PadrePoint

My American Family Insurance agent obtained coverage for my three home built boats. Under $100 / year each.

Hey! You found one! Good for you. Are any of your kids old enough to send a couple on a road trip to get the boat? Perhaps you could hire someone locally to make the venture… their vehicle or yours.

VERY nice!!

Still two foot piles of snow along my driveway (central Wisconsin)… but the next sailing season is approaching. I just wrote my $120 check for six months of parking Avocet in the nearby boatyard at Lake DuBay. Norma T will be parked next to the house again. I thought to write a post because this screensaver image popped up on my phone… my first time of camping on Norma T with my raised cockpit floorboards (aft section) providing space for a small tent, that I put up after this photo was taken. I’m with my boys who are camping in Avocet… we anchored up together on the lake. Soon. This is the video of our camping adventure that my phone produced spontaneously a year ago.

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.

A nice day for a couple of guys out on waters of Lake Superior south of the Apostle Islands. I might try getting up there this year .

Don’s latest photos today… busy guy!! A canopy… more effective than the tarp that we tried last summer. (A bracket for the spare wheel was put on earlier. A couple more keel rollers: A board for the centerboard (with a bumper to help me when I forget to raise the centerboard to load onto the trailer. New today… some electrical stuff… and outlets on the new bulwark racks. This winter storage plan is working out great!

Lots of wide room with this approach.

I have a Honda 2.3. Yes, it is likely louder as people say. It’s also likely lighter… and is air cooled. I’m guessing the motor would be used for short durations rather than a long run like 30-45 minutes.

Gee Don, exactly what came to my mind. I was pondering today about what the joint would need to be like if lengthening the centerboard from the top. How could a joint duplicate the strength of all the full length wood pieces in the original? Then I started thinking of how a butt joint COULD be reinforced… or made sufficiently strong… or making a scarf on a curved joint… or reinforcement rods… or some goofy ideas that came to mind. Of course, given my lack of genuine knowledge on these kinds of things my brain-musings are just to pass some time while driving, thinking about creative ideas (that I likely won’t do) just for the fun of it. On the plus side, I haven’t capsized Avocet or even started approaching anything close. So, I haven’t had the need to stand on the centerboard. Maybe never? (Maybe not realistic.) I guess my solution leans toward a new full length centerboard at some point. I really like the cnc shaped board B&B built for my CS15… that would be my choice solution. We’ll see what the engineer-guy thinks next year. That’s a ways off and there is plenty of skiing and sailing for me to do first.

Hey, Don, Maaaaaybe I could get The Weezer would let you take her Spindrift 10 “Rita Lou” for a spin next summer. You could even dress up in pink for the test run.