Violet's Bloom Launched

[Jan Williamson]

Thanks again for the nice compliments and good advise, Fintan I wonder at what point when the keel raises out of the water in a heel and it no longer is counteracting the sails does one go into the drink

Stump, ah....ha :idea: I get it

[Steve Downs]

Way to go Jan. What a beautiful job you did. You should be proud. Looks like a beautiful lake as well and a nice day to boot. Congratulations!

[Dave R1]

Congratulations Jan. What a lovely boat. I agree with Adla--more pictures.

[Frank Hagan]

Jan, on these boats, you could probably do well sailing with the main sail alone, but probably not with the jib alone. I haven't tried it on mine, but I think you'll be fighting the helm too much with just the jib, as the boat will tend to want to head up into the wind too frequently. So I would sail around with the main sail only for a bit, and see what happens when you trim the main sheet in and out, how close you can sail into the wind, etc. You'll very quickly get a feel for the "personality" of your boat.

[Knut]

Jan,

if you have a lapper jib (large enough to reach back to aft of the mast) you may well go sailing with jib alone if there is a decent wind. With the stock jib you will quickly get bored since the driving effect of this sail alone will feel like close to nothing.

By the way, sailing on jib alone will NOT increase the weather-helm and force the bow up in the wind. On the contrary, the tendency will be the opposite. On mainsail only, the weatherhelm will be more pronounced than when you also have a jib set.

If you feel uncomfortable with the wind conditions (too strong for taste and experience), the best approach is to reef the main one or two steps and keep the jib up. The boat handles much better with a jib and you get good speed with very limited heel even in strong wind. Especially going upwind on mainsail alone gives lousy performance.

Congratulations on the beautiful boat and thanks for the action pictures.

[Frank Hagan]

By the way' date=' sailing on jib alone will NOT increase the weather-helm and force the bow up in the wind. On the contrary, the tendency will be the opposite. On mainsail only, the weatherhelm will be more pronounced than when you also have a jib set.

[/quote']

Yeah, something like that! :oops:

I never see people sailing with headsails alone, especially a small jib. But now that you mention it, isn't one of the storm sails a small sail flown high on the forestay? "Storm trysail", something like that. Its the last step before going to bare poles on some boats. That would argue against weatherhelm being an issue.

My Weekender has very slight weatherhelm, and I honestly can't tell if there's any difference flying the jib or not in terms of weatherhelm. There's a bit more power with the jib.

[Johannah]

Also just catching up here. Great work, well done and I hope you are just popping with pride. That tiller stub failure may be nothing more than a weak pice of wood but you can always go with a nice chunk of straight-grained oak or ash for the next one. :roll: How do you like the sand bag ballast. Do you leave them in place? How are they restrained?

[Phil Gowans]

Wonderful! Wow that looks like great sailing.

I thought I'd point out one item you might have have missed. The weekender is designed with a hole in the back of the rudder box. This is for use when the steering konks out and you need to control the rudder. Just place a rope in the hole and you can use that to move the rudder back and forth. I had to do that once and even though it wasn't the easiest thing to do it was possible to sail the boat. When winds are strong and the rudder is biting a bit it takes effort to put the rudder where you want with the rope. You will need a small rope (probably about 6 ft minimum - more is better). Tie knots on both sides of the rudder box. My cleats on either side of the aft deck helped to have a place to pull the rope from and to tie off to. Tacking is real interesting with this type of steering.

[Jan Williamson]

Phil, I like your cool looking cleat interesting that you brought up the hole in the rudder box. I suggested the rope through the hole for my brother, but he had a hold of the tiller stub by then and didn't want to switch. And although a little tough, managed to tack in. He said it was ego that kept him from dropping the sails and motoring in Good advise.. thanks

Johannah, Thanks,...the sand bags were just thrown in the forpeak but I have a piece of plywood suspended in there (screwed to the stringers) to give the batteries a level home. I didn't strap them down yet, becasue I didn't know if I even wanted them at first. The batteries are strapped dwon BTW. We ended up having someone out on the forepeak though most of the afternoon, so I actually think we were a little front heavy there for a while. But when we did all three sit in the cock pit, it seemed well balanced. Very little pressure on the rudder although it is hard to know if that is balanced helm or different rudder design, and quite stable feeling. See... I expected it to be a lot more tippy than it was. In some of the pix I swear we looked half sunk though

Knut, thanks and I'll try the reef points next time. I should havwe insisted, but you know how newbies are I already feel better after I got a little more understanding from everyone. Two of the sailboat out there that day were reefed. More pix on this site if anyone wants to look.

http://www.msnusers.com/WeekenderBoatbuilding/pictures

[JMetzner]

Jan,

Congratulations!!! on your launch of Violet's Bloom. She is a beautiful boat! You will be amazed at the difference in reaction from her when you single hand the first time. Muuuuch more responsive. You'll notice quickly the interaction between wind direction, wind speed and weight location in the boat. I found it very educational as to what was really going on.

Congratulations again on your wee bonnie!

--John M.

Fairbanks, AK. (where the snow is here to stay for awhile now)

[Jan Williamson]

Thank you, you are right when you consider 350 lbs less weight, BTW how did you post your video?

[Stump]

Great photos in your album Jan!! 8) She was heeled quite a bit on several occasions wasn't she! :shock:

[Jan Williamson]

Your telling me Stump. :shock: :shock: :shock: 8)

[Johannah]

Jan, I just read your comment on another thread about your plans going to "sleep with the fishes" courtesy a restless daughter. Please don't think you have to tough it out without them! Give Mike Stevenson a shout for permission to get a xerox copy from another builder. It would probably be OK to go ahead but it would be good manners to check. I will root around for the plans that came with our boat but I'll bet there are others here who have them right at hand in epoxied glory. Whoever makes you a copy could use heavier paper so they hold up.

[Jan Williamson]

My daughter throws anything in site out of site. And on the boat that would be in the water. I was on my boat at the time. so...

We really have to watch her with things like phone and gps. I hadn't thought of as copy though. Wouldn't that be nice!!! Thanks for the idea.

[JMetzner]

Thank you' date=' you are right when you consider 350 lbs less weight, BTW how did you post your video?[/quote']

Jan,

Posting the videos was very easy. Once I downloaded the whole tape to the computer using Windows Movie Maker, I created the short clips with the same tool. I'm using Windows XP Home, btw. Moving them to your particular webserver is probably where the method will differ. I used 'ftp' to connect and copy the files to the webserver. You can do a search from window explorer on your local system to find and run ftp. Mine was at:

C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\ftp.exe

Once you run ftp a window will popup. Use the 'open' command to connect to your web server. Use 'lcd' (local change directory) to move to the directory on your own computer that has the clips. Use 'cd' to change to the dirctory on the webserver where you want to put the files. Before moving any files, be sure to type 'bin' into the ftp window once followed by an enter, otherwise the files will be unusable once they arrive on the server. Then use the 'put' command to actually move the files to the server. So a session would look something like this:

ftp> open mywebserver.isp.com

username: myusername

passwd: mypasswd

ftp> lcd localvideodirectory

ftp> cd public_html

ftp> bin

ftp> Violets_blush.wmv

ftp> quit

I'm sure there are other ways to do this, maybe even some point and click GUI tool. But that's the way us Unix geeks move files.

--John M.

Fairbanks, AK.