PadrePoint

Jacking up an end could be a good approach. Never thought of that. My floor is level enough that I could have used it to make a straight line along the sides. The dimensions from bow to waterline and transom to waterline should be somewhere in the plans and a bit of math would reveal appropriate and relative heights of bow and stern from the floor. NICE to see your progress on your build.

So, might a 60 pound weight (or so… like a sandbag or tube from the local farm & fleet store) placed in the bow area of Avocet as far forward as possible make a positive balance difference with a 5hp motor on the back? Just wondering. I will try this in my ski boat next summer just to see if there is a trim difference. It has a bounce at high speed. Yes, I put the gas can and battery at the transom. Trim tabs sufficiently take care of the bounce, but adding weight IS something I intend to try.

Sure. Do.

I’m glad you posted. It caused me to read back a bit in the thread to be reminded about this set of helpful sailing tips from Graham posted by Paul (who is currently sailing his CS17 in Florida this week … he and John Hippe drove their boats down from Wisconsin this past week.) Paul’s post is just prior to this page.

Excellent job FLSailor!! Thanks for posting your achievement. While you were making a significant sail adventure in the EC, Don Silsbe and I were at least enjoying a beautiful couple days in Gasparilla Sound - Charlotte Harbor (West Coast of Florida) sailing Avocet, number 6 of the CS17mk3 line. We made it successfully back to the boat launch after delightful sails (my goals are far less lofty ). It was worth my flight down from Wisconsin. Yours is a significant accomplishment ; I saw your progress in some updates. Congratulations!! And, nice setup.

Something I wondered as well. Hope to see some ideas.

I appreciate having a Honda 5 on Avocet, with a shifter and potential for an external tank. Half throttle moves it along and sips gasoline.

And so, how is that build going? Any photos to share. Your thread is hoping for an update. My “update”: Don is using my boat in Florida this and next month. Here is Avocet yesterday:

Norma T sits in winter storage right now. No, we’re not able to have the fun of sailing it right now. BUT, my wife is enjoying a minor winter project of assembling this 1,000+ piece puzzle she was given at Christmas. My daughter had a puzzle made from a photo she took of my wife and me sailing with our three grandkids last summer. I believe we are in a race here, succeeding at not being last. (Actually, we stayed ahead of several other boats.) NOPE, I’m wrong with the photo. I noticed there is no mizzen mast in the thwart and the motor is running. This was taken in 2020 during “Gramma Camp.” I had just finished building the hull but the sails were still on back order, due to the shut-down. So, this is the first time we took the kids out in the boat, just motoring around on the local pond, enjoying the day. It occurred before I started this thread. I did not sail Norma T NEARLY enough during 2022. I was distracted by finishing my ski-boat build and getting used to Avocet (the CS17m3 that I purchased in fall of 2021.) I plan to make 2023 a season of LOTS of messing-about with my “fleet”. Seeing the puzzle project on the kitchen table reminds me of how happy I am that I built this CS15.

My disaster in one of my earliest Avocet adventures last summer… a comedy of cascading errors leading to an utter failure of sailing. I regard it as a funny episode.

This is worth my remembering.

Sculling I just bumped into this video, a guy’s first attempt at sculling over the transom with one oar. I added a transom oar lock to the transom of Norma T (CS15) and gave sculling a couple tries in 2021. I only have a pair of curved oars (two part) and I thought my results were kinda “meh”. I think a straight blade with better movements and perhaps a longer oar would produce a better effect… then again, as I write this about my curved oars and think about it, the curve would have the same effect in both directions if sculling… so it should work to some degree. Perhaps having the curved “cup” of the blade facing down in both directions might be more effective to push water backwards… I shall try to remember experimenting with this in my next attempts. I had followed up that early sculling attempt with placing the one oar in a side oarlock, using both hands on the single oar, and steering with the rudder (that has a tiller tamer keeping it steady.) I felt it was a satisfying approach. It seemed a bit easier and as fast as using a pair of oars. Well, it’ll still be some months before the snow and ice disappear from our local lakes so for now I can only store up ideas for the next boating season The video maker above offers a link in his video description to an instructional video on sculling. He shows some interesting variables. (I still think it can be a useful way to get the boat away or back to a dock, so I’d like to develop some reasonable skulking in sculling my boat )

I just realized I did not post anything about Avocet’s visit to the 2022 Messabout. I got there early and thoroughly enjoyed the sailing and chatting with a lot of the participants. These are videos that my phone and I made of the event: And one more video of my two sons and me camping overnight on a local lake in July. My boys used Avocet and I used my CS15 (Norma T.) AND I CAN’T DELETE THIS LINK:

Just a foreshadow of an Avocet Adventure… After Don Silsbe made a bunch of modifications to Avocet, he set out today for a Florida trip and I will fly down in March to do some sailing with him. (I’ll try to get Don to post stuff about his trip.) This link below is to the thread Don created to describe his modification work on Avocet this winter: THANKS, Don.

Having a cup of coffee after breakfast. Nice video of a guy in eastern Australia. He tries his hand on his new sea anchor.