The new rig... Ongoing

For those readers who forget what a Lapworth designed CAL 34 looks like with it's normal rig...

 

The new Simplicity rig, however, looks like this...

Now for a comparison here is what the two rigs look like on top of each other...

As you can see the mast is quite a bit shorter (seven feet shorter to be precise) and is now a cutter rig. Even with the shorter mast the working sail area is more than the standard CAL 34 with main and jib... Neat!

Monday we will answer the question... "What kind of rig is this anyway?"

More on the rig front... Simplicity!

One of the boats on our short list that I mentioned some time back, the Simplicity, got me thinking about its rig. The fact that at the time I was mired in the where-would-I find-room-for-the-running-rigging-on-various-possible-rigs-of-the-junkish-variety, made the word Simplicity resonate quite a bit...

Simple makes all kinds of sense!

Over the last couple of weeks or so, Mark Smaalders and I have been throwing ideas back and forth on the idea of a Simplicity rig variant for "So It Goes". The result winds up being a pretty interesting affair!

One thing you should know about Mark is that he "GETS IT"! Unlike a lot of designers, he has actually built a boat and cruised in it long term. In fact, he is co-author of the aptly named "Tropical Cruising Handbook" and writes from hard earned experience. Experience that finds its way into his designs as well. For example, he understood my thoughts that having less things to break in the rig was a good idea...

"I once had a welded forestay tang at the mast head give way during a nasty 4-day passage between islands in the Pacific. The only reason the mast didn't come down was that the fitting jammed at the masthead after breaking, which isn't the sort of thing you want to count on."

Like I said... He gets it.

We'll start talking about the actual rig tomorrow...

Well they would say that...

Zero to Cruising in their quest to get ready for the cruising life has been looking into what would make a good sail repair kit...

One of the folks they spoke with (a sailmaker) gave the opinion that all someone really needed was some sail repair tape and some dental floss. While it might make sense for a day sailor, it does not make a whole lot of sense for someone going cruising. Of course, the dental floss and sail tape repair kit is an excellent thing for sailmakers as it requires those who take that route to use sailmakers for all their repairs. (Now just as a rantish aside, I'd really prefer if folks who made sails were called sailmakers and sadly these days the real sailmakers are all in third world countries and so called lofts are simply the repair and sales arm). Maybe a more apt kit of the sort would be dental floss, sail tape and lots and lots of money!

We have two sewing machines on "So It Goes" and they have both earned the space they take up time and time again. The fact that having lost our rig and sails recently kind of brings that into focus. A new set of sails at the bare minimum (who needs reefs right?) would be over $5000 or so... Being that we are some kinda picky about gear possibly quite a bit more. Having the tools to build a sail on the other hand means for about $2000 we can have exactly what we want and we know it is done right. It's not rocket science and anyone can do it. One book that makes it easy is "The Sailmaker's Apprentice" by Emiliano Marino.

Most of the repairs we have had lofts do over the years have involved longish waits (face it, megayacht cushions are so much more important than sails these days) and when we did get the sails back were needful of re-repair... so why did we bother? Here is an example of what $150 repair gets you when you take your sail in to fix the the UV strip on your jib... The fact that they did not really fix it but simply restitched bits badly  (serious tension and missed stitches seem to be their forte). The area of fraying material which was why we brought it in to be restitched was not dealt with at all and should at the very least have been turned over. A real repair would have  dealt with this.

It's different in your home port where you can have a relationship with your local loft and not doing good work can kill a loft's reputation, but cruising is a whole different story...

That said I'd still bring along the dental floss as clean teeth are happy teeth!

Smart in plywood...The French get it right

Plywood is a wonderful material to make boats out of... It's as strong as steel by weight and good quality plywood is consistent which any boatbuiler loves. Of course, it has fallen out of favor (I won't bother to go into that silliness) but in some quarters Plywood is making a very real comeback.

Over in France there are quite a few small to medium sized production boatbuilders who are now building go-anywhere cruising boats in Ply. Plywood, because it is an economical material both in actual and tooling costs, makes all kinds of sense and really lends itself to less than Bendytoy production runs.

The French boating press is (on the whole) more interested in how a boat performs and fulfills its function rather than how much advertising they spend. So, the fact that designer David Reard's state of the art Phil 43 came out as the LN Boat of the Year in 2008 is no real surprise. In fact, it says a lot! Of course, it is just one of many serious plywood cruising yachts on offer going head to head against the Bendytoys, Hallberg Rassy's and suchlike while coming out on top kinda says it all.

My kind of boatyard...

Matt Mays from Terminal Romance



Building a Boat...

Pedal steel guitar boat storage solutions and a great talent much missed...

One of the appeals of a larger boat would be the oft-mentioned advantage of more guitars... I mean, where does one find room for a pedal steel on a CAL 34?

Speaking of steel guitar...

I recently came across this great old photo of Doug Sahm who folks my age will remember from The Sir Douglas Quintet or possibly from the Texas Tornadoes though in fact he was some kind of a musical prodigy a lot further back as he was sharing the stage with the likes of Hank Williams way back in 1952 and was already something of a Texas musical legend at the age of eleven.

I sort of rediscovered Doug when he and Freddie Fender got together with Augie Meyers and Flaco Jimenez to form the Texas Tornadoes, something of a Tex-Mex super group if you will!

Sadly, Doug Sahm passed away back in 1999 but luckily left a whole lot of great music in his wake... There is also a biography that is coming out I have been looking forward to which might be of interest...

Needful book for a boat and good works... The Hesperian Foundation

The Hesperian Foundation is both a good cause and an important resource for people who sail far and to places where a doctor might not be just around the corner... "Where There Is No Doctor" is a needful addition to any boats bookshelf.

The foundation does the best sort of ongoing aid and education and it would be no bad thing to give them a little help from time to time...

Smart... Not so smart

The Bianka Log has some good advice... of boatworthy note!

Me, I'm wondering if yesterdays Supreme Court decision will result in our elected folks bedecked in company logos like pro Bass fishermen and Nascar drivers... Why not they mostly seem bought and paid for!

On not sailing the farm and making water...maybe, maybe not!

Some time ago there was a book that caught a lot of people's attention (and still does) called "Sailing the Farm" by Ken Neumeyer. Mr Neumeyer proposed a very self sufficient system where a boat could sail and grow its own food (for the most part) harvest from the sea and even make your own water... The problem is that most of what he proposed simply did not work in a practical sense. While the book did have a lot of interesting tid-bits that were valuable (his information on seaweed and kelp for instance) for the most part it is a book that is best left on the shelf.

For example, his methods of making water (solar still) sounds enticing but simply is not a system that works well on boats, nor does it produce enough water for even the most water frugal cruiser and as for those with a forepeak full of tomato plants that requires watering... well it is simply not going to happen.

If you do need to search out a book on the whole self sufficient sea-steading gig you'd be much better off going with Jermome Fitzgerald's  "Sea-Steading: A Life of Hope and Freedom on the Last Viable Frontier".

Speaking of solar stills department ...


Sailing Anarchy (01/18/10) had an interesting bit about a "marine" solar still by Sea Panel that bears looking into. Off hand, my experience with solar stills is that the available room on a cruising sailboat does not give you the water production needed to make it worthwhile and while the information is sketchy, I don't see anything keeping the unit from cross contamination of the the freshwater product and the saltwater which is a big problem for solar stills on boats and liferafts in anything but dead flat seas. That said, this could very well be a good investment for an emergency source of water for some scenarios and I'll be looking into it. 

The exception to the rule on the cross contamination problem, would be the old GoreTex solar still that never seemed to catch on... but maybe one of our readers has some information about it?


PS... Just in from Mike at Sea Panel...


"The cross-contamination problem is mostly solved because the water in the evaporation tray does not slosh around, but is actually held inside special open cell foam, which is then wrapped in evaporative wicking material. So we get the benefit of protecting the water from slosh, and we also get the benefit of the increased efficiency of a wicking still, rather than just a passive basin still. This is covered by pending U.S. Patent.

Normally you would be correct that the water these things make is not worth the deck space, but our tests indicate that in hot weather, the Rapid Deploy Marine will make up to 2 gallons/day, which is a good rate for a 6 foot x 2.5 foot system. Plus, the unit folds up, which is good when you need the deck space but not the water."

Schooner envy...

I've been getting a lot of questions about the decision to go with one mast as opposed to two...

My interest in going with a schooner was a quest of keeping the spars down to a manageable length as well as keeping the individual sails weight down... OK there is the fact that schooners are just all kinds of cool as well!

The problem on "So It Goes" at just shy of 34 feet LOA made fitting in the required 600 feet or so of sail area just a bit problematic. The interior was surprisingly unaffected but sorting out a logical and trouble free running rigging fix for the junk rig just did not work without just a few too many hoops to jump through.

Of course, my real desire was to do a balanced lug rig and while the running rigging situation was much more simple (I almost said elegant) but to get the sail area needed without the two sails getting in each others way was problematic. The logical fix is to go with a higher aspect balanced lug sails but then you have much taller masts... 

All boat design is always a compromise... Right?

Which brought me back to a single mast. While I could have gone with a single balanced lug sail on an unstayed mast, the idea of having to manhandle a 600+ square foot sail is just a little too much like work for my tastes. So to manage the sail area into a less worklike situation, we find ourselves back into the sloop or cutter realm once again.

Unstayed masts and headsails are less than a perfect combination so some staying becomes part of the new equation as well. BUT being that I just lost a rig to a bit of metal breaking I am not all warm and fuzzy feeling about putting myself into the situation where it might happen again. What to do?

The first thought was to go with a keel stepped rather than a deck stepped mast as well as a mast section that will more or less stand up by itself. Throw in some rigging to be able to have a reasonable tension for the head-sails and we are getting into a belts and braces situation.

The new rig does not have to be as tall as the one I'm replacing and looks to be about seven feet shorter which results in less lever arm... I'm starting to like this rig!

Now there is still the problem of metal pieces that go ping which can to a great extent be solved by simply getting rid of metal in the rig... Fiber stays are now both accessible to us mere mortals and costwise are pretty much par with its stainless counterparts as long as you don't get silly. The advantages of weight are a big advantage of course... It's pretty easy to get rid of all metal at the masthead (losing even more weight) by taking a page from old gaff rig rigging practices which leaves only a cunning plan or two to sort out the chainplate situation (and we are still working on that...)

More soon come...

An uplifting tale about the cruise ship industry helping Haiti... NOT

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned that I am no fan of the cruise ship industry...

The cruise ship publicists do paint a pretty picture but when you get down to the real nitty gritty, it's all about making money and if distorting or destroying an economy in the process, it is simply the price someone has to pay. It's not a problem as long as the cruise ship industry makes a healthy profit.

What can I say... Big bonuses are at stake!

Case in point... While Haiti is in the throes of its worst disaster in a long line of terrible disasters, it's business as usual for "Independence of the Seas", one of the Royal Caribbean boats. I mean why should Royal Caribbean let a little thing like thousands of dead and dying get in the way of their schedule or profits?

Read about it... Cruise ships still find a Haitian berth

For a couple of good books on the dark side of the cruise ship industry read "Cruise Ship Squeeze: The New Pirates of the Seven Seas" or "Cruise Ship Blues: The Underside of the Cruise Ship Industry" by Ross Klein who also has a very revealing website entitled Cruise Junkie!

Jessica at Cape Horn... She be walking the talk!

I sat back some time ago and marveled at all the dire predictions and Sunday morning quarterbacking on various forums when Jessica Watson had her run in with that freighter... Far too much of it from folks tied to a dock whose cruising is the odd weekend sail down to the local party anchorage and who "one of these days" will throw off their dock lines and if conditions merit sail off to the Bahamas...

Having a collision with a freighter is some kind of serious trauma inducing milestone in anyone's life, much less a young teenage girl and the fact that she got back on the boat and went back to sea is a lot more than most could do. The fact that she is well on her way to actually doing what she set out to do (whether or not that is a goal worth doing is neither here or there) you simply have to give Ms Watson credit... She walks the talk!

Money, cruising and the cost of tomatos in Spain or avoiding those WTF moments...

One of the questions you hear a lot is the rather basic, but very important, "What's it cost to cruise?" It's a simple question but all of the answers are anything but simple... As they say, it all depends!

Most of the battle to pare down cruising costs is won or lost long before you set off from the dock. Did you do your research? Can you fix the various systems on your boat (or at least make do without them till you can sort them out)? Have you locked yourself into expensive systems?

As most readers of this blog know, we lost our rig about a month ago and by lost I mean total loss including the mast, all rigging and sails. No big problem when all is said and done, and to be truthful, I am really enjoying the chance to build a new rig and one a bit more suited to the sort of cruising we favor.

Losing the rig is a good example of just the sort of problems that can destroy someones cruising dream, unlike say, the loss of radar which you can get along without till you sort out a replacement, fix it or simply decide to do without. Nope, losing the rig stops you dead (well maybe not for those "we never take our sail covers off" folks but you know what I mean). Throw in the fact that the rig is a BIG TICKET item... I'll admit that I am still a bit dumbstruck at the cost of getting a new mast shipped down to the Caribbean, new sails, rigging and all the various bits and pieces that added up to a very severe WTF moment.

When you think of it, the perfect cruising boat or cruising plan is one where you design out all the possible WTF moments which is why you do your research so you know what can cause those moments.

Our first real WTF moment way back when, was when we provisioned in France and I noted that just about all of the canned tomato products in France were actually from Spain, so while we provisioned to the hilt, we left tomatoes off the list as we were sure that since they came from Spain they would be cheaper than in France... When we got to Spain, not only did we find that tomatoes were way more expensive, it was almost impossible to buy them at any cost as apparently all of the canned tomatoes went to France. While not a WTF moment of the stature of sticker shock for a new rig and sails, it was still a WTF... and WTF moments are simply not good for the cruising kitty.

I'm lucky as I have been doing this boat gig for a whole bunch of years and I long ago learned to work on my skill set and tool inventory so I don't have to depend on people charging $75 and more an hour to do rather simple tasks. So, when I saw just how much a new stock rig would cost, I simply moved over to plan DIY which is still more money than I'd like but when the dust is settled my new mast (yes... singular and more about that later) will wind up costing less than the shipping alone for a new mast from Stateside.

So it does go...

The conundrum of boating education...

To say that I am not a huge fan of what passes for boating education these days is something of an understatement... But I'll be honest and say that I really don't have a clue on how it should be done other than making it a profit based paper chase would not do anything but make it worse.

Luckily, other brighter minds have given the subject some thought and a really good place to start might be "Saving Sailing" by Nicholas Hayes which makes all kinds of sense.

One of our favorite blogs "Zero to Cruising" is spending their winter taking a class or two in the frozen north and it has been interesting getting the perspective of a couple of motivated newbies who are more than ready to get cruising...

Lectronic Latitude yesterday also had an interesting take on boating education in their "Donzi Mayhem at Sam's"...

Like I said, I don't have a clue what the answer to the question is, but I do agree that some form of education is needful whether it be Dads teaching their kids or local community programs or some other format... I do know I'd love to hear what the Boat Bits readers think.

Cheap night vision...

I have a project in mind of a boat video nature where some passage making will be filmed and the ability to do some night vision POV shots would be handy... Now most of the video gear I use is pro but every once in awhile consumer stuff makes all kinds of sense. Especially in this case where the camera needs to be disposable and I have to buy a bunch of them.

The Vivitar 510 while having some problems in image quality (by pro standards) and a non optical zoom which for my purposes makes it a single focal length camera but even so a camera like this is very cool! In fact, I can even make the lower resolution image quality work for me to achieve a neat look.

Since it only costs $50 or so I can put a couple of these cameras in interesting places like the end of the bowsprit or the top of the mast and just leave them there to be triggered when needful... And, since they are only about $50, I won't get too depressed when I destroy them!

Fun stuff!

No boat content whatsoever...

Giving a whole new meaning to "Red-Neck"...

Less really is more...

I tend to get a lot of emails to the blog about what sort of gear to buy for various boats and most of my advice on the subject boils down to "Don't buy stuff unless you really need to".

But, just maybe, I'm not the guy to be giving this sort of advice because I simply don't enjoy spending money (remember I'm Mr Cheapseats) and, if a ten-year old piece of gear on the boat is working and fulfilling its purpose, the idea of replacing it with a newer piece of gear (albeit lighter/sexier/more featured) just does not compute.

For instance, the winches on "So It Goes" both date from 1969 when the boat was built. They work and will, no doubt, continue to work till the next millennium... So why replace them? I certainly don't need self-tailing or electric winches and while I really admire the stainless and lightweight Andersen winches, I just don't see saving a few pounds to be worth the large chunk of money involved, so the old winches are here for the duration.

On the other hand... I sure would like a new VHF and my AIS receiver is a first generation unit and just a bit clunky so the purchase of the new Standard Horizon GX2100 starts making some sense as it would give me a cockpit mounted VHF and AIS where I could actually use the information. As it stands now, both the VHF and AIS are inside and I simply don't use them most of the time. So it would seem that the GX2100 would be a good thing when all is said and done but you won't see me rushing out to get the first one in my corner of the Caribbean as I'll wait to see how the model actually fares in the real world (face it everything is perfect while it's vaporware) before I trundle down and buy one.

Anyway, to recap on the buying stuff for your boat advice thing...
  1. Don't buy it if you don't need to (and a pathological need to spend money does not count as NEED)!
  2. Wait and see how it really performs before you do buy...

Forks in the road... a couple of thoughts on boat design

Way back when we asked Phil Bolger about designing Loose Moose 2 for us, the process was we told him what we wanted and he asked a few questions then a couple of weeks later a few "cartoons" and misc plan bits showed up in the mail with what he thought we wanted...

This one was the one that resonated the most for us. I liked the look and the interior seemed to give what we desired more or less. Not perfect, but a great place to start from.

At the time we had Phil's Jessie Cooper design (Loose Moose) and, as much as we liked the balanced lug rig it sported, I had a lot of reservations about Phil's favorite rig the dipping lug. I wrote back to say that  we liked the cartoon mostly but maybe we should change the rig and how about going with a gaff rig? This, of course, was the first of several forks in the road that took us to what would become the actual Loose Moose 2.

The adage that hindsight is 20/20 is really only partly true, but in this case I'm pretty sure that the decision to go with the gaff rig, while not a mistake, was just maybe not the best of all possible decisions on my part.

I still don't think dipping lug was the way to go for us but what sort of boat would Phil have designed for us if I'd said instead of "let's try a gaff rig", I'd said "Let's try a balanced lug"? Sadly, it is no longer possible to go back and see where that line of thought would take us...

Bamboo fiberglass?

I really wish I had a little bit more time for playing guitar and building surfboards, which in my mind are just about the two most relaxing things around...

One of the hassles with board building is that these days the costs of getting blanks down to the Caribbean is simply silly expensive hence my interest in cunning board building systems like the cardboard cores and suchlike.

One company that has been on my radar for some time is  Greenlight Surfboard Supply who are into sustainable materials for surfboard building with a heavy emphasis on bamboo and earth friendly.

One of the carrots I'm holding out to myself for the after new mast and sails reward is building a new surfboard for myself and I am really looking forward to trying out Greenlight's Bamboo Fiberglass which is a very interesting product that may also have all sorts of uses in boatbuilding...

and we live in the tropics because...

Back when we lived in Europe we had a couple of winters that were pretty evil and I remember spending over a week on Loose Moose 2 frozen in on the Seine...

Scottish Highlander, one of the barges we represent in our charter business is having just such a spell of less than tropical weather...

Makes me want to make cocoa!

Sure cruising sailors are all nuts... then again?

The other day someone mentioned that "we" sailing boatfolk are some kind of nuts for giving up the 9 to 5 cubicle and sailing off to tropical paradises, spending our days doing the odd bit of boat work between frozen drinks served up by bikini (or less than bikini'd on the French islands) clad servers... The writer also mentioned my odd inclusion of posts relating to zombie apocalypse scenarios...

So call me nuts... but the news from stateside makes me wonder just how off kilter I may be...

In Lawndale California... The city apparently planted garlic plants all around the town to keep vampires at bay (shades of BUFFY!) "The only reason we had garlic put in was so we could keep the vampires out of town. And since we have had garlic I haven't seen one single solitary vampire in town."

Joe Lieberman is still the chairman of one of the most powerful committees and has not had certain egg-shaped body parts nailed to the doors of the Senate (maybe they should try GARLIC?)... Throw in the fact that they put the idiots who caused the current economic mayhem in charge of fixing things while giving themselves bonuses... Nah, that's not nuts!

On primetime TV you can watch a guy give himself a guano (bird crap) enema... Well sure, that makes all kinds of sense!

Cops feel so threatened by an epileptic having a seizure that they Taser him eleven times... I'm having a hard time sorting out if this is better or worse than Tasering a ten-year old or a great-great-grandmother...

So yeah, I might be nuts being here in the tropics where decent rum costs less than Coca-Cola, there is no snow (or zombies last time I looked) and I don't have to wear socks.

But since it's not snowing, I have some boat work to do just as soon as I have another Bushwacker...

Sea Shepard boat run down by whalers...

The Sea Shepherd vessel "Ady Gil" was rammed by a Japanese Whaler... For more info

On helping other boats... Color me nervous!

Yesterday we came back to the boat and noticed that a small power boat moored near to us looked a little out of place so we dinghied closer to see that in fact it was dragging and was very close to making contact with another moored boat...

We noticed another local boat had someone aboard so we went over to check whether they knew the owner of the boat and could give him a call to tell him his boat was walkabout. He didn't and suggested we call the local water police and they would come and sort it out in an hour or so...

I've never been much of a math wizard but looking at the boat's direction, wind and the fact that it would most likely hit a couple of boats within a few  minutes, and if not stopped by one of those boats then be on a reef in a half hour... Well, waiting an hour for someone to come seemed a little bit long!

So we dinghied over and towed it off the boat it was bumping and took it back to its mooring which was not much of a bother but the fact that we were nervous about the process says a lot about how much things have changed on boats.

Once upon a time it was normal to come to the aid of a boat in distress... But these days of a crazed legal system coming to someones aid is a bit scary as it is as likely to bite you on the butt and get you sued as it is having the owner of the boat you save buy you a beer for doing a good deed.

So it goes in 2010...

A really, really great anchor!

Right now we are anchored amidst a bunch of boats on moorings so can't have a lot of scope out. So the use of a second anchor to keep us from going bump at night when the wind shifts, is needful...

The second anchor in question is a Northill folding in stainless steel. Sadly, these are no longer made anymore, but if you ever come across one at a nautical flea market my advice is snap it up as they are one of the best anchors ever made!

While the design dates back to 1933, they came into their own during WW2 days. The Northill broke the mold as the first anchor that used clever design in place of brute weight.

The reason behind this is that the Northill folding was not actually designed for boats as such but instead were designed for the PBY flying boats where every ounce counted.

Being light at just a kiss over 12 pounds and the fact that they fold up but have holding power that matches most thirty-five pound anchors they do kind of rock. The icing on the cake, of course, is the fact that they are built of 316 stainless!

We mainly keep ours around as a kedge as being light, and it's folding action is tool-less (it just snaps open) so it is easy to deal with in a hurry and is dinghy friendly... What's not to love!

Someone gets it very right...

I try and keep the politics down to a minimum here on Boat Bits but every once in awhile it is needful to point you to someone who makes sense because sense these days is a pretty rare commodity...

Grow Up America

Just a day on the water...

The calm after the new year...

We have lots to do... Ordering the Douglas Fir and glass/carbon for the new masts... a roll of  sail cloth and bits for the sewing machine and a lot more epoxy!

Then it is setting up a spar bench and female mold for the strip planking... Actually a lot less work than most people think... then the actual making of the masts... Fun stuff!

In the meantime we are taking a little time to enjoy ourselves! Yesterday a bit of snorkeling in the anchorage checking the anchors and finding the location of a future dinner...

Sunday is for reading... "Pirate Latitudes"

Being something of a buff on the historical side of the age of piracy, books and films on things piratical are more likely to piss me off rather than entertain me and it is not unusual to hear the sound of book being thrown against bulkheads...

Not so much with the late Michael Crichton's "Pirate Latitudes" which mostly gets it right. No mean feat in a genre that mostly gets it wrong and where source material is more than likely to be an amusement ride in a theme park rather than history.

Speaking of getting facts right, this just may be the first book on pirates I have read that actually gets the boat stuff right...

Crichton has always been a writer who could make me turn pages and while I don't always agree with some political aspects of his work, I always still find it enjoyable as he tells a great tale and mostly gets his facts right.

I'm still reading this book. I've found I'm enjoying it so much that I find myself rationing the chapters. It's that good! Just the perfect book to read at anchor in St Croix while sipping the Demerara...

The list from hell...

While having a project list on a boat is just part of the gig, there is a point where it gets seriously like some work might actually need to get done.

The new masts, of course, are the big addition to the list and after that new sails to sew as well... Where it gets messy is the new masts require steps to be built and the deck areas require some serious beefing up. So far, still not so bad...

Well, except the CAL 34 has really big aft portlights which have been on the replace list, so maybe a good time to downsize a bit and since I'm beefing up the coachroof what better time to change out the portlights for smaller more robust ones and hey presto I can put two new wood/carbon beams and a demi-bulkhead in to reinforce the new mainmast partners...

Which, it would seem, impacts the galley area so what better time to finally install the new stove, move the sink and add a new icebox to the mix...

Which, of course, abuts to the battery area for the Electric Yacht drive... Some work waiting there for sure...

Which abuts to the Nav station which is going to need some rewiring... and as long as I'm messing with wire I just may re-install the SSB...

And so it does go...

Beats the hell out of shoveling snow or mowing the lawn!

Ultima thule...

I'm not 100% sure what a breakfast of coffee and Key lime pie portends for the new decade, but I have been giving it some thought.

One thing I know is that I'll be enjoying the process of making "So It Goes" new rig experiment work over the next few months... It will be interesting this time next year to see just what sort of sail that we have settled on. In the meantime, folks with CAL 34's should be afraid... Very afraid!

It's also about time to point "So It Goes" towards some places she has not been before... Not that I have a clue where that might be, but I do know it won't be the same old same!

Maritime Moose will be coming out with a few DVD's in the coming year and hopefully not your normal boaty thing but something that explores some new waters and hopefully brings a smile or three and just maybe really piss a few people off in the process.

I can't say it any better than Hunter S. did...

 "When the going get weird, the weird turn pro"


Let's all do what it takes to have a great new decade...

RLW

PS Let's start by bringing the troops HOME!