Other People's Teals.....

So, today I went out to Frenchtown Pond with the Pica and met up with James with the Blue Flower.  You don't really see much mention of Teal's really showing up in groups, but sometimes they do.

This time around we were looking at a lot of wind, with gusts up to 19 knots.  Not much in the grander scheme of things, but for Missoula it is an exceptional amount of air on the move.  James was already in the water with his gaff rig with jib(somewhere in the neighborhood of 65 sq ft); myself, I tied my reef in on my balanced lug (45 sq ft).  If a good gust presented itself, I could boogey quite well.  I might have run up the whole sail (67 sq. ft.) but I wasn't feeling too ambitious--not to mention that I still need to deal with the fact that my mast is a "hair" to short for the sail I have (bought on closeout from Polysail) http://www.polysail.com/

An excellent comparison of sail plans of the Pica (left) and Blue Flower (former Annas Discors) on the right.  Don't let that gaff rig fool you.

So, my sailing was rather lackluster, but it was fun, and I may well dropped the reef and gone all out, but my tiller extension gave up the ghost (broken screw eye), leaving me to drop the rig and row to the dock.  Phooey!

James came in at this point and suggested lunch, which struck me as a good idea. At lunch he complained about a problem his rig has always given him in heavy winds.  To wit: the problem would be that the boom would furl up against the mast in heavy wind.  He had such an event before I arrived, and had the hole in his main sail to prove it.   He knew he wanted a downhaul but, rather like me, hadn't gotten around to mounting it yet.  Still, he has fun with his boats and you can read about that here:  http://inlandpacket.blogspot.com/

Well, that's what rope is for.  Happily there was an eyelet in one location and sufficient projections on the mast in the other.  Not much later a boom vang in born.  Now oddly enough, James was generous enough (?) to suggest that I take the boat out.   He said the Blue Flower is touchy and edgy with the wind--well he was right.

I guess the first harbinger that this would be interesting was after I had cast off the dock  "You know, I always put up the sail at the dock........"  In all honesty, I found that rather lame, I always thought a person should be able to raise and strike a rig on the water.  I did get the sail up, but a person does need two ropes (throat and peak halyards) and the parrel beads merrily hung up on the bolts on the tabernacle.  With sail up, twas time to sail.

Now, a balanced lugsail is simple:  one sheet, one halyard, one sheet line.  The Blue Flower is not:  Two halyards for the Gaff.  A line for the boomed gaff, a halyard for the gaff and a downhaul for the jib.  Yeah, five lines to sail a boat... egad.  Now in light airs this would be a non-issue, as very little of it would require fiddling, not so today.

Once I got away from the dock, which typically has weak winds, I was moving along nicely.  I did not raise the jib but the wind was moving the Blue Flower along nicely.  I decided to test out the boom vang by trying the one maneuver that gave James such trouble--a straight downwind run.  I was not able to get the boom to pop up, though I knew it was going to rise up some, simply because I had no way to really apply tension to the vang.  The gaff sail pulled well enough, and I soon had the boat up to hull speed and a wake that looked like I had a motor.

It took a while to master how to tack with the rig, and in the process of doing that I had to "go around" on a tack, which brought me too close to shore, in a tight turn and with the wind on my stern quarter, over she went and well, blub blub.  Happily I was close to shore and able to get the boat ashore.  Also the air boxes on the Blue Flower seem to work better than mine on the Pica, so the boat took on less water.  After much happy bailing (with James watching after dealing with the Pica as a rowboat) I set out again, this time with the jib up, but the gaff scandalized.

I would not scandalize the rig next time as it did not seem to provide a great advantage and it hampered performance later on.   I  spent about another half hour tooling around the lake, crashing through shoals (fallen trees) and pushing the heeling limits of the Blue Flower without actually sinking it again.  Finally I made it back to the dock and gleaned a few things:

A stiff rudder is kind of handy.  Since the Blue Flower has cockpit coaming, tacks are easy (1) put the tiller over the coaming and let the boat come around (2) when the boat is almost through the tack, shift yourself across the seat thwart (3) take in the sheet to keep loose lines from causing trouble (4) pick up the tiller and let out the sheet once on the new heading.  After practicing, it get a whole lot easier.

The Blue Flower is a very sensitive boat.  Part of this is because you are seated on a thwart that is 6 inches off the floor.  The coaming also makes it hard to get out on the rail.  being 240 pounds is a benefit for that, but not everybody comes with built in ballast.

A great example of the "barn door" rudder on the Pica.  Contrast this to the low aspect rudder on the Blue Flower below.

 The rudder on the Blue Flower is light years different from the catboat style barn door on the Pica.  It certainly helps the Blue Flower have a healthy weather helm, but gaining steerage way is a bit of a challenge and between that and the wind direction (no wind pennant) led to a number of gybing turns to make a tack.  I did get better at it and that gives me reason to think that I might be wise to try a different rudder blade setup on the Pica.

So, all in all, a very rewarding day on the water.

Boom and Bust

Had the Pica out on Frenchtown Pond a couple weeks ago (perhaps I should post more promptly?) and the wind was very good.  Sadly is was winging out of the northeast, which creates weird wind shadow problems.  It was also gusty and fickle, which amplify sail shape problems

Problems?  Well, actually, when all is working well, the balanced lug I have on my Bolger Teal works great.  However, due to some construction shortcuts (no....) I have been bothered by my sails sometimes, and the most recent sail pointed this out in spades.  The main point of the problem is the outhauls slipping and causing the lead edge of the sail to bag, which makes the sail much more difficult to control when trying to point into the wind.

Just a note to indicate that outhauls provide tension to the top and bottom edges of a sail, and downhauls provide vertical tension against the halyard (in very general terms).   A great discussion of rigging a balanced lug, especially for performance, can be found in this article by Mik Storer at:  http://www.storerboatplans.com/GIS/GISRigging.html

Why would the outhauls slip?  Possibly because they are wrapped and tied around the end of the boom and yard with no cleats or eyelets or anything to hold them in a particular position, save friction.  If the knots remain undisturbed, things are great, but if something gets loose....look out!  Obviously if I had built the Pica to the stock plan, the leg of mutton sail detailed by Phil Bolger would have no outhauls and darned little fiddly rigging to hassle with.

Of course the Leg of Mutton (Spritsail) cannot be reefed either, and that seems like a bad idea if weather conditions can vary as much as they can locally. 

So, maybe it's time to deal with those slipping outhauls and wandering rigging by putting some cleats on the upper boom.  The lower boom gets by with a couple screw eyes to restrain the lines, though that should be upgraded somewhere down the road.   So the simple solution is to run down to the nearest chandler (brick and mortar or online) and pick up the required cleats.  Being a more frugal (cheap) sort, I elected to make them out of wood.  I've have other wooden cleats on the boat, so why not more?

At this point I can't point out photos of these beautiful little gems.  Okay, that might be pushing it, but I did make a pair of regular cleats for the outhauls on the upper boom, and a thumb cleat to limit the movement of the halyard.  Subsequent sailing has shown the problem to be remedied.  I'm posting this blog without pictures because I have another post to put up (and don't want to get all out of order).  However I will put up pictures shortly.

A Turning Point, the evolving rudder...

Who would have thought that sinking my boat would take the wind out of my blogging sails?  Egads.  The story is not over (not by a long shot.  I won't steer you wrong--in fact lets talk about steering!

When this boat was abuilding I don't really recall what Payson mentioned about rudder hardware. One thing though, there's darned little out there designed for a double ended (and pointy ended at that) sailboat.  It gets a little better when you have a real stem and stern (as exposed timbers--but those timbers are buried under plywood, so some sort of canoe rudder hardware is required.

Being cheap and not really seeing anything cheap and easy to procure, the first thought was:  why not make them out of wood.  Yes!  Wood gudgeons and wood pintles!  It is a wood boat after all, no?

Somewhere around this time, I had come across the Wooden Boat Forum, and in there, lots and lots and lots of photos of James McMullen's Rowan, an Ian Oughtred design called the Sooty Tern.  It certainly wasn't the boat I was going to build (being 19'--certainly not), but there were plenty of photos of construction details, including the rudder.  Well, the Rowan had nice cast bronze hardware, which I wasn't thinking I could replicate.  Still, good design is always an inspiration, and the idea of having flowing carved gudgeons in dark wood as brightwork against a white hull still strikes me as something really cool to attempt--with a proper bandsaw and sanders........  Lacking that certainly changed the outcome.



Wait though.  Wasn't the  Annas Discorse equipped with a rudder?  Of course, but the Annas Discorse also has a transom, a narrow one, but a transom just the same, and so was able to use much more common gudgeons for a flat surface.  A picture here will explain neatly:

From the Annas Discorse--note the transom end of the boat--not pointy.

 So, what resulted is sort of brute force gudgeons.  The pintles would probably qualify as brute force trauma--and the two were connected by dowels made from cut down broom handles.  Did it work?  Well... sort of ....   note the sort here.  A picture might be more interesting....

Even at this early point, this I think is the second time out, the wooden pintles were regarded as failures and replaced with "Payson Eyes" (large screw eyes).  The pins are dowels, with copper wire keepers.    

 

 

The wooden pintles just didn't work, the non-square pivoting of a sharpie end caused them to bind and frankly, they were really bulky and ugly--that blunt force trauma thing.  They were replaced with "Payson eyes", (ie, screw eyes).  They performed better, so long as the pins didn't get lost.  The gudgeons actually functioned quite well, for being sort of whacked out of tight grained 2 x 4 stock.  They stayed with the boat even after it was painted.  The misshapen rudder stock was ok, but rudder failures kept cropping up, and that takes all the fun out of going out on the water.  Time for a new plan....

Wooden Boat Magazine has a wonderful forum that is full of all sorts of interesting stuff. Even though the bulk of it is aimed toward traditional construction methods and larger boats, good design ideas and sound construction techniques are everywhere.   One of the threads I was reading involved rudders, and one photo (getting permission for it) posted by "Thorne" gave me a straightforward solution to making a decent pop up rudder.  Rather than having the blade of the rudder fit within the rudder stock "cheeks" why not have smaller cheeks that pivot with the rudder blade?  A picture of what I built:

 

 

Simpler, easier and, as a bonus, more effective!

Showing the rudder head, and the tiller extension.  Of course later it was suggested to have the tiller on the other side, which is where it still resides, though changing it (or breaking it down for storage, is simply a matter of pulling the pin and switching it.

The new design required changing to a push pull tiller, but that was ok, as I was tired of having the tiller handle sticking me in the back, and having to reach around to work it while sitting in the middle of the boat.  The rudder blade was recycled, but rather than use a rope tie down to keep it down, I decided to weight it with lead--handy when one has a hot metal pot built into an Intertype machine.....

So... what did I do about the pintles and gudgeons?  Will, I got lucky to find a set of stainless canoe gudgeons on Ebay, and later wound up buying pintles from Duckworks.  Of course the two didn't mate, as the gudgeon pins were too big, but I had access to a lathe and did machine them down, yielding a much handier setup.  It certainly took time to get used to the new tiller setup, and some really exciting gybes were the result, but I consider the new rudder a success, and it will likely remain with the boat for as long as it sails. 

Next time around, perhaps a look at the sails is in order, or the mast, it'll be one or the other.

When Things Go South

In many ways the construction of my boat is nearing the end--though there is plenty more to share here.  Still, even with the boat built, there's much more to be learned...sometimes in ways that I'd rather not.

One of the goals of the plan drift that I imposed on the Teal was to make it easier to recover from the inevitable capsize.  All boats can capsize, just that some are much easier than others.  The Teal is considered a fairly "tender" design, which means that it will let you know the wind is at it and, if you ignore that, let all the water from the outside in.  Blub, blub.

Well, while I was able to do some sailing this year, singlehanding was being strangely elusive (people seem to like riding in my boat).  Today (yes, a column written the day of the event!) the wind forecast looked good, with winds running about 10-15 mph and temps in the low 80's, pretty much gorgeous.  So, with the help of my son, I loaded up the boat and went out to Frenchtown Pond State Park.

There were a lot of people at the park, and I was using my old sail. which I has partially unrigged.  I launched after putting things together, navigated around all the kids crowding the dock and got far enough out to run up the sail.   About that time I realized I hadn't rigged things precisely correctly, so some fumbling about resolved that problem and I was off.

Frenchtown Pond is small, a measely 52 acre gravel pit that flooded.  In some ways that's a good thing, as it makes you have to think about your sailing, and also practice tacking, a lot.  The wind was blowing strong out of the northwest (it seemed and I could put on great bursts of speed.  I've modified my rudder steering from a tiller to a push tiller and I still need to get comfortable with the arrangement.  Still, was going good and got up to the far end of the pond when I was about to go on a reach across the pond and go around a fishing skiff that was at that end before a wonderful broad reach down the length of the pond (about a 1/2 mile).

Well, I must have gotten greedy and sheeted too much, because I caught a gust square on and before I know it, I am taking on water and pretty much sank!  Karma, I suppose.  Happily the water was warm.  Also good is that nobody was there to take pictures!  Even better was that the fisherman and his son were willing to render aid to help me get my Pica to shore.

In the course of this, I learned a lot of interesting details that will be applied in the future:

An ill fitted life-jacket is nearly useless to swim in.  It doesn't sound like much fun, but the darned things have to be near strait jacket tight to keep them from riding up or snagging lines.

Speaking of lines, since I went over on the lee side, I wound up getting tangled with my mainsheet, and it was somewhat disconcerting to get out of it, as some of the lines were getting up under my life jacket.  It made me understand why the old timers would carry a knife on them to cut themselves free.  Happily I didn't need to exercise such an option.

One thing I did right though--I did not panic.  Happily, neither did my son, who was watching from the shore and came over to where I was able to beach the boat.  Unhappily I must remind myself that I might have been better to abandon ship and not try to resolve it right there right then.

While I could right the boat with the mast and rig in place, each time I did so, the vessel was completely swamped.  I did release the halyard to bundle the sail, but this yielded no useful results.  It didn't help that the decks over the future airboxes were not watertight yet, so they flooded.  Next time (oh yes, there will be a next time) I'll have to see how the boat rescues if the mast is removed, as the boat did actually sit high on its side and without the mast may well have come out much drier.

Figuring out how to rescue the boat without it being awash would be nice in another way:  after I brought it to shore, it took a long time to bail the fooled thing out.  Perhaps I need a bigger (than l gallon) bailing bucket.  Needless to say, once I got it bailed out, I rowed back to the dock to pull out.  I didn't feel like trying my luck again--at least not til those air boxes are tight.

The Great Voyage--Part One

Let's go back in time, to marvel that it sure seems a lot longer than a year (and not even that) that I've had my boat.  So, to late September James and I went to Frenchtown Pond to fiddle about.  Wind was good but one of the rudder pins got loose and so we had to put back to port and call it good.  The intent, the next day, was to go to Finley Point State Park on the FIathead and see what would happen up there.  The rudder was repaired before setting out, of course.

So the next day, things are loaded up and off we go.  It's a beautiful indian summer day and in reasonable order we make it up to Finley Point.  While about to take the boat off the carp top, it came to notice that the leeboard was nowhere to be found.  What?  How can one mislay a leeboard--especially off a Teal (which is a 15" x 4 foot chunk of plywood)?


So, I indulge in the captains first prerogorative:  Blame the crew!  Suffice it to say, the crew denied any responsibility for the failure of items to be recovered (leeboard being left on the lawn where we loaded the boat at Frenchtown Pond.

This turned into a round and round debate and a question of what responsibilities does the crew have.  Of course the buck stops with the captain but if you intend to be on a vessel, I would say you should do whatever you can to ease the journey.   Rather like arguing angels on the head of a pin.

Some degree of hard feelings were running along, and since we were 60 miles from Missoula, there wasn't much to be done.   "Well, we could go out anyways", said James.   Ummmm, yea we could.  The lake was fairly calm and the wind was from the north at 5 mph at best.  At least we could see what happens, since we are here, and we have oars.  "Okay, we can try that," I said "What could go wrong?"

With that we set up the rig, loaded ourselves, lunch and a tool kit (duct tape and bailing wire, among other things), and finally rowed out of the marina and out into the lake.

Looking north from Polson Bay, past Finley Point (the Narrows) and into the main portion of Flathead Lake (look Ma! No Horizon!).  Finley Point is to the right, Little Bull Island at center, an unnamed isle next to it and Big Bull at the left.  Weather conditions this day are excellent.  The Flathead is a nifty inland sea.

The sail was run up and we seemed to make good progress from shore.  Winds were from the north at maybe 5 mph.  With two grown men in a Bolger Teal (load of probably 450 lbs) well, we weren't making great time, not at all.  "You know--if we jury rigged a leeboard, we might make better time..........."

Not sure whose idea this was, but it seemed like a good idea--at the time.  Well, there was a clamp, bungee straps and rope to be had... why not?  The work began in earnest.

Jury rig complete.   Yes, a real leeboard would be much more logical.

Somewhere toward the end of fiddling and getting this oar set up as a leeboard, I looked about and asked:
"Where's the other oar?"   Somewhere, in whatever we were doing, the other oar had jumped ship and drifted lazily off behind us--never to be found.  Hope somebody found it on the shore and got some use out of it.   The only saving grace was that it was the oar with a knot in it--but the prospect of having to make another oar was not helping my cheerfulness index--no, not really.  Good thing James knows lots of martial arts stuff and that it's really impractical to have physical combat in a 12 foot boat, well, I think it is anyway.  Suffice it to say, we got along well enough to continue--after all, where are ya going to go?

We were hoping we could tack and get towards Little Bull Island--the nearest one to Finley Point State Park.  Well a Teal with two guys in it is really a pig for what we wanted to do.  As we kept going, the wind finally dropped out with us roughly south-southeast of Big Bull.  We could make out the dock and boats belonging to the UM Biological station there.  We however, were a good quarter mile offshore, and not getting one foot closer to either island, as the wind seemed to desert us.

Still, it was a pretty day.

Looking southeast into Polson Bay.  The Mission Mountains march off in the haze.  Polson would be six miles distant on the right side of the photo.  By this point, we were making out way back.

We sat becalmed out in the middle, off of Big Bull for what seemed a while, but probably wasn't more than 20 minutes.  James, being one who reads lots and lots of nautical books and such, threw some bread crumbs on the water and lo! we were moving--albeit slowly.  He then made up a chip log to watch our pace, which wasn't blistering at all.  Part of the problem was that the jury rigged oar would turn enough to be a drag and keep us from moving much of anywhere.  Some adjustments later, we were on our way---slowly.

We finally did make our way back to shore and got back to Missoula.  I was able to retrieve my errant leeboard from the Fish Wildlife and Parks office, who informed me that some kids were using it as a skateboard ramp!  Well, all's well that ends well, and any voyage that brings you back to dry land is a good one!

A Little Paint......

   Well, Spring is finally sort of making an appearance.  The sun came out and temperatures finally creeped above the 40's.  Gee, it's almost May and the tulips haven't even bloomed yet!
  
   A couple days ago I finally pulled the tarp off the Pica and moved it over to the sawhorses/workbench.  There I realized I rather botched the "long winter's sleep department".

It wasn't really nice to look inside the boat and see this nice blush of mildew.  Curiously it didn't take on the floor or the bottom of the sides, on account of epoxy coatings there.

    Mildew, sure sign that I really didn't have the boat blocked off the ground well enough and moisture built up under the hull (upside down).  I will have to build higher bunks for next winter--as I suspect that this will happen whether the interior is painted or not.

    On the outside, more things pointing out that better storage is needed:

This is the view of the outside of the hull, and while the mildew is not as bad as the interior, there is still some checking and varnish failure.  Blue tarps just aren't that good.

  So... what to do?  Sadly, the mildew appeared the bloom under the varnish.  It also seemed to be the worst on the luan and somewhat on the plywood bulkheads.   Solid wood pieces were not affected, but that may be because there was either more varnish applied (varnish early and often--like voting).  It could also be that the plywood products did not present as tight a surface and so the varnish that was applied, just wasn't enough to fill the pores.   To note, the gunwales came through the winter in perfect condition.

  Not really sure what the mildew would do, or not do, but I wasn't too worried about the outside of the hull, as it was meant to be painted anyway.  To that end, I did some sanding the then painted it Rustoleum Topside Marine Paint.  Yeah, Rustoleum makes boat paint--with one caveat:  the paint is not meant to be submerged for long periods of time (over a week).  I don't think I'll have that problem, so I started by putting down a coat of primer.

   What a difference a coat of paint makes!   I didn't quite get it perfect (runs on one side) but those will sand out and I'm pretty confident I can make the finish coat look good.  Still not sure what to do with the interior as yet.   Much as I really want to get out onto the water, I really ought to get this done first.

 

 

It's a SAIL boat--

Well, some folks have the power of denying themselves gratification, but I'm just not that disciplined.  With the bull together, oars in hand and a mast raised, it wasn't much more to cut the sail and booms, figure something of the rigging and have that in order.  The leeboard and rudder--well they deserve their own stories (oh boy....).  Suffice it to say, time to take the boat out.

Frenchtown Pond State Park is a 52 acre flooded gravel pit, but is long enough and broad enough to make some decent sailing.  It's also the closest water to get to.  So, putting the boat on the car and trundling out with James (who brought his current 1 sheet skiff project, the Trudy C.) the challenge lay ahead, will it float? So, August 26 was the fateful day, and worked out to be a pretty good one.

Fiddling with the lines and not ready to sail anywhere, but it does float!

There was a decent breeze (anything around here rates as wind), and when I finally got the lines in order and the leeboard set--off I went!   As much as people complain that the Teal design is tender, I didn't find it that bad--certainly a whole lot more boat than a Harley 8!

And now we're sailing.  Oh so short lived--shallows ahead will not play well with the leeboard.

At the Pond, it's always into the wind to go west, and a true test of what a boat will do if you can get past the dock.  The Pica did that with ease and, as a bonus, tacked without stalling.  To say the least, it performs great.  There are no doubt boats that run rings around a Teal, but for starters this was pretty darned good.  Sadly, in not being mindful of lake conditions, and having made a really big leeboard, I eventually found that getting near the shore created problems.   After running the leeboard aground once, I was able to sail a bit more before it decided to fail when on a reach.  Even so, I was able to sail back to the dock.   Actually this was the first of many excursions, but one of only two with decent wind.  Well, lets me work on my rowing skills.