Morningstar UPDATE!!

[smoolie671]

Ok I'm back. With the new year I have been able to make some signifigant progress on the Morningstar. I finaly worked up the nerve to build and install the bowsprit. I was worried that I might get it too long or too short. I had to do some serious picture comparisons to the "movie version" I'm still working on the forestay deadeyes. Yesterday my friend and I laid down the starboard top deck planking. It went far faster than I had thought. Once we worked out how we were going to stagger the planks, it went like clockwork. Thankfully we only broke one drill bit and bent three nails (two of them in a row). Of course we still have to finish the port side..... Once finished we will coat the planking with epoxy and then varnish. I'm also contempalting a keel extension like that of Barnical Jim's on the byyb.org site. I figure with that, and some ballast we should be able to control her instability due to the top heavy cabin and rig. I think the next one I build (Black Pearl) will have a wider hull and no forward cabin, thereby cutting down on the instability problem. I'm setting May as the target month for water tests.

[Greg Luckett]

Ok, I am guessing you have probably explained this before, but please do so again, since I must have forgotten. This looks like a neat boat. Is there a link to more information about it for me to review? Thanks for the pics. That is a cool looking bowsprit. She also looks really roomy inside. How long and wide is she to be? Length on deck, length on water, beam on deck, etc. What sort of rigging and amount of sail. Just full of curiosity I am.

Thanks

[smoolie671]

Well believe it or not, she's a weekender. Well the hull and deck at least. I had searched around a bit for a hull design that best suited the look that I was after. I couldn't find anything in a simple design for a long time so I kind of forgot about it for a while until one day I was searching the web for something totaly off topic and I found a picture of someones weekender. I got the name of the boat and found Stevenson website and instantly fell in love. I like this boat just the way stevenson's built it, but I was after a hull design that would closely match the Morning Star from the movie Cutthoat Island. So with absolutly no designs I modified the weekender cabin by spreading the walls out to the side of the boat and then added the rest on the stern. The stern of the boat is about 1 1/2 ft longer than the stock plans due to the overhang of the "aft cabin".She will be brig rigged with ony two masts, and square sails fore and aft with of course a loose footed gaff and two jibs. The jibs will have to be roller furled so I can get them out of the wind quickly.

Overall length is 25 ft.....I think.... I measured her about a month ago and I forgt the exact measurements

She won't sail as fast as a stock weekender, but she will do it in style. Now I take that back, on a downwind run she might come close.

[smoolie671]

Oh I forgot I am working on a small website for the Morning Star But right now I have not published it. I should have it done sometime by spring along with the completion of the boat er I mean ship.

If you want to talk about it I'm willing to give you my number if you want.

[Greg Luckett]

Wouldn't the Vacationer hull have been better?

[smoolie671]

I thought about using the vacationer hull but it was a little larger than I wanted to start with. It would be my next choice for one of my other ideas.

However for the "black pearl" Im going to draw up my own design. Now that I have built this hull I have a real good grasp on how loft my own.

[kydocfrog]

This project just remains so weirdly cool I can't wait to see what happens next.

I will be very interested in seeing how you rig the square sail sails. I've daydreamed about a captain's handkerchief sort of thing myself.

Of course, I'd better worry about getting in the water first.

DocA

[Ray Frechette Jr]

Has Morningstar ever been finished?

I don't recall ever seeing launch photo's

[PAR]

I know he moved down here, some place in Lakeland (about an hour south of me) a few years ago. I posted this very question some time ago and he did reply, though I think life has weaseled between him and the completion of the boat.