Classes started back up for the summer. While I am enjoying learning C, it does sadden me a bit knowing another summer is slowly dwindling as I’m sitting in class and at work. Fortunately for me, I already have a tiny bit of programming skill, and am already ahead of the class with my homework.

All this means I have some time to play with the boat. Molly and I tried out Orchard Lake in Lakeville a couple weeks ago, which was a nice little lake.

Who loves aviator sunglasses?

We do!

Why yes, I did change tack and hop on the deck just so Molly could get sweet picture of me looking all regal. Why do you ask?

I’ve also been back to Bush Lake a couple times. Mostly calm winds on both places. I need to find a better source of wind information, and also a better threshold on what constitutes “enough wind”.

For example, this is a snapshot from Google’s My Tracks, this trek of 0.3 miles just over 22 minutes to complete, with an average moving speed of 1.17 mph. Yowza.

Did I mention I have yet to install my oarlocks? Yeah. That needs to be moved up the priority list…

In addition to water time, I’ve been puttering with the trailer a bit. I dropped the stand-offs so the boat sits quite a bit lower on the trailer. It made no sense to have it up that high in the first place. Not sure what I was thinking when I did that. Here’s the new look:

The bottom now rests about 2″ from the trailer.

Also, you can see I added a couple rollers to the back of the trailer to ease the unloading and loading at the dock. Only used them once, and those have been a HUGE improvement. I wanted to make sure I could easily get it on/off there by myself, and these were the ticket.

I can slide them forward about 6″ and might tinker with that later to find the best position. For now, they work fine.

So, the rollers are a huge improvement, however, some damage had already been done to the hull. Mostly paint scrapes at the point. And while I intend to fiberglass the entire bottom of the hull, for right now, I needed to mitigate further damage.

Pretty scraped up. But she still holds water!

Ugly scrapes.

The solution was actually Molly’s idea, I think. I’d talked about various padding schemes I was cooking up, and she reminded me that we saw pool noodles at the Dollar Store. The price was right, so I picked up a few that matched the trailer and got to work:

Pool noodle, or trailer padding? I don’t care, they’re cheap!

Drew a line down the length. Believe it or not, this was straight when it was drawn on there.

Slicing it

Test fit. Kind of ugly, but it’ll keep the boat from slamming against the wood. I hope…

Zip ties are one of my favorite things ever.

Now that the trailer was slightly more accommodating to the boat, it was time to move onto some other things that needed love. First up: the leeboard. On the last few outings, it had lost a considerable amount of paint, and was starting to swell up. The plan: Strip off the paint, sand her down, and make it the first fiber-glassed piece of the boat. After taking off quite a bit of paint, and then wood, and making little progress. I realized I needed a different plan…

After a bunch of planing. Still a TON of paint that doesn’t want to let go.

A couple hours in, STILL more paint.

At this point, it became clear that no amount of planing, sanding, swearing, hoping, or crying was going to remove enough wood to allow the extra width of the fiberglass and epoxy coat. I made the original tolerances far too tight to begin with. And now I would pay for that sin…

While I was rocking out to some excellent boat building music: Why not make a NEW daggerboard that would better fit that space, and allow for the width of the glass? Good idea, me! So I sliced a couple of 10.5″ wide 1/4 ply sheets leftover from the duck, and glued like there was no tomorrow!

Glue is cheap. Don’t starve your joints.
Mmm. Titebond II, is there anything you cannot do?

Clamps, clamps, clamps!

Since a new rudder was in the works and I had to test out the epoxy I just picked up, I decided to forego the glass, and just epoxy coat the old rudder. Paint and all. Mostly, as an experiment. The hope is that it will set up correctly, and be water tight. This will give me a spare daggerboard, and I’ll learn a bit more about the properties of epoxy.

I totally forgot to put on gloves, and remember when I dripped on my hand. Vinegar to the rescue.

One side coated up. Extra special attention was given to the edges where water seemed likely to wick into the board.

That’s all I have for now. Need to get my nose into a programming book. More when it happens. (Or a few days later, which is usually the case.)