Non-Sailing Summer Adventures

Since starting this blog, I've been in the habit of sharing a couple of non-PocketShip photos of summertime activities, usually as a way of  explaining why more boat building wasn''t getting done.  Well, Solitude III may be done and on the water, but that doesn't mean that there aren't other fun activities to share.  So, here are some summer highlights:

Deck remodel...had been putting this off to focus on boat building!

The weather un July was outstanding, and the long days allowed fabulous after-work hikes, such as Bandera Mt

And weekends could be filled with longer excursions, like Grand Ridge in the Olympics...

...Blanca Lake in the Cascades....

...and even a fabulous multi-day trip across-the-Olympics hike to Enchanted Valley.

Then there was the epic roadtrip across the middle of the country...

...including St.Louis, MO...

....somewhere in South Dakota...

...somewhere more definite in South Dakota...

....where the buffalo roam (I have deer and antelope pictures too)...

...and Big Sky country.

Montana is pretty.  There are a couple of PocketShips being built in Montana, but I didn't stop to see them.

One more random hiking picture, courtesy of the Walt Bailey Trail.

A Round of Upgrades

During my first season sailing Solitude III, I made a number of upgrades, though I have to admit I didn't get nearly as far through my to-do list as I had hoped. But, every little bit helps.

Mainsheet cleat

I singlehand Solitude quite a bit.  With one hand on the tiller and one on the mainsheet, there are times that a singlehanded captain can find himself willing to give anything for another set of hands, at temporarily.  Like, for example, when said captain is out on an after-work cruise, and would like to eat the sandwich he brought for dinner!  Of maybe the jib needs tending.  Or a light jacket needs to be retrieved from the hinterlands of the cabin.  The PocketShip manual makes a big fuss about never cleating off the mainsheet in a small boat, though I suspect that this is to prevent a calls from yokels who cleat their mainsheets in a 25kts breeze, go below for a 10 minute nap, capsize, and then promptly call the designer asking why he didn't warn them.  Anyway, knowing that my judgement is a little better than that, I decided to install a cam cleat base for my mainsheet.  Now I can trim the sails.

The tiller clutch

GPS

Also on the workload-reduction front, I added a tiller clutch to my tiller.  This also provides a spare hand, especially when under power.  It has proven particularly useful when baiting my fishing hook.  :-) Rule #1 is that this doesn't get used at the same time as the mainsheet cleat.

One other project that has already proven immensely useful, despite being only half-done in the installation of the GPS.  I say half-done because the unit is also a depth sounder...I simply haven't installed the transducer for it yet.  I mounted the GPS to a wooden bracket that slips over the lip of the companionway.  The wire run from under the cabin sole, though they have yet to be neatly routed up to the companionway...like so many others, that is a project for another time.

Rigging a PocketShip

In response to several inquiries, both via email and on pocketship.net, I've put together a short tutorial video on how the quick and easy process of preparing a PocketShip for launch. Enjoy!

Fishing Rematch!

The heart of salmon fishing season is again upon us.  Last year, Solitude III's first engagement as a fishing boat yielded no results.  So, it was time for a rematch.

There are some pretty choice fishing grounds about 5 miles away from my usual boat ramp.  For a high-powered, fancy pants, aluminum fishing boat cruising at 20 kts, that's about a 15 minute run.  For Solitude III, it takes closer to an hour.  You want to be out early to get the fish, and with the longer passage time, I had to wake up extra, extra early.

To squeak out a few more minutes of sleep, I decided to launch the night before and pay for a night's guest moorage. It was a pleasant evening, and after I had the boat on the water, I scampered around the cockpit, working on a few projects that I had been putting off, including installing a tiller clutch and wiring up my GPS/sounder unit. I still haven't taken the big step of cutting a hole in the bottom of my boat to install the transducer for the sounder yet, but at least I now have GPS capability.

I rolled out of bed a little before 5:00am the next day, and headed down to the boat, and set off. Boy, was it ever foggy. Visibility was in the 1/4 mile to 1/2 mile . I didn't know that it was going to be foggy when I was wiring the GPS the night before, but it was fortuitous that I did, because without it the adventure would have ended before the boat left the dock.

Guided by the dim light of the glowing GPS, I plunged forth into the pre-dawn mist. It was a little eerie out there. I took a course that was well off the straight line to try to put some distance between myself the the steady stream of fast fishing boats racing out (in some cases at faster-than-safe speeds). It was very instructive to try to steer for a while on gut feel and then check my course against the GPS; there is a good reason to rely on your instruments in the fog. Maybe the tensest part of the affair, though, came when I had to cross the ferry lanes at Mukilteo. When under way, the ferries would blow their horns every few minutes, but figuring out exactly where they were in relation to me was impossible. In the end, I simply waited well away from the ferry lanes until I was sure that the boat had passed.

Finally, I arrived at the happy fishing grounds. I dropped my line and settled in. It was quiet, and just a little eerie; the sea was still and dense fog still enveloped the world, creating the illusion of an infinite, featureless world. Occasionally, other fishing boats would flit in and out sight.
I fiddled around with lures, speeds, and snacks (I have found that the key to making fish bite is to snack on the right thing). I wasn't getting any hits, but reassuringly, I'd occasionally see a fish roll or jump near me! The fog lifted at noon. I finally could see the other boats around me, and there were quite a few! And then it happened...wango, wango, wango went my fishing rod...fish on! Unfortunately, in my excitement, I horsed it a little too much and knocked the fish off. I sent my line back down and within three minutes I had another one on. This time, there was no escape, and soon a 4lb pink salmon lay in the cockpit, destined to thrown on the BBQ later in the day with some garlic, lemon and butter. Oh yeah.

Photo Bombed

I am always on the lookout for ways to get new and different photos to support these blog posts.  Pursuant to that goal, on a recent after-work sail, I set about playing around with a feature on my camera that lets me control the shutter from my phone.

I waited until the sun was going down, set up the camera on a tripod on a deserted section of dock, got the phone and camera talking to each other, hopped in the boat, got the sails up, and set up for a beauty pass. The strength and direction of the wind was perfect for my purposes, filling the sails majestically as I set up on a reach for my run past the camera. My finger was on the trigger as Solitude entered the frame. Just then, out of nowhere, a stupid little plastic motorboat came out of nowhere, pulled up right between Solitude and the camera. Not wanting to ruin my opportunity at the shot, I spilled the wind from my sailed and tried to slow down enough for the stupid little plastic motorboat to get out of the way. But the yokels in the stupid little plastic motorboat decided to slow right down too. They finally drifted past me, just as I was sailing out of the frame. Giving up, I sheeted in the sails, snapped a photo (just because), and bore away to make another pass. Unfortunately, the camera's batteries had started out low, and by the time I got back into position, they were done for. So, that stupid little plastic motorboat had robbed me of my chance of getting the shot that day. Oh well, there's always next time.   

Imagine what this shot could have been with proper composition and no stupid little plastic motorboat.

Love Me Tender, Volume IV



You never know when it's coming, but you know it's coming.  It's the boat building disaster.  Every boat construction project has one: a mistake, slip, error, or accident of such  magnitude that is appears that there is no way to recover, at least not without hours upon hours of rework and substantial expenditure of additional funds.  Coping with this moment is the true test of a boat builder's skill, ingenuity and emotional resiliency.

I managed to finally get up the gumption to get out and do the sanding that I wanted to get done before stitching together the hull of my Eastport Pram.  My motivation level shot up, as I could now enjoy that single most rewarding part of stitch and glue boat building, stitching, where in just a few short hours the hull of a boat emerges from a pile of plywood. 

Indeed, I quickly stitched the first set of planked to the bottom.  It was getting a little late in the evening, but I figured I would spend a few more minutes and get the added boost of getting the second set of planks started.  That's when I noticed it.



The rabbet should have been where my finger is.
But it's not.

John C. Harris, owner of Chesapeake Light Craft, designer of the Eastport Pram, and author of the very fine set of instructions that comes with the boat, issued stern warnings about this, and I sure tried to heed those warnings.  Yet something went wrong.  You see, the Eastport Pram is what Chesapeake Light Craft markets as a "lap stitch" boat, in other words a stitch and glue boat that has the appearance of a lapstrake boat when it is done.  To accomplish this, a rabbet is cut into one edge of each plank.  However, this rabbet has to be along the right edge or the whole thing doesn't work.  And somehow, despite all the warnings in the instructions and in the plans about very carefully marking which edge gets the rabbet, I cut it wrong on the second set of planks.  Don't ask me how.
So, how did I deal with it?  Did I collapse into a piteous pile of despair?  Or, did I rise to the occasion in a solid display of boat building fortitude?

I despaired.



"Inlaying" wood in the bad rabbet.

All fixed up!

Then, I pulled myself together, and contemplated the various possible courses of action.  The first natural instinct of any boat builder is find recourse in epoxy, and indeed the very first thing that came to mind was to somehow fill the old rabbet with thickened epoxy and cut a new one.  This idea was quickly discarded however, as the practical question arose of how that much thickened epoxy would take to later being bent into a boat-like shape.  I also though about just cutting the new rabbet at leave then old one, though this got thrown out on both its aesthetic and structural implications.  Next idea...more plywood, cut new ones, increase total cost of materials some 20%.  OK, how about this one...find some 1/8" thick (the depth of the rabbet) color-contrasting wood, cut it to the right shape and inlay it in the old rabbet.  With any luck, it might even look intentional.  We have a winner.

A Little Matter of 20 Cents

I received an letter in the mail the other day from the Port of Edmonds.  Though I had stayed at the Edmonds marina on my first cruise, I couldn't imagine any reason that they'd want to send me a letter.  Did they lose my payment?  Were they angry with me about my liberal interpretation of the "Reserved" signs on the guest dock?  Were they thanking me for all the fame and fortune that my visit brought them?  I hurriedly opened the letter and found this:

Two dimes taped to an invoice.  When I registered at the Edmonds Marina, the moorage fee for Solitude III came out to $19.80.  As I had arrived after the port office closed, I enclosed a $20 bill with my registration card into the after-hours drop box.  I can't say I really cared about the 20 cents that I overpaid, nor was I expecting to get change! 

What I find particularly interesting is not that they returned my 20 cents, but that they spent 46 cents for postage to send it to me!