PadrePoint

Six days of sailing in my first week!! 😁😁😁😁😁😁 My wife and I took the boat out today. The winds were... um... sporty (12-14 mph with 20+ mph gusts.) I put the reefs in but we noticed the possibility of the mizzen sprit interfering with the mainsail. (I’ll shorten them both some more.) I left the mainsail reefed but used an unreefed mizzen to prevent an interference problem. I think that the unbalanced sails and the stronger winds helped me begin to understand more about weather and lee helms and some of the effects of the two sails being “in” and “out” of balance.

Sailing with Family Today Beautiful day today with warm-enough temps, blue sky, and sufficient wind. I invited my family to meet me a few hours downstate for some sailing at a State Park lake. I wanted to introduce people to our new family sailboat. We had two sailing sessions today with a full boat. In the first session, my wife and I sailed a couple hours with one of my sons, his wife and their two little girls... who were VERY excited. My son sailed a sunfish-type boat in high school and, as an adult, had joined me a few years ago in a 3-day sailing course in Lake Superior’s Apos

Another day of sailing today? The sun is out and the sky is blue. Great! I should probably look at the weather: I don’t mind the cool... but zero wind and Max Wind Gusts up to 5 mph!! Too much for me. 😁 And why add a direction to the “no”wind? Well, maybe that’s for the gusts. Today, then, is good day for some “driveway sailing” or at least practicing stuff and working out some details to smooth out my set-up and take-down processes. Having “circumcised” both sprits last night I wanted to see the effects. There is now more margin

I took the boat out this afternoon. The day was cooler (frost warnings tonight just north of us) and a blue sky... but not a lot of wind. That’s ok because this first week I’m mostly working on getting all the various processes working well... and not forgetting too much stuff... like forgetting to raise the centerboard BEFORE pulling the boat onto the trailer (I’m glad to have the cleat that releases when there is excessive force.) Today, I had a chance to learn about the Anderson bailer 😄. After preparing the sails and rigging (described in the previous post) I launched the boa

Amos, Even when I rigged the boat today I had some moments of befuddlement 🤪 trying to envision the mainsail/sprit/lines arrangement. I finally realized that my “fixes” from yesterday’s rigging kind screwed up a few things. (I had done yesterday’s “fixes” when trying to raise the sails on the water... with four other people sitting in the boat waiting to sail 😄.) I do find my confusion in these steps comical and the rigging process is getting better. I’ll shoot for 20 minutes to set up the rigging tomorrow. On a good note, the halyards quickly pulled up both sails toda

A Sportier Sailing Today Today was my third sailing of the Norma T. I plan to sail each day this week and weekend; the weather looks consistent. This time I went to a lake about 8 miles north (a larger flowage on the Wisconsin River well suited for sailing... there is even a sailing club on the lake.) Winds were more lively today than my first two sailings. I’ll attempt to exploit this nice fall weather... after all, I already purchased my season passes for alpine skiing so the seasons will be changing soon. Today, for the first time, my wife joined me, along with three neig

Thank you, Graham, for the information and tips on making all this work as well for me as possible. And I appreciate your citing the dual realities of: “...she is a spirited boat and can capsize, it is easy to do if you are inexperienced.” I certainly am hoping for the fun of having a spirited boat, and it is always good to combine that kind of hope with the sobering need to be thoughtful about what could happen with the spiritedness. (Careful what you hope for??) I guess the fun part of exhilarating experiences is walking the line between “boring” and disaster. It’s s

First Day Sailing the Norma T I did a few more things this morning to ready the boat for the road... don’t want to lose a mast or something else. I decided to use my little Toyota Yaris as tow vehicle. It pulls the boat just fine, even out of the water at the landing, and probably gives other drivers a chuckle to see such a silly car doing this. The Wisconsin River flows through our town and the flowage should be big enough for some sailing. I rarely see sailboats here, but hey, it’s available and convenient. There is another good sized flowage that many u

I didn’t realize what your goal was. I am unfamiliar with the details and options of other boats. My build called for permanent mast joints. I thought Alan’s approach was effective and efficient for that purpose.

I spent a couple days installing the rigging. Lots of dumb little errors and a bunch of trips to the hardware store were part of the process. I only had three pieces left to install this morning along with the obnoxious task of reaching way under the bow deck to sightlessly install washers/nuts to the bolts for the stand up blocks... and somehow tighten them. Some weird contortions were needed for a big person to do this. Half way through installing the last three rigging pieces, a FedEx guy came walking up with a box of SAILS! Quite an effort to op

Ah... I found the link I saved to Alan’s mast joining post: https://messing-about.com/forums/topic/10540-capt-bones-core-sound-17-mk-3-14-kit-build/?do=findComment&comment=103113 I did this approach for my first of four joints. It used a lot of fiberglass tape, more than I thought I’d have available for the other three joints. I decided then to make 2 inch bushings to fit and added the cross-cross layers over them to hold things together when inserting the still-wet bushings into the other tube end. It worked very well for me.

I understand that my sails have just been shipped from B&B... so, the Norma T goes back into the garage to finish installing the rigging. Next week looks like nice weather... it might be possible to have some initial sailing days yet this fall. Yay! 😁

I visited Paul to look over his boat this spring while building my CS15. It was VERY helpful to see a completed Core Sound and to hear Paul offer his comments and describe a number of processes.

I wanted to get the motor out of the way. This will work for now. (It’s well behind where the car door opens.)

I spotted a method Alan described for joining two mast pieces; I don’t recall where it was. Basically, bushings were created, a couple glass strips were placed from the top bushing around the end and back up the other side (these strips held things together.) The wrapped end was inserted into the larger mast piece while everything was still wet. With even wrappings and a good tight fit, the joint self-aligned the two pieces.