Yeah, this boat would certainly work for me...

Why I can't vote for the President of the US of A, some needful reading, and the death throes of anchoring in the sunshine state...

So, a while back I was talking about a scow schooner that Tad Roberts was working on and, lo and behold, it's no longer vaporware and it even has a price... This, my friends, is some kind of goodly thing.

The new design goes by the name of Laura Cove and it shoehorns an amazing amount of livability into it's 28 X 8 foot envelope... A scary amount as it happens because, comparing it to my CAL 34 (33.5' X 10'), I'm pretty sure it has as much usable space and stowage with somewhat better livability.

Just think about that for a moment...

I won't even go into the fact that with it's draft of 15" (yes inches) you can almost always find an out of the way place to anchor which is something I see as an important feature with the growing anti-anchoring mind set in a lot of places.

Then there's the rig (which I'll be going into some serious depth on in the near future) and you know how I feel about balanced lug but the short form is it's cheap, simple, and powerful so makes all kinds of sense. For those enamoured of the junk rig (not as cheap, simple, or powerful but it does reef easier) that works as well.

As far as costs go, a boat like this would not cost a lot in materials ($8-10K) and labor would work out to somewhere between 600 to 1200 hours of industrious productive work (we don't count the time you sit staring at your pile of fifty sheets of plywood or daydreaming as productive work). So, a finshed boat ready to leave the dock to go cruising for $15K would be very possible... Possibly a lot less if a group of builders got together and went the co-op route for needful stuff.

I'd color that affordable.

The only area I find a bit problematic is the size of the cockpit which is only four feet long. That said, our Jessie Cooper and LM2 both had cockpits that were right around four feet long and I don't recall ever having an issue at the time but, compared to the uberlong cockpit of the CAL 34, it would require a bit of readjustment.

This boat would make a great cruiser for a lot of people... I could certainly live with it.

More about it over at Tad's website.

Listening to a bunch of Paul Simon covers

So it goes...

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On not being a true believer...

Pretty much says it all, dumb as a bag of hammers, and in the "paid administrative leave" department...

I apparently cause some folks problems where rigs are concerned. My crime being that I find merit in a lot of different rigs which in today's "there is only one true path" mindset world is considered a heretical sin of a high order.

For example, I don't get on very well with folks enamoured of the junk rig. That being said, I do happen to think junk rig makes a lot of sense and, while I'm a member of the JRA (you really should be as well), I just don't quite fit in because I don't fall into the idea that the junk is the "BEST" rig religious fervor party line. My take on the rig is that it's certainly a good rig and, in some cases a "best" rig for someone's particular circumstance but, like all rigs, it is far from perfect.

The balanced lug rig, which you probably know happens to be my favorite rig and far and away more powerful and cost effective than the junk, is still far from being a perfect rig. I love the rig but I'm not going to embrace the rig with a religious ecstasy that blinds me to it's disadvantages or other rigs good points...

Comparing the two, I have to admit I feel the balanced lug makes more sense if you honestly compare their strengths and weaknesses. But more about that another day...

I could go on with any number of sail types and rigs... gaff, Bermudian, wingsails, etc, which all have their strengths as well as weaknesses, but you get the picture...

The real truth of the matter is all rigs make sense in most situations and not so much in others. Not addressing this fact is counterproductive to getting the most out of whatever rig you happen to have or are thinking about using. The bottom line being that the more you know (spelled s-a-i-l-e-d) about all of the available rigs out there the better off you'll be.

Listening to 6 String Drag

So it goes...

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The power of negative input...

A little worthwhile reading, some stuff you need to know about, and something worth a listen to from Jay FitzGerald...

Way back when I was building our first Loose Moose (a Phil Bolger 'Jessie Cooper" design), I expected a certain amount of hassle of the negative input variety... Hey, it was an "Odd" boat and not what most people think a boat's supposed to be like.

The thing is what I did not expect is how easily seeds of doubts planted by others tend to take root and grow like Kudzu if you're not paying attention.

A good example of bad seeds growing out of control was the mainmast... The Jessie Cooper design has a free standing mainmast with a balanced lug rig and this seemed to bother a lot of the folks who visited the build site because...

1. The mast did not have standing rigging
2. The mast did not have a track
3. The main halyard had a simple sheave at the masthead which was considered insufficient
4.  It was wood

The seed of doubt that took hold and kept me up nights was the issue people had with the simple sheave ... People thought that since the sail had both a yard, a boom, and a chunk of sail area that I'd never be able to raise the sail without significant added mechanical advantage in the form of more blocks and a winch.

So as the seed grew into a bush of doubt, I found myself looking at winches and other various schemes to add a six-part purchase to the top of the mast. This, of course, slowed down the work effort and distracted me from stuff I should have been doing...

Worse, now that I had decided there just might be a problem with the halyard sheave all of a sudden anytime someone pointed out a possible problem/issue, which anyone who's ever built a boat knows happens daily, I found I was much more receptive to allowing it to take root.

One morning I woke up to find I thought the whole boat sucked... Not exactly the sort of mindset you want in the home stretch three weeks before you launch your boat.

Since I really had to finish the boat I put the doubts on hold with the resignation that "I'll just finish the sucker and then redo the mast after" .

Once on the water with the boat floating right side up I felt a lot better. So I stepped the mast, rigged up the sail, and, fully expecting disaster, proceeded to raise it. No problem at all and the sail, and yard zipped up the mast faster than the proverbial greased pig..

All that worry for an issue that never really existed.

That said, some of my friends who had issues with the weight of the sails, yard, and boom all had boats with masts that had tracks and even with big winches they had to huff, puff, and strain to get their mainsails up. In most cases, sail track adds an amazing amount of friction to the equation and that's why everyone thought my simple sheave arrangement would not work. They were used to all of that friction that the balanced lug simply does not have and I was stupid enough to listen...

Listening to the Rolling Stones

So it goes...

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Ripping it up...

Ten things you should know, a little needful backstory, and G&T making a good point...

I'm in the middle of a project so here's some Paradox and balance lug wonderfulness to watch.



Listening to KT Tunstall

So it goes...

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