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Any interest in a Catspaw build? Also featuring rabbits.


cracked_ribs

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As a fellow biker and boater I am sorry to hear about your wife's pain and yours. Best wishes for a speedy recovery! You have inspired me to consider a Catspaw 8. I have missed whether you mentioned if yours is an 8 or a 9 foot boat. What thickness ply have you used and also, have you weighed it to see how heavy it has finished? No rush, wait 'til your lovely wife is out of hospital.

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On 6/21/2018 at 7:26 PM, Drew said:

As a fellow biker and boater I am sorry to hear about your wife's pain and yours. Best wishes for a speedy recovery! You have inspired me to consider a Catspaw 8. I have missed whether you mentioned if yours is an 8 or a 9 foot boat. What thickness ply have you used and also, have you weighed it to see how heavy it has finished? No rush, wait 'til your lovely wife is out of hospital.

Sorry, I forgot to respond to this.

 

That's a Catspaw 8, built mostly to spec, so I think that was 1/4 ply?  I would actually have to look at the plans but whatever the recommended thickness was, that's what I used.

 

A few random bits were thicker because I had a small pile of scraps that I thought would be enough to just buy two sheets of ply, which has worked out pretty well.

 

I think the weight is arould 75 pounds but I haven't weighed it.  It's got an extra few pounds on the bottom because I used a sheet of 6oz fabric and a graphite-epoxy mix on the bottom, plus that random deck/coaming assembly, and in general not doing too much of this stuff so slopping everything on thicker than necessary.

 

I'm REALLY excited to try it out; I have a really busy week this week but next week I'm hoping to get it done.

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I thought about it but the only place it'll really be upside down is on the beach at my island place which is really shaded.  I'll shoot the trim with an infrared gun maybe this weekend and see how hot it gets but it's coastal Canada after all.  I think it'll survive okay.  Enough people have graphited their hulls by now that I feel like if it was destroying boats I'd have heard of it.

 

 

But I do have an infrared thermometer I can always test it with.

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Very west indeed here; rarely a shortage of salmon in PR so that trip has real potential!

 

This is the first hull I've hit with graphite so I'm curious to see how it does.  The bay where it will spend most of its life is half oyster and half rock, so it should be a decent proving ground.  Will be up and down the beach many, many times.

 

When not on the beach this will mostly be under a cover...it's not self bailing (obviously) and has to live for weeks at a time on the hook so keeping rain out is a moderately high priority.  But keeping sun off the black probably isn't a bad idea either, at least a couple of months a year!

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Jury is still out on that stuff... gets you over a scrape by wearing like a pencil.  Next time I'm rolling with copper powder or titanium .  Supposedly that is what they coat the bottom with down in Carolina.   Those guys are nuts. They run the boats up on the beach at full speed and flip the motor at the last second. Then grab the boat with a trailer and dash away before the sand grabs the truck tires.

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Gosh David, I didn't know that's how we did it down hear in Carolina. One thing about it makes sense though. Dashing away as quickly as possible. But not because of the mud, but before the "state bird" (skeeter) catches up to us. As for running up on the beach at full speed. That often happens when a new sand bar pops up where the channel used to be before that last storm.

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No fooling though check it out on you tube ! Been a couple of years since I watched it but the locations they are chasing the salmon are remote with a not so great launching areas .  I assume the launch points are too far from the fishing spots.  I was blown away .  :) I iimagine a few guys forget to pop the motor and donate to the bar but they were hitting the beach at 35 to 40 miles an hour . One boat after another 

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15 hours ago, david bugden said:

Jury is still out on that stuff... gets you over a scrape by wearing like a pencil.  Next time I'm rolling with copper powder or titanium .  Supposedly that is what they coat the bottom with down in Carolina.   Those guys are nuts. They run the boats up on the beach at full speed and flip the motor at the last second. Then grab the boat with a trailer and dash away before the sand grabs the truck tires.

They must have pretty forgiving beaches!  You could do it once here, but just once.

 

I have seen some boats run up on to sand before, but usually either aluminum or 3rd world wood.

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Yeah, in the background you can see the tops bits of what is locally known as "Miami Beach" because it is the only actual beachlike area on the island.  At low tide, the white (ancient oyster shell) sand stretches out towards the horizon for literally...tens of feet.  

 

I mean technically we also have this:

 

cEAwn2X.jpg

 

(wife in foreground, commuter in background) 

 

But it's basically glue, strewn with large rock just under the surface, and it ends in a wall of rock.  We rested the bow on it once just to unload groceries...the back half was still floating but I had to lift the bow about three inches to get her back out.  Would have waited for the tide to turn, but if it settles, you could have bedrock poking up through the mud and into the hull.  This is the real reason for the Catspaw 8: bringing the commuter right up to the shore is a headache.  I just leave it out there on the hook and row in with a week's worth of stuff.  The only time I bring the big boat to the shoreline is if I have to unload something really ungainly, like new furniture etc.

 

At any rate I'm really looking forward to having a tender that rows well, and sails a bit.  Today I bought all the rigging hardware although of course I ended up straying from the plans a bit; I intend to build the spritsail version but wanted a halyard and downhaul for reefing without screwing around, plus ready access to snotter tension via a line to the centreboard trunk.  So I have cheek blocks and clamcleats etc on the way.

 

I have been struggling with locating spar timbers of sufficient quality and was getting really frustrated and then suddenly on Friday it occurred to me: I have acres of forest at my island place.  I couldn't even guess how many bone-dry douglas fir poles I have at my disposal. The standing deadwood of approximate size alone must be hundreds; I'm pretty sure I have half a dozen actually laid up and dry under the floor which I put up for no specific reason; they were just really straight and I thought I might need them someday.  I'll just plane a couple of those down, which I'm actually super excited about.  Why not have a mast of your own timber?  It's kind of cool.

 

Anyway I'm hoping to get the rigging close before I leave the city again, and maybe mock up a cheap temporary sail so I can get some distance and do a bit of fishing and crabbing.  I think I'm stuck in the city for another 2-3 weeks before I have enough accomplished to be left alone for a while, so that might be enough time to get it sail-ready.

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