Really... as in like ready to go anywhere you care to point it tomorrow.
Even better it schoons!
Need I say more?
Check it out.
Read More..
Even better it schoons!
Need I say more?
Check it out.
Anyone looking for a turnkey cruising boat?
| 0 comments |Labels: Boat buying, Junk Rig, Sweet rides
a quick thought on a fragile infrastrucure...
| 0 comments |Labels: Cruising grounds, Provisions, Thought
Just an Earth Bound Misfit points us to a new low, a needful read, and so much for higher education for profit in my book...
Yesterday I went shopping and I couldn't help but notice some stuff that didn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense...
For instance:
Octopus was on sale but it was from Indonesia, there was salmon at a good price but it came from Russia. No lobster anywhre but there was crab from Alaska.There were potatoes but they were from Idaho and apples weren't on sale but they were nice and came all the way from the Yakima Valley in Washington state....
I could be boring and go on but the bottom line was that I simply could not find anything in a well stocked Caribbean grocery store that had not traveled at least two thousand miles for me to buy.
Just something to think about...
Listening to Brandi Carlile
So it goes...
Read More..
Yesterday I went shopping and I couldn't help but notice some stuff that didn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense...
For instance:
Octopus was on sale but it was from Indonesia, there was salmon at a good price but it came from Russia. No lobster anywhre but there was crab from Alaska.There were potatoes but they were from Idaho and apples weren't on sale but they were nice and came all the way from the Yakima Valley in Washington state....
I could be boring and go on but the bottom line was that I simply could not find anything in a well stocked Caribbean grocery store that had not traveled at least two thousand miles for me to buy.
Just something to think about...
Listening to Brandi Carlile
So it goes...
Something you might want to watch...
| 0 comments |Labels: Media
How the news on your TV and reality are not always the same, a good point being made, and a politician admits he made some real mistakes...
Small is Beautiful: A Tiny House Documentary - Trailer from Jeremy Beasley on Vimeo.
Listening to a bunch of really good music
So it goes...
Read More..
Small is Beautiful: A Tiny House Documentary - Trailer from Jeremy Beasley on Vimeo.
Listening to a bunch of really good music
So it goes...
Then again he wasn't building a shrine...
| 0 comments |Labels: Boat Design, Boatbuilding
A trend on the way out, some riveting reading, and, just maybe, we might want to pay some attenion to the science...
When I was a kid I spent a lot of time watching a friend of my father's build a boat. A troller to be exact.
What really impressed me at the time was the fact that the builder didn't have a "plan" but was building more by "feel".
He'd set up his building space and a strongback of sorts and then added a single mold more or less in the middle of it and, for a couple of weeks, I'd watch him move the mold a couple of feet either way but mostly he'd just sit in a chair and look at the single mold sitting forlornly on the strongback...
I suspected my dad's friend was a little nuts.
Then, one day in a great flurry of enterprise, the single mold was joined by another mold that looked suspiciously like a transom on one end and a piece of 3 X 10 pine on the other. The following day there were a couple of long 2 X 4's as well... Things, as they say, were becoming interesting.
The day after, it seemed he was back to the moving the central mold a foot forward then back again two-step but he'd also taken an axe to the 3 X 10 and taken off some wood to form a rough but fair curve. A couple days later I woke up to find the transom, central mold, and the 3 X 10 were now connected by several 2 X 4 battens. The shape was beginning to look like the skeleton of a boat...
Then all hell broke loose... All of a sudden there was a near constant cacophony of boat building noise and everyone woke to the sound of saws and hammers. I remember for a couple of weeks the last thing I'd hear every night was the rasp of a plane...
A couple of weeks later there was a real honest to goodness boat in the guy's back yard. All in all it took a couple of months for a fiftyish-year old guy with hand tools to singlehandedly build a 42-foot troller which he proceeded to fish commercially day in and day out for the next twenty years or so.
I mention this mainly because it's easy to forget just how simple boat building really is.
Oh, and by the way...
It was a really pretty boat.
Listening to Richard Thompson
So it goes...
Read More..
When I was a kid I spent a lot of time watching a friend of my father's build a boat. A troller to be exact.
What really impressed me at the time was the fact that the builder didn't have a "plan" but was building more by "feel".
He'd set up his building space and a strongback of sorts and then added a single mold more or less in the middle of it and, for a couple of weeks, I'd watch him move the mold a couple of feet either way but mostly he'd just sit in a chair and look at the single mold sitting forlornly on the strongback...
I suspected my dad's friend was a little nuts.
Then, one day in a great flurry of enterprise, the single mold was joined by another mold that looked suspiciously like a transom on one end and a piece of 3 X 10 pine on the other. The following day there were a couple of long 2 X 4's as well... Things, as they say, were becoming interesting.
The day after, it seemed he was back to the moving the central mold a foot forward then back again two-step but he'd also taken an axe to the 3 X 10 and taken off some wood to form a rough but fair curve. A couple days later I woke up to find the transom, central mold, and the 3 X 10 were now connected by several 2 X 4 battens. The shape was beginning to look like the skeleton of a boat...
Then all hell broke loose... All of a sudden there was a near constant cacophony of boat building noise and everyone woke to the sound of saws and hammers. I remember for a couple of weeks the last thing I'd hear every night was the rasp of a plane...
A couple of weeks later there was a real honest to goodness boat in the guy's back yard. All in all it took a couple of months for a fiftyish-year old guy with hand tools to singlehandedly build a 42-foot troller which he proceeded to fish commercially day in and day out for the next twenty years or so.
I mention this mainly because it's easy to forget just how simple boat building really is.
Oh, and by the way...
It was a really pretty boat.
Listening to Richard Thompson
So it goes...
Now this is interesting...
| 0 comments |Labels: Boat Systems, DIY, Projects, Sustainable systems
A drought problem I suspect you were unaware of, some battery news, and the stupidity it burns...
Listening to some Bj�rn Ulvaeus (ABBA) covers
So it goes...
Read More..
Listening to some Bj�rn Ulvaeus (ABBA) covers
So it goes...
in the a "lot more sustainable" department
| 0 comments |Labels: Boatbuilding, Epoxy, Materials, Surf., Sustainable systems
A needful voice in the mix, just ripples in a pond, and a question we should all be asking...
Maybe boatbuilders should pay attention...
SURFBOARDS FOR A SHARED PLANET from erik derman on Vimeo.
Listening to Zella Day
So it goes...
Read More..
Maybe boatbuilders should pay attention...
SURFBOARDS FOR A SHARED PLANET from erik derman on Vimeo.
Listening to Zella Day
So it goes...
a matter of seaworthiness...
| 0 comments |Labels: Bluewater, Catamarans, Sailboat design, Scow, Seamanship, shoal draft
In the "hardly surprising" department, this really says a lot, and some needful reading...
I was recently looking at the study plans for one of Reuel Parker's boats, a scow as it happens, and there was a comment by Reuel that got me thinking...
Listening to She & Him
So it goes...
Read More..
I was recently looking at the study plans for one of Reuel Parker's boats, a scow as it happens, and there was a comment by Reuel that got me thinking...
"Scows are not considered seaworthy types, although they can make coastal trips and island passages."
The thing about seaworthiness is it's a pretty fluid concept at best and, in most cases, something of a gray area being dependant on many factors. Which means that one person's seaworthy vessel may seem like a floating death trap to another. Having crossed seas with an internally ballasted shoal draft sharpie that drew eighteen inches, I used to have this pointed out to me on a regular basis...
That said, scows of the traditional sort are not seaworthy in the same sense as a keel boat with external ballast. For starters internal ballast is not very good at righting a fully capsized hull and if that's going to be your main criteria of seaworthiness a scow may actually seem somewhat lacking...
Just like a modern catamaran.
Seriously, if you applied the same thought process that makes a scow unseaworthy to just about any production cat currently being built today you'd have to come to the same conclusion... Catamarans are unseaworthy.
You might want to think about that for a moment or two...
Which does not mean that I think all modern production catamarans are unseaworthy (just some) or that a traditional scow is either. Just that they are both different in ways you should be aware of.
Like I said before, seaworthiness is a pretty slippery notion and depends much more on the person sailing a boat rather than the actual design. Sailing a traditional scow has a lot more in common with sailing a catamaran than it does with an externally ballasted monohull...
So, would I consider sailing Reuel Parker's scow across an ocean?
Sure I would. Then again, before I did I'd sail it a lot, practice deploying a parachute sea anchor/heavy weather tactics, and sort out the best way to hove to with the board up because I'm not real keen on surprises further offshore than I care to swim towards land. Of course, anybody considering a trans-oceanic passage would do the same no matter what sort of boat they intended to cross with..
Right?
Listening to She & Him
So it goes...
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