Friday, August 01, 2008

Construction Complete! Woodstock takes to Flight!

Wednesday's anticipated launch was postponed due to a trip to the emergency room with my mother-in-law. Somehow she had dislocated her finger. By the time we arrived at the ER the finger had relocated itself but that didn't prevent the development of a fair amount of pain and swelling. At 89 years old she did a great job of taking it in stride but had no idea how it happened.

Thursday morning - final section of varnish is done. In the process I dropped a long piece of masking tape on the wet varnish in a effort to keep boat from appearing perfect. (Yeah, right.)

Thursday night - mounted cam cleats, fairleads, oarlock sockets, and applied lettering and registration all while being supervised by a "supportive" neighbor. The construction of Woodstock is DONE! Very pleased with the results.

Friday morning - saw ten deer (including four or five fawns) while on our daily bike ride, got to farmer's market before the place was packed, and dry rigged the boat again for photos.







Friday afternoon - short trip across town to Reed's Lake for Woodstock's maiden voyage. The trailer is pretty stiffly sprung for a boat this light and the jouncing caused a buckle on the tie downs to whack the yard pretty good - gives it character and gives me some touchup to do during the off-season.

At the conclusion of the dry rigging this morning I tried to do a minimum of breakdown of the rigging and I loosely wrapped everything in the hope of minimizing the time required to set it all back up when we launched. It sounded like such a good idea at the time. Not so much. The result was summarized in a comment from a bystander at the boat launch. He was admiring my boat and I mentioned that this was the maiden voyage and it was only my second time sailing with the last time being when I was 19. His comment was, "Oh, that explains the rigging in disaray." Disarray? What do you mean disarray? This is the carefully wrapped, finely tuned rigging I placed carefully in the boat so as to speed the process here at the boat launch where the wind is blowing, the waves are making the boat bob, my 230 lb body makes the boat change attitude by just thinking about shifting my weight, and these sheets and stays seem to have tangled themselves with out any encouragement whatsoever. Fortunately the bystander was kind and held his remaining thoughts to himself for the remainder of the time and another bystander volunteered to hold the boat steady since my wife's job was to snap pictures of the event.




Anyone who has experience with sailboats knows that if you have a choice you set the rigging with the boat on the trailer before backing down the ramp. I have essentially no experience sailing and all I could remember was pictures of a fellow PMD builder rigging his boat while it was in the water. Trying to raise the rigging while the boat is moving and bobbing isn't very much like doing it in your driveway. I spent a fair amount of time breaking down the rigging just to get it organized.



Ok, I've done this rigging a couple times before. No problem. This bowline knot should be just the thing for this line. But I didn't think bowlines were supposed to be slip knots (they aren't,... what did that diagram in the book look like again?). And now the wind has picked up, it seems to continually shift direction, and the boat has become a big weather vane.

D'oh, the line securing the top of the main sail isn't in that nifty little groove I made in the top of the gunter yard. Drop the whole dang thing, slip the line into the groove, and try to get out past these rocks (and those pesky little minnows that keep tickling my legs.)

OK, it's an hour later but the rigging is set. Put one foot in, push with other foot, shift my center of gravity over gunwale, hope body does not continue in motion over opposite gunwale. I'm in the boat! Cool, I only look like an idiot instead of a complete idiot.


Tiller, mainsheet, what do I do with the jib, push the centerboard down, drop the rudder, which direction is the wind coming from, tiller, mainsheet, the sail just went limp, but I'm moving, just keep moving, don't worry about returning,.. ever.
In the midst of the swirling wind near shore I am fortunate enough to partially fill the sail (finally on just one side of the sail) and I'm off. Now, just keep heading in a straight line until you remember what to do to bring her about. For now look like this is what you intended to do. Do not turn except to get a bit more air in the sails.

I should mention here that this small local lake is known for the high ratio of sailors in comparison to the general boating population. These folks (many not yet past puberty) know how to sail. And here is where I chose to make my debut as a sailor? What was I thinking? If nothing else I suppose I provided comic relief for the locals.


In the picture above you might note the direction of the wind and my (starboard) position in the boat. Now would be the time for a nice gust don't you think?

Ok, I've set a decent course, the jib is full, the mainsail is tugging eagerly, the hull is heeling over nicely, time to think about what to do when I decide to turn this puppy around. I think I'll let the jib loose so it can come across during the turn. Push the tiller, duck, oops, didn't duck far enough, hat in water, jib lines snag on cleat on the mast. Geeze this went better 35 years ago. (And in retrospect I remember why - No hat and no jib 35 years ago! Not to mention somebody was more nimble.)

I remember thinking that if I simply turn in a circle to retrive the hat I could get into trouble. I couldn't remember why I would get into trouble or what to do about it but at least the thought did cross my mind. Of course that didn't keep me from going a complete (thankfully)circle. I gotta believe the wind swirled in coordination with my turn because I remained upright, I grabbed my hat, and I was off on a far-fetched near reach, or close haul, or all out gallop with out tipping over. Whew!

How do I unsnag that darned jib sheet. Oh look, the wind flapped the jib just right and the jib sheet is free. (Am I gonna be able to do that again?)


Things improve, coordination gets better, whoa, that was a pretty good gust of wind, glad this boat is a little beamy so it resists just rolling on over. Avoid those other boats, work on tacking back, sensory overload, this is kinda cool, what am I doing.

Better start heading back toward my wife. The place where I left her appears much smaller than when I set sail.


I'm getting closer. Need to drop the sails so I can row to shore.



Now this danged boom and yard are in the way of the oars. Must untie the yard. (Worst knot on the whole boat to untie.) Oops! There goes an oar. It has set sail on its own. Those mis-sized leather buttons I mentioned in the last posting apparently allow the oars to escape the oarlocks far esasier than I thought.

(Note "escaped" oar visible in front of boat.)


Wow, that spruce floats really high in the watter! Paddle with remaining oar to retrieve lost oar. I'm far enough from shore that my situation is not that obvious to those on land. Retrieve oar, loosen yard, row to wife.


Honey I'm dry and I'm back!
Tear down rigging, stuff rigging into Focus hatchback with mast sticking out window, mount outboard on transom, putt around the lake varying the speed according to the break in procedure, relax,... and watch Old Faithful emerge from centerboard trunk every time we hit a wave. I've heard of self-bailing cockpits but this is the first time I've experienced a self-filling cockpit.

The outing was great. It wasn't pretty but I count it a success that I didn't turn turtle. A few times I even caught myself thinking, "This is MY boat. I built it." It handled the stress on the stays, it tolerated a not-yet-novice skipper, it responded to the wind, it dug a shoulder in when heeling (as my friend Jerry says), it held the promise of less chaotic outings as I get some practice, and it looked sweeeeet through it all.

On August 1, 2008 Maritime history survived my initiation into the ranks!

Later!















P.S. When I was a kid I had several small outboards. All of them were two-cycle and they all had two cylinders. That meant they had two power strokes per rotation so they ran quite smoothly and the sound they produced was indelibly etched into my audio memory. Boy does this 4-cycle one-cylinder sound different. One power stroke every other revolution makes it sound a little like the sound track of the old-time cars that you had to use a manual crank to start.