon as the main is luffing and don't pull it in until the jib has got wind and has clearly pushed the bow around to the new tack.

I have a 120% jib on my Balboa 20 that I would like to be able to reef. I have installed myself and used slab reefing for the mainsail on the Weekender, but for the jib, I have previously either used a roller reefing or simply changed the jib for a smaller one. Now I would like to start out by reefing a couple of steps, before going to a smaller jib. This way I can reduce the work involved in shortening sail and get two steps of reduction before changing to a third step in form of a smaller and stronger fabric sail. Can anyone direct me to information on how to modify an existing jib for some sort of slab reefing, or may be provide the details on the forum? Help will be much appreciated. These days internet search on the subject only comes up with roller reefing or sail change. Knut

In my opinion the Weekender is a dinghy with sails. There are lots of sailing dinghies around, but the main difference to the Weekender is that they do not look like a pocket cruiser with a cabin (giving the false impression) and most can be easily righted and bailed after a flip, by design. In the choice between added floatation to facilitate bailing (righting is easy) and ballast I would go for floatation. Ballast added in the boat or mounted on the existing keel certainly helps, but it will not be a guarantee against going over. Therefore, added weight must also be compensated by added floatation (to maintain safety) and in the end there will be little space left for anything else :? . I know there are other opinions about this and the choice is yours to make. By ensuring that the boat can be bailed (with extra floatation and suitable splash coamings) and with proper preparations before going out, both practically and mentally, sailing the Weekender is really great fun . It will also be safe and with experience, I am sure anyone can sail for months and years without flipping. The important point is the fact that it may still happen and for peace of mind , at least I wanted to have a sure way out without being dependant on help from others. The only way is to be sure that you can bail on your own. :idea: :!: Happy sailing

Larry, welcome in the club. You are not the first to flip a Weekender and for sure, you are not the last. As you may know from previous postings, I managed to do the trick on my launching day, 3rd time out from the launch area. You are right 3rd time........ :? I can only second your lessons-learned-items. May be the most important one is to be fully aware that a stock Weekender will NOT allow bailing on the spot. You depend on getting on shore or to a sandbar or similar, to be able to get freeboard to bail. This property of the design can be changed by installing floatation, but if it has not been done, it has to influence the way you use the boat. :!: Personally, I would not go far away from land and other frequent boat traffic unless being prepared and able to carry out a bailing while in the water. Of course, this has also to be influenced by who is in the boat (kids, anyone not used to boats etc) and even more so in low temperature waters. Even if you were a better sailor than woodworker, there is no guarantee agains an accidental flip, not for you or anyone else. Tacking a Weekender should normally go quite easy, but there is one trick to be aware of (if you are using a lapper or similar): When you start the turn you must release the jib-sheet more or less at the same time (or very shortly after start of the turn). The bow has to turn about 45 degrees before going through the wind-eye and say half of that before the jib will loose the wind and start flapping. During the first half of the turn, the jib will produce some forward force, but it is also counteracting the rudder trying to turn the boat. By releasing the sheet you will have more effect of the rudder, which should be used smoothly. It is also important to haul in the main tightly as you start the turn to push the stern over the right way for as much of the turn start as possible. You did not say anything about it and may be I am preaching what you already know: I jibing, make sure to pull in the mainsheet thight before turning through the wind. This way the boom will move only a short distance and the risk of hard knocks in the rigging and of getting flipped is much reduced. (Sorry if I am being too obvious, but may be others are less experienced). Congratulations on having the guts to share the story. I wonder how many have done something similar without confessing :?: :!:

Thanks for the useful information regarding origami steel boats. I actually found the Yahoo group yesterday, but the link to the guys producing hulls for sale was a new one. Why don't someone tell me that this is dangerous activity? The boat building bug can be quite aggressive and is not easy to overcome. I need help. :roll:

I know it is probably dangerous to even think about technical and practical issues regarding the Origami steel boat project that is the basis for this string. The fact that this method resembles the Weekender process (using plywood sheets) in that no frames or molds are needed, is quite intriguing. The hull can be built directly without the need to buy lots of materials that will not be part of the boat. My main reason to post though is to ask if anyone has expeprience with the kind of hull/keel type that was presented. That is, with two daggerboards (one on each side of the hull) and ballast placed inside the bottom of the hull? How well is such a design going to work beating upwind and what about stability? To start welding such a hull, what education and training would be required to ensure the necessary quality of all welds? I know this is pretty far from the normal woodworking questions on this site, but it is anyhow still linked to messing-about in boats, so I hope there are some experts out there able to enlighten a steel working novice (even more so than with wood).

Thanks for sharing the story with the rest of us. The point is, anyone can get cought in a situation like that (unless you don't go sailing at all, which is not an alternative). In hindsight there is also frequently some things to learn and most of us have to learn by doing our own mistakes, but it is actually possible to learn a lot by checking out what could I have done myself in such a situation and in particular: What equipment may I be missing if a similar situation comes my way?? A favorite of mine is the sea-anchor or para-anchor. It may sound a bit drastic if you are sailing mostly on lakes, but there are lakes that are too deep for normal anchoring and if you can preserve precious sea room by using a sea anchor, you may avoid having to test out whether the ground tackle will stop the boat before reaching the rocks. Typically, lakes are of limited size, so the sea anchor may actually be more valuable on a lake than on the ocean (where a lee shore may be far away). By heaving to you may reduce the down-wind drift to between 1 and 2 knots, but a good sea anchor holding back a hove to boat will reduce the drift to about 0.5 knots and it is quite easy set and retrieve.