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markfitz

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Everything posted by markfitz

  1. Hi Par, I can't quite picture that....Unless you mean we'd need to drill a hole and then route a channel or something up underneath the pintles? We used actual store-bought pintles and gudgeons so maybe that's why I'm having trouble picturing it?
  2. turns out our angle is about 96 degrees.....acceptable, or should we try to fix it?
  3. Yeah, I saw that --- nice. But with the "sort of stock" rudder box we have (ours is basically solid) we don't have any way to bring that rope up underneath the tiller. That's why I was trying to figure out some other way...
  4. Beautiful! Maybe I missed it in there, but I was curious as to what it ended up weighing.
  5. One other problem we had with our weekender is that we had modified the boat to take a tiller, and as such had no through path for the rope that is supposed to keep the rudder in the up or down position. What we ended up doing was attaching a rope to haul it up, but then in order to get it to not float, we had to push it down into the water and put a pin in. Not really knowing what we were doing, we didn't even think that if we hit something it would rip the back of the boat off -- so we want to modify that, obviously. I saw a thread here http://www.messing-about.com/forums/index.php?topic=3934.0 about a lead-weighted kick up rudder, which looked like it would be pretty easy to modify our existing rudder to use -- but then read this on Chuck's more recent thread "The kickup feature can be fixed easily with a bungee or a down haul and a "break away" cleat. This will keep the board down, yet let it come up when it hits something." I'm assuming the breakaway cleat is one of these: http://www.duckworksbbs.com/hardware/cleats/sd002570/index.htm but I think that means I have to figure out a way to use a rope to pull the rudder into the down position, which I really don't currently have. I originally figured a shear pin would work, but I have no idea what I should buy for a rudder like the one on the weekender. Is one way better than the other?
  6. My father has visions of sliding out there and attaching it -- however I'm going to make sure he reads this thread first! Thanks for the insights.
  7. Thanks Barry -- we're going to measure the angle again on Thursday, so wish us luck! Hopefully it's right on the money, but my thought is probably not, since we had to make that bulkhead twice.
  8. I didn't mean to hijack the thread -- should I move this somewhere else? Barry, a sketch would be great -- I think I understand what you mean -- the goal is to get the mast more perpendicular to the deck of the boat, thus raising the boom height? Here's a bad picture taken with my cell phone of what the sail looks like up:
  9. Thanks, I will definitely check out that video on Stevenson's site. We may try again this week. I've never sailed, and my father has only taken a few lessons, so we're a little chicken to put the sails up to begin with. Everyone says to just let go of the boom and the tiller if you think you're in trouble, but I'm trying to find an "experienced" sailor to go out with us the first time there's actually some wind..
  10. The one in frank's picture is the one we used as well...we haven't have a chance to try it out yet but, we did put the sail up in the driveway while still on the trailer, and it seems like the boom is too low....when the sail is out to the left or the right, the rigging is pretty much sitting right on our tiller. I'm not sure if the issue is that our tiller is too high, the boom is too low or a combination of both. I'm hoping it won't matter that much..
  11. Some of you probably remember me...I've been frequenting this forum on and off for a lonnnnnng time -- I've been working on this boat once a week with my father since my mother passed away. Without your help, I doubt it would ever have gotten finished, so thanks to every one here for your invaluable assistance. Here's a few pictures of the launch: We had been worried about getting it on and off the trailer, but it turns out it wasn't an issue, so we didn't even need to use our extender. Unfortunately, we never did get the sail up. We forgot to bring the mast pin! And as you can see from the first picture, there's this bridge in the way...so you can't put the mast up while you're still trailered and then get to the main lake. There's a private launch at the other side of the lake we may try next time. How do you guys normally do it? Is it difficult to put the mast up while you're anchored? We figured putting the mast itself up while floating wouldn't be that difficult, but then realized that unless one of us could walk on water, we didn't have an easy way to attach the front cable for the jib. Any thoughts or recommendations? Thanks again!
  12. Thanks! We will definitely get the battery box. I think the jib has clips, so rebagging it and tossing it in the cabin seems like a good idea.
  13. I saw a lot of threads talking about putting your weekender battery for your trolling motor in the front storage area for ballast, but I have a "non-ballast-related" question about that. We bought sails from Stevensons, and they are very nice. We haven't actually put them on the boat yet, but we cut and sanded all the rings for the main mast. On one one of the videos it shows them storing the jib inside that front-most forward compartment. Will storing it in there with the battery have any negative effects on it? I am wondering what (if any) sort of fumes a lead/acid deep cycle battery would put out. I don't want to do anything to mess up the sail integrity. Thanks for any advice.
  14. Thanks Konrad! We dinged it up a bit in the garage over the years and it needs some touch up, but we hope to launch by the end of the month...
  15. We got her up on the trailer last week. I figured I'd post a few pics.... http://www.messing-about.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=31 I'm not exactly sure how we'll get this deep enough in the water to float the boat off...it looks like it's pretty high up in the air.
  16. Perfect, thanks so much for the pictures!! I'm starting to get excited about getting this thing in the water.
  17. Are there any pictures here that show a weekender trailer with the boat off the trailer? We are trying to figure out how to set the trailer up, and we are killing ourselves trying to figure out where the boat will want to balance and what parts of the keel will actually be touching the channel. The bunks are another story. We think we may need to add some additional ones in the front, but we figured if you all could point us to some trailer pics, or post some, it would be helpful. I tried to check the gallery here, but couldn't figure out how to get it to show me what I was looking for....thanks!
  18. So the throat and peak halyards just come straight down to the top of the cabin? They don't get in the way of the main sail? I'm having trouble picturing that...so you don't use the cheek block on the mast at all?
  19. Another question regarding block placement -- we are trying to figure out if the jib control and the peak halyard come back to the cockpit on the same side or different sides of the boat -- we assume different, but we are probably wrong. Also, we're wondering where to place them. The drawings show them sort of in the middle of the cockpit, but at that point you can't get to the underside so you have to resort to screws instead of bolts. We were wondering what the drawback would be to putting the peak halyard cleat farther up near the cabin so you weren't sitting on it if you sat on the edge of the boat. How often do you have to adjust that vs. the jib? Would it be better to have them both on cam cleats? Thanks!
  20. Thanks, everyone! Good stuff.
  21. We've worked on this boat for over 7 years and it took us until just the other day to realize we built our weekender backwards! Actually, when figuring out how to get it on the trailer (which we haven't done yet) we realized how much easier this task would have been if we didn't build the boat with the bow facing away from the garage door! :-[ Anyway, assuming we can find a few volunteers to help us haul this boat out of the garage and turn it around, my question has to do with the eyebolt or U bracket or whatever one would mount somewhere on the front of the boat to connect the trailer winch to -- I didn't see anything in the plans, and I wasn't sure exactly what to call that thing so my searches were wildly unsuccessful. I'm assuming that should probably be drilled right through the entire keel with a giant washer on the inside. Is that how most others have done it? Also, I remember reading somewhere about a keel saver technique -- some sort of sacrificial strip along the keel that was replaceable. Would it be a good idea to include something like that, or is it just asking for trouble screwing into the keel?
  22. OK, that all makes sense -- I think we are going to copy frank's method. I do have another related question -- we got our sails from stevenson projects and they appear to be very nice. Now we are wondering about the other blocks. We started out with hardware store pulleys, but then had to buy a harken for the cheekblock, and we were amazed at the difference. We were looking at the the areas on deck where the plans say to use a pulley and a spring to run that particular line down to the cockpit, but it seemed like it would make more sense to put another cheekblock pulley or something like it instead since it seemed to want to be sideways. That confused us a bit, but it did get us to thinking it would be beneficial to just use all "real" blocks -- but there seems to be so many types (e-bay, for instance) that we're not sure what we are looking for/buying. If we wanted to replace all the plan's pulleys with real hardware, does anyone have a list of what we should buy for the swap outs? Thanks!
  23. Thanks -- the pictures help. Sorry about all the non-nautical terminology. Neither my dad nor I have ever sailed, so we don't know what all the technical terms are yet. :-[. (In researching this, I just learned what a boom vang is, for instance. Is that the same as the "traveler" mentioned below?)
  24. We are at the point where we are placing pulleys....since we decided early on that we wanted a tiller and not a wheel, we're wondering how to rig the boom pulleys on the back. The wheel plan calls for one transom mounted pulley right smack in the middle, and we know we have to do something different, but we're not sure exactly what. I tried to do a search on "tiller boom pulley" combinations but didn't find anything specific. If someone can point me in the right direction, either to a thread or pics, I'd appreciate it! Thanks!
  25. perfect, thanks!! That's what we were hoping you would say.
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