markfitz

I'd love to hear more about that canoe. How long did it take you to build? Plans? How heavy is it?

Thanks Frank & Johnny. PAR -- I will try that. I didn't think it came out that bad, just not what I pictured in my head, if you know what I mean. If I thought it was completely horrible, I wouldn't have posted it. I don't really know what I'm doing though. It was a lot harder than I expected it to be, and I am not really looking forward to making another one. I'm more of a windsor chair kind of guy. I'll try the diluted paint idea. I don't think the stripping would work very well, since that cypress took the stain like a sponge. I should have just sprayed it with tinted lacquer or something that wouldn't have soaked in so much. I'll post a pic after I give it a shot. Thanks for the suggestion.

I just wanted to post up a picture of my first trailboard. I'm not crazy about it, and in retrospect the cypress was not the best choice for carving or staining. Neither was the gloss finish. I can change one, but not the other..I don't like the wild variation in how the grain took the stain, even though I used a prestain conditioner. I may paint them. As my friend the finish trimmer used to say, "Spackle and paint make Steve what he ain't." It was my first ever attempt at carving something. It would probably be my last too, if the boat wouldn't look funny with only one trailboard.

Hi Tim. I just finished a weekender but I'm a novice sailor so you'll see me asking all sorts of dumb questions on here. It's a very helpful place, with great people.

Thanks, I just thought if you knew a reputable online retailer I could use them. I found a place called http://www.torresen.com. I also ordered a harken double bullet block for the peak halyard. Hopefully that will eliminate my binding problem.

Ahhh, thank you so much. Any particular place you'd recommend buying one?

Thanks Frank. I think that points out our problem. We might need a U-shaped shackle instead of just mounting the block directly to the eye. PAR, can you point me to one? We have a deck mounted block on the jib, but it doesn't "stand up" It is more of a swivel. We got it at duckworks.

Thanks guys! Lots of good suggestions here -- I'm making a list! Thanks for taking the time. Frank, I do have a quick question for you -- we were having some trouble with the rigging method you used on your boat -- the rear deck-mounted block kept jamming up. I was wondering if you could tell me more about what type of block arrangement you used here: The picture is a bit small to see clearly.

Sadly, no pictures. We forgot the camera. We remembered the mast pin this time. We thought we forgot the life jackets, and were just about to drive back home for them when I found them tucked under the seat inside the cabin......we really need to make a check list.. And that makes sense about the jib, because we were (or at least we think we were) going dead down wind at that point. One other thing we had a problem with is the throat halyard blocks. We think they may be too small, and also causing some friction when we are trying to drop the sails. What size is recommended for those? I also remember seeing some information on a triangular plate of some kind to separate them. Would it be better to separate them, or replace them with a double block? The overall handling of the boat was better than I expected. Originally we thought about adding some weight in the front, but there wasn't much chop today and we only weigh about 300 pounds combined, so the bow wasn't up all that high. The one thing about this boat is that it brings people out of the woodwork to check it out. I'm not sure if it's a sailing thing, since I'm new to this, but everyone loves to tell boat stories! We had a guy today telling us that the hardware store turnbuckles and cable clamps we had were going to fail, and when they did, our mast would snap. He suggested we get real turnbuckles and have our cables trimmed and then swaged. Any merit to that?

Just got back! And it was great. Everyone stayed in the boat, the water stayed out of the boat, so I call it a success. We got to the boat launch with only one almost-catastrophe...my father hit a pothole with the boat trailer and the whole rudder box bounced out of its gudgeons. Luckily we didn't lose it on the highway thanks to the bungie cords holding everything together. We got it in the water and motored out with the electric trolling motor, and then hoisted the sails. They went up pretty easy, and we didn't have any trouble catching the breeze. It was only about 5-7 mph, so it was perfect for learning. After a bit we got the hang of tacking and we could pretty much turn around whenever we wanted. The Weekender seemed to behave OK, there didn't seem to be much pressure on the tiller at all. We did the drill where we sort of just let go of everything, and the boat came around like we expected and the sails started flapping. We missed a few tacks, but most of the time it wasn't bad. I do have a few questions (of course). At one point the jib was filled in one direction and the mainsail in the other. I have no idea why, or that this was even possible! My second question is probably related to that, but I didn't really seem to know how or when to adjust the jib. My instinct was to tighten it up on the tack, and then loosen it again, but I never really seemed to know how much or how little. The mainsail was easier -- I could let it out to spill a little wind, or haul it in a bit and we'd pick up some speed and heel over some. We have some bugs to work out too. The mainsheet kept getting tangled on one of the cleats we installed to tie the boat off to the dock, so we may have to move them forward a bit so that doesn't happen. The gaff jaws are chewing up our mast. Originally we had the parrel beads on it, but they chewed it up worse, since they were oblong and not the round ones. Basically, I think nothing likes to go around a square mast. We didn't think the tumbler that I've seen pictures of would fare much better. Probably doesn't help that mast is also fairly soft wood. We may try putting leather inside the jaws to see if that helps. The "stevenson-bought" sails worked great, and it seemed easy to keep the shape of the mainsail pretty consistent. All in all, it was a good day, and a good maiden voyage for both us and our boat.

Hi frank, yes I have the spacer line and it does seem to help. Maybe tomorrow I will get a video of what's going on. And I will pay special attention to any binding.

The mast is tapered and has radiused edges, and the sail is lashed to PVC rings. They seem ok. Sails are kind of stiff... That wouldn't have any thing to do with it, would it?

Nice! I hope my first time goes that well...

I was wondering if maybe the sheaves we used were too small...they seem fine, but they are certainly not very large. Basically it is rigged according to plan up top, but then it runs to a cheek block at the base of the "tabernacle," then to another block on the starboard chainplate, then back to a cockpit cam-cleat. It does run over the outside of the gaff jaws. I don't see anything rubbing, other than on the mast and gaff jaws. Maybe it's time to cook up a buttload of bacon! It seems easy to adjust the position of the peak halyard, and that will drop to a relatively horizontal position just by releasing the cam cleat, but as the sail drops, eventually it seems like the weight of the line (sheet? man, I need a glossary) balances out the weight of the gaff, and it just stops wanting to drop by gravity alone. That's when the the gaff and the mainsail stop coming down together, and the peak halyard falls behind.

Oh boy....after reading that, I'm *really* glad I didn't take her out. Reading that thread and the comments did raise a few questions in my mind. I read this bit "But as Paul noted, everyone's gaff should drop smooth-as-pie when the peak is eased so that the gaff is horizontal. Then let the throat and peak halyards out so it falls while remaining horizontal. If it's not doing this in your driveway-sailing exercises, keep fiddling with things until it does. It's pretty necessary." When we "driveway sailed," one thing I noticed is that the gaff doesn't seem to have enough weight to come down smoothly on its own. It will drop horizontal ok, but as you bring the main down it seems like the gaff lines have too much resistance going through all the blocks. It's certainly not "smooth as pie" unless you're talking about a very lumpy pie. Once it's down to "grabbing height" I basically have to grab the gaff jaws in one hand an lever the rest of it down with the other. I know I'm not explaining this very effectively, but I hope you get the gist of it. Our gaff is pretty thin -- we could only find closet rod, and it's about an inch and a half in diameter. Maybe it's just not heavy enough?

Thanks for the words of wisdom. We scrubbed our mission for tomorrow and instead we will work on finishing up some other things like rebuilding the split boom-crutch. Next week, I guess. I would rather that the maiden voyage not be someone elses rescue mission!

We are planning to take the weekender out on Thursday, but the weather calls for West winds 15 to 20 mph with gusts up to 30 mph. Too much for a couple of novices? I may be able to get a third with sailing experience on a larger vessel to join us, but I am wondering if we are asking for trouble.

That is good news! Launch day in July, party at Al's house afterwards! The Weekender is a pretty forgiving boat, and unless you're in a really big blow, you can grab the boom and help ease it over while tacking (and stop it from smacking you as long as you're watching for it). The boom will lift while under way. One thing you guys might consider is a topping lift; a line from the top of the mast cleated to the aft of the boom so you can manually push up the boom, cleat the line and keep the boom up while you are motoring (or rowing) along. I wouldn't delay the launch to put one in, but its an inexpensive option that helps quite a bit. Dumb question on this: How would you do a topping lift from a gaff rig? If you did it from the top of the mast, wouldn't the line be in the way of the sail?

Ray, mostly just because the plans called for 93, and as-built, we were at 96 degrees. We figured we'd get it as close to right as we could before we actually tried to sail the thing.

Thanks! We are hoping to hoist the sails on some actual water next week. Sorry I'm not using all the correct sailing terminology yet -- some of it is confusing! Thanks for all the tips. I'll let you know how it works out. (Assuming I come home with most of the big pieces.)

Hi Barry, Hirlonde -- the problem seemed to be that the aft shrouds were too short. We could get the front hinge pin in, but there was so much slop in the hinge itself that the mast was leaning backward, with about a 16th of an inch gap between the two pieces of mast. We have it tight in the box, we added a piece of wood to the front once we had lost the saw kerf. What we ended up doing was extending the shrouds, and adding a turnbuckle to the forestay. This allowed us to close the hinge gap with the forestay and then tighten up the shrouds. I think we're ok, just that we didn't know how to adjust it correctly at first and panicked a bit, thinking we were going to need different hinges. The good news is, I'd say we got about 10-12" of boom clearance out of the 3 degree change.

After slicing the wedge off the back end of our weekend mast to change the angle, we find that the front hinge (and the hinges in general) have a lot of slop in them. If I haul on the forestay, I can close the gap in the mast, but I'm not sure how much tension should be on that. I am thinking of putting a turnbuckle there, just to get the mast to stand up straight. Is that ok, or will it stress the bowsprit too much? I searched around on the forum quite a bit, and saw some threads that look like they might help, but the pictures are gone, so the posts weren't as informative as they could have been. We gained a bit of headroom on the boom from the 3 degree mast adjustment, but to tell the truth, I think the mast slop is probably doing worse things to the boom than the mast box was.

I'm all for being better balanced in any way I can. Thanks for the assist!

Well, we did it. Once we drew the 3 degree line on there, we were amazed at how much that actually was. Here's our molested mast:

OK, you convinced me....sigh. :sad: Thanks for the advice...I want it to be as easy to sail as possible, so we're going to do it. I think it's probably going to make our standing rigging too short.