tdrown

Wow, looks great! And the design is named after the Massachusetts lake where I first launched my Weekender! The trailer modification looks like it works great. What's the cabin like and how much does she draw?

I built a Stevenson Weekender and used polyester resin to fiberglass, and I would definitely suggest epoxy. I haven't had any major problems with the resin [*yet], but epoxy can be used as a glue and as a filler and works with wood a little better. It's actually not that much more, Raka epoxy has pretty good prices, I've ordered from them and I'm satisfied.

At .02 ampere per LED, they are really great for these electrical systems. I just added one to my compass in the cockpit of my weekender (albeit it was a retrofit, I had to drill some holes and add some resistors). There are a bunch of places to get cluster-style online, I can't say I've seen them in stores.

http://www.westmarine.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product/10001/-1/10001/148723/10001/657/64/3 It's $134 regularly, 30% off, it should be about $94. The sale actually covers a bunch of stuff, like most of the things I bought a week ago.

West Marine is having a sale this week, 25% off West brand VHF's (and 30% off footware, I got a new pair of Top Siders on the cheap).

On the mast I think I went with a 5' stub before the tabernacle, instead of a 4', so I think that would make the mast about 13'. (I just bought a VHF antennea, and the 8' was cheaper than the 3', so I went with the 8', but I may end up returning it because it is going to be rediculous and it will probably look silly too). I can't say I remember how much longer my bowspirit is. I think maybe only 10". The third fender in the picture is another funnoodle cut and just wrapped in cloth. I wish I had a closer picture of the second rope fender I made. It's a lot nicer and better made. I think I made if from 50' of cotton clothing-line rope, maybe it was more. The toughest part is keeping the length of the strands the same (so they last for the entire fender) and doing the knot at the top (which is tough when you don't have the length for it. Other than that, they are easy to do, I think I watched a movie while I made mine. A web site with a how to on Rope Fenders is here: http://www.floatingbear.ca/RopeFender.HTM

I've made two of those, with the funnoodle thing inside the fender. I have a photo sequence of the first one I made here: http://tyler.drown.org/fender.html You can see my two rope fenders in these picture from Ocean City, MD. Please be aware that they are down and I am sailing, I know I'm not supposed to do that. Also ignore my bad sail trim, that was the first time I tried the clipper rig, that's why the foremost sail is down in the second picture.

Looks like a great project, a real handsome boat, especially with all the mahogany brightwork that can be restored. Is that a logarithmic speedometer? The scale looks really strange to me.

more than plenty strong, especially if you are glassing.

What a handsome boat! Great choice of woods and color.

On eBay, you can find some for well under $100. Be carefull what you get though. I bought one on ebay a while ago and despite it being advertised as a marine radio, it is really a CB, with 3 VHF channels (albeit the important ones).

A steam box for this application would be relatively easy to create. Just get some plastic piping long enough and large enough for your wood. Cap both ends. Add a tube that leads into large teapot (or some other closed container that you can boil water in, my borrowed steam-box used a metal gas-can). Drill a few holes into the pipe so it doesn't explode when you start to fill it with steam. Put the wood in the pipe, close it, and boil the water.

I think my mast rake was a bit off. The fact that I used cotton sails didn't help, they bag out and stretch. My boom actually would catch on the wheel if it were to hang loose. Look at my sail in my avitar, I'm holding up the boom and it has bad trim. I'm not sure if the sails were even made with an 80deg. angle at the tack of the sail. To help solve my rake problem I just added another forestay with a turnbuckle, it works fine in getting a better mast angle. Needless to say I'm making new sails too, out of Tyvek probably.

I strongly agree to that. Except that I didn't use Weldwood, I used Polyester Resin, which does not have strong adheasive properties (though it does has some). Thankfully everything also has mechanical fasteners. I just redid my rudder box with epoxy. Once everything was unscrewed it just required one hit of the hammer to undo the bond. I would have gone with a squared off cabin trunk and added front-facing portholes. I would have made the whole for the lazaratte hatch larger, not smaller. I also would have added deck access to the hatch. (I retrofitted something recently). I would have bought screws in bulk. I would have introduced myself to the manager of the local hardware store. I would have bought nicer plywood. I might have gone with the stock seat hatches for both sides. I would have made tarp sails (instead of drop-cloth, bad idea).

Wow! Look's great. I too like the cleats. Is all your brightwork Oak?

hborger: I am about half way through setting up an automatic bilge system. I've got the tubing, the electricity, the pump, and the float switch hooked up. What did you choose for the solar panels? Where did you get them and where in your electrical system do they attach? I am considering doing the same. Thanks -T.S. Drown

Drug Store/Dollar Store/Grocery Store sunglasses are often hit-or-miss. I've bought some that block out the sun very well while others that are no better than saran-wrap. I'm pretty satified with the pair I'm using right now. Aviator sunglasses from a Walgreens in Edwardsville, IL. I think they were about $10.

That's about the size of the garage I built my weekender in. The garage also has an I-beam going down the middle, so we can't have a standard garage door opener (the motor actually goes up and down with the door). I took up both sides of the garage throught the process. Sometimes it was a tight squeeze, but I had more than enough room most of the time http://tyler.drown.org/115.html the above link is mostly side-view pictures of my boat when it was mostly finished.[/url]

I'm adding a gutter on my recently enlarged seat-top hatch and I am adding a bilge pump with an auto-float switch. I'll post more on it once I finish it, which may be as soon as this weekend.

made wider 2-1/4 times with a higher aspect ratio rig:

righting moment - he may be refering to moment as in the Physics term, Moment = distance * force, it's basically the same thing as Torque. In dingy sailing you normally put feet on the gunwales and pull backwards on the centerboard. The axis of rotation is more or less the waterline. Was this guy an engineer?

When I built most of my boat (March through June 2003) I was in school most of the day and came home to work on the boat. Once school let out I had all day and yet did less work in a day than I did in an afternoon when I had school. I wanted to finish the boat by Memorial day. Since I had already missed that deadline, I slowed down since I was in no rush anymore. The next deadline I had to make was July 3rd, since my family was going up to Massachusetts to visit family and for vacation. I nearly missed that deadline. I left without the steering hooked up, without windows in the portholes, a last minute hatch, and an unpainted cabin. I spent most of the 4th rigging the boat. I didn't get to launch the boat until late in the day and we all had dinner in the dark after we came back from the lake Chebacco (we ruled out launching the boat in Beverly Harbor, the boat and I wouldn't have been ready for that.) the point of the story is: having or setting deadlines helped keep me motivated, sort of.

Although I haven't been able to sail my Weekender in months, I've done a lot of sailing this past Fall and Spring. Being a freshman at Drexel University, I made it a point of joining the Sailing team as soon as I could. We sail Vanguard 420's one design, small fiberglass 2-man boats with a Jib and Main. We went (the season is over) 2 times a week normally in the late afternoon down on the Delaware in Essington, just south of Philadelphia International Airport and north of Chester. We rent dock space and a storage locker at the Corinthian Yacht Club, situated between a state park and a lot of manufacturing facilities including a giant plant for Boeing Helicopters, a rarely used seaplane base (the US's oldest, although because of the International Airport, there is an airspace height limit of 400', so it is sparcely used), a coal power plant, another aircraft company, and a marina. The river is wide enough that we don't have to worry about being in the shipping channel, where some gigantic container ships, tankers, and tugs go buy constantly. The river there is still fresh water but has about a 6' tide that provides a very strong current in either direction. This November, after the fall season was over, a tanker spilt 473,500 gallons of oil into the river just North of where we sail. Unlike gasoline, oil sinks. We would normally see crews go out of the neighboring marina to various locations as part of the clean-up effort. All their boat's all flew Chilean flag (I suppose that's where most of them were from) and had full sized port-a-potti's on them. The season is now over, we held an alumni regatta last weekend to try to raise money for new sails for the boats (we have 8 420's and are buying a Laser this summer). I was elected new Equipment Manager for next year after an unsolicited nomination. This weekend, I'm finally going back to Allentown(it's been months), so I finally fix some things on the Weekender for sailing. This summer I hope to finish the dory I was working on as well.

If you turned it sideways it could be the Netherlands or the former Yugoslavia. -I think I'll just stick to flying the U.S. Flag off the gaff. I may eventually buy the U.S. Ensign, but I have no reason to right now with a perfectly fine flag on the boat already.