Sail raised for the first time.

Sunday morning, woke up at 6:30 for no good reason other than this was the day I was going to finally see the boat with it's actual rig.  Got up, got the dog to the park, grabbed an early lunch on the way home and dived into installing all of the grommets.  I went with 12" spacing at both the yard and the boom

The Zip ties were a pack I had laying in the shop.  They're for indoor use and will need to be replaced with either lacing or some UV rated ties.  I threw a pretty good stretch with the end ties and then took all if the intermediaries pretty snug, but slidable along the spars.

 I lashed a block to the yard at Jim's suggested 40% up the yard, grabbed some line for a quick and dirty downhaul and ran her up the yard.

In the picture below was the initial hoist with all of the rake Jim designed into the rig.  The way I trimmed the sail down to @ 113 ft2, I moved the CE Back and shortened the boom.  I built the step to where I can take it almost vertical by moving one block.  I went ahead and moved it to bring the whole rig forward, and to my eye it's much closer to proper balance.

Not a lot of wind, but enough to show me that the head of the sail was shaping nicely.  the foot was bunching up.  I cut all of the intermediary ties on the foot and made her essentially loose footed, and the shape got much nicer.  I built the boom quite a bit stiffer than plan with this possibility in mind.  It's nice to be able to change the draft of your sail with foot tension.

The only other real problem I had was getting the final bit of hoist.  I left a pretty long tail on the lashing to the block, and it really kept me from sucking the yard right up to the mast, meaning the mast was crossing forward of where I would like.  I'll need modify/adjust this to get the block much closer to the yard.

Overall happier than a pig in shit.

getting the sail finished up this weekend

So Friday night I got home and I hand stitched  at the tack, clew, peak and head.  Sewed through the rope into the tarp for several inches each direction.  I was getting ready to throw on the reinforcement tape, and realized this thing was only 8 ft away.  All I needed was the right needle and thread to stick in it.

Saturday I stopped by the sewing store to pick up the needles and thread.  I also picked up a bunch of bobbins I could preload cause I knew one wasn't coming close to going all the way around that sail.  Spent a few hours in the the afternoon refreshing my memory of how to rig the machine, loading the bobbins and sewing the sail.   Now it's ready to tape the corners.

The dark stitching was what was done with the hand awl.  the brass thingy is an old poker handle, and excellent for pressuring tape down.  the flange on the small end does tight areas and the crease at the rope reinforcement nicely.

I suck as a seamstress.  Structurally fine though.  Below is the first corner after tape reinforcement.

All the corners done and ready for grommets in the morning.  This sail is going to hang tomorrow before i head to Mom's for mother's day.  You can see the rounding past the spars.

I can't wait to get up.

Getting going on the sail & a video walk around

So after the marathon window session Friday night I attended to a few domestic details like the lawn and shaving the hair from 3 dogs off of the floor and furniture.  I did get the boat rolled out into the sun and fiddled with things between cleaning the garage and making space to lay out the sail.

And it's been a while since the last video walk around, so here's a new one.

Windows sealed and it came out OK.

Instead of making the sail this weekend I decided to finish sealing the windows and get all of the nuts installed inside.  Once the sail is finished, I'm really going to be in a hurry to just start boating so I figured I should get this done first.

It came out pretty nice.  Hardest part was sizing the bead of caulk to where a crazy mess didn't come squeezing out.

And the windows are dry fitted. Registered.

Windows showed up UPS this Friday.  232 holes and 116 screws later, they're all dry fitted.  I need to back them off and get sealant behind, the tighten them back down and get the nylocks on the back.  Still, I could actually take this down to the lake and run it as a motor boat now.  I could even try sailing with my old Junk sail, though I think I'd have too much lee helm with the CE.

The bigger tarp from Dave at Polysail showed on Saturday.  I'll try to get that finished next weekend.

That just leaves the trailer, and I'll be down to all of the little details that are the ongoing process in the life of a boat.

I stopped off at Sportsmen's warehouse and turned in my registration paperwork and got my 180 temporary.

I'll be floating in May.  Grand total project duration, @ 15 months.

Motor Mount and Windows

So the windows showed up from my brother in Idaho Friday.  1/8" lexan all cut to shape with a radius on the corners, light grey smoke.  Thanks Steen!

I made a trip to Parkrose hardware and picked up 100 stainless #8/32 x 1" Machine screws and nylock nuts.  It wasn't quite enough, and it got late so the front windows will need to go in tomorrow after another trip to the hardware store.

Also got the motor mount all done up and permanently bolted in.

Dropped off the paperwork and paid my fees for title, registration and the ISP.  Got a temporary good for 180 days as bureaucracy grinds, but that's the boating season :-)

The bigger tarp showed up today as well.  As soon as I finish the windows I clean the garage floor again for sail lofting.  I'm thinking that's done next weekend.

Biggest job I have left is making one of the trailers truly competent at hauling, launching and retrieving this boat.