US coverage of the race has been slight, but now The Amazing Race host and producer
Phil Keoghan is planning to cover it in a new reality series. The Hollywood Reporter noted Phil’s interest in the project:

Exodus Film Group has secured North American rights to an upcoming series based on the Velux 5 Oceans race, where skippers risk their lives to sail around the world on racing yachts. The race spans nine months.

“Extreme adventure sports have been captured many times, but what makes this race so unique is the world’s best sailors will take on the unforgiving oceans alone,” Keoghan said. “This is a fantastic opportunity to share a physical and mental challenge that will test competitors beyond what seems humanly possible and at the same time highlight the planet’s awe inspiring oceans.”

The project hasn’t been picked up by any network yet, so no broadcast dates are set.
 

After his recent relocation to La Conner, WA from Kansas, Bill is eying the waters around the San Juan Islands with a sailor’s anticipation. Bill’s no stranger to living in a sailing paradise; he grew up in San Diego and started sailing there in high school.

Image from “Visit the San Juans“

Bill’s site will be especially interesting to anyone struggling with the idea of building a boat that is too large for their shop. His approach is to build as much as he can in a modular fashion, starting with things like the rudder, centerboard and masts, and then progressing to going 3-D.

From Bill Ginn’s Sharpie Diary Building Blog.

While he describes himself as having “average” skills, his Building Blog makes those of us from the hack and splooge school of boat building wish we had taken a bit more care.

It will be interesting to see Bill’s Princess Sharpie 26 take shape. Add his Building Blog to your bookmarks or RSS reader today!

Notes: The Princess Sharpie 26 is designed by B & B Yacht Designs. The B & B Yacht Designs support forum is found here on messing-about. Bill Ginn’s website, as well as the B & B Yacht Designs website, are hosted by messing-about.com Hosting Services.

The Lake Pepin Messabout is a regional gathering all those who build or love home-built boats. That includes canoes, kayaks, sailboats and powerboats. Admission is free.

Just like last year, the messabout will be at beautiful Lake Pepin, on the border between Minnesota and Wisconsin.

The high cliffs and woodlands surrounding the lake create a beautiful boating site. The lake is huge, and absorbs lots of boats, so there’s no crowding. The sailing can be adventurous, and you’ll see some wonderful boats cruising the area. Don’t worry about the current. It’s a non-factor since the lake is so big.

The site outlines the accommodations available (tent and RV camping, marinas and motels), other activities such as a Boater’s Swap Meet, and the public ramps available for day trippers.

Lake Pepin is huge; at 22 miles long and 2 miles wide. More about Lake Pepin:

Lake Pepin is a naturally occurring lake, and the widest naturally occurring part of the Mississippi River, located approximately 60 miles downstream from Saint Paul, Minnesota. It is a widening of the river on the border between Minnesota and Wisconsin. The formation of the lake was caused by the backup of water behind the sedimentary deposits of the Chippewa River’s delta. It has a surface area of about 40 square miles (100 km2) and an average depth of 18 feet (5.5 m), which makes it the largest Lake on the entire Mississippi River.

Featured in the Laura Ingalls Wilder book Little House in the Big Woods (part of the Little House on the Prairie series), Lake Pepin is also home to the legendary lake monster Pepie. Because Lake Pepin is about the same size as Scotland’s Loch Ness, Pepie is rumored to be a close cousin of the Loch Ness Monster. If Pepie is of Scottish heritage, it is an early immigrant having been first spotted in 1871.

Boat builders are fiercely independent and often courageous, characteristics often attributed to Grog. Nevertheless, messing-about.com has investigated and found that no boat builder has been harmed by Pepie. So far. messing-about is offering a special reward — free registration in our forums — for any evidence found of Pepie during the messabout

While the advantage ebbed and flowed in the prestart and in the first few minutes of the first leg, the challenger USA overcame a 650 meter deficit and passed Alinghi just 15 minutes into the first race of America’s Cup 33. From there, the Americans never looked back. It’s 1-0 in a best-of-three match.

America’s Cup Coverage from Cup Watch

The 33rd America’s Cup has been the subject of extensive court action and litigation surpassing in acrimony even the controversial 1988 America’s Cup. Since the two parties were unable to agree otherwise, the match will take place as a one-on-one Deed of Gift match[2] in gigantic, specialized multi-hull racing yachts with no other clubs or teams participating. The litigated issues included which club would be the Challenger, the dates and venue for the regattas, certain rules governing the regattas (in particular the measurement rules), and the construction of the boats.

The Wikipedia article contains more of the sordid details, including the formation of a non-sailing yacht club intended solely to keep the competition in the waters off Valencia, Spain. The winner of the last cup, Switzerland’s Société Nautique de Genève (SNG), accepted the challenge from the newly formed “yacht club”. After court challenges, the Golden Gate Yacht Club of San Francisco, California, was declared the rightful challenger over the Spanish group.

Garry Hoyt's patented Offset Rig

As Gerry explains on his web page:

The fundamental difference of this patented rig is that both the boom and the horizontal gaff are carried out to the side of the mast by a special offset arm. This provides a totally clean leading edge to the mainsail, free of the windage interference of the mast, which penalizes the performance of conventional mainsails.

This offset arm also allows the forward projection of both boom and gaff ahead of the mast, creating a balanced rig that enables easier trimming in the same way that a balanced rudder enables easier steering. The Offset Rig also delivers an important new safety feature by significantly softening the force of the jibe. The approximate 20% of the sail area that is carried ahead of the mast acts as a brake by slowing the swing of the sail across the boat during the jibe.

Garry Hoyt's Illustration of the Offset Rig

The HOR will work on any sailboat hull, but care must be taken to position the mast, boom and gaff so that the sail’s CE (center of effort) is correctly related to the CLR(center of lateral resistance). Also, the free standing mast of the HOR requires extra strengthening at the deck partners and mast step. For all these reasons, I am reluctant to encourage amateur installation at this stage because improper installation could penalize the concept. Therefore, I prefer to initially concentrate on new construction with the involvement of professional builders and designers.

A Cute Little Dubber

Peter Hunt, not Lying about Fish

Narrow Top "Whaleback" Design

If you are over about 160 – 170 pounds you should definitely consider building the Bigger Dubber; however, if you weigh up to 180 pounds and lightness and portability are overriding demands (and you are careful using it on protected water) you can go with the Little Dubber. For people over 180 pounds, I recommend the Bigger Dubber (or a diet).

Plans, page 9

The plans booklet, 76 pages and generously illustrated, is very readable. Peter’s wry humor is sprinkled thoughout, and every imaginable question a new builder might pose is anticipated and answered. He provides a list of the tools he uses when he builds a Little Dubber, which is full of items you don’t actually NEED (pencils are listed several times, because you always lose them). But the real tool requirements are basic hand tools and, in the power arena, a jig saw and drill. He recommends a table saw for ripping some trim to 1/2″ and 1/4″ square, but allows that for this one operation, you can probably impose on a friend who has a shop. If you have a woodworking shop already, you have the tools you need.

The Little Dubber Plans

Example of the Generously Illustrated Pages

I estimate it would cost $300 – $400 to build a Little Dubber using 2000 prices. Less if you already have some of the materials lying around.

In July, 2009, Southport Island Marine commented that they build the Dubber to spec for customers, and are planning a lower-cost production version in fiberglass. We’ll feature the new fiberglass model in a story here on messing-about, as it promises to be an economical alternative to hand-built wooden versions.

Now, what about that name? Peter’s friend Sandy, upon seeing the first one, said “What a cute little Dubber!” His marketing research for a suitable name ended at that point, and the design was dubbed the Little Dubber.

I emailed Peter prior to writing this article, to let him know the Little Dubber plans would be reviewed on our new web site. At that time, he didn’t have a web site set up yet, but now he does: go to the Little Dubber Page at his KayakDesigns.com site to see more about purchasing the plans.

Somewhere out there folks are building and paddling Little Dubbers, and we’d like to talk to them. I will build my Little Dubber (well, the Bigger Dubber actually, because that “diet” thing is out) and report on it here when finished. But other builder’s experiences are also very much encouraged.

Quick Facts:

Little Dubber Kayak
• 7 1/2′ or 9′ LOA
• Weighs 25 – 30 lbs
• Stitch and Glue Construction
• 76 page Plans Book
• No specialized tools
• No jigs or strongbacks
• Easy to build

Available from:
Little Dubber Kayaks
The Shed for Sail Studio
PO Box 135
Norton, MA 02766
Website: http://www.kayakdesigns.com
Price: $18 plus $2 shipping/handling

Peter’s more philosophical side comes to the fore in the plans from time to time, such as when he is discussing why someone should build their own boat:

I fully believe every person, both man and woman, should build a boat sometime in their life. There is nothing so satisfying and esteem-building as building your own boat and then having this creation of your hands bear you out over God’s blue waters …. As the Water Rat said in Kenneth Graham’s classic story Wind in the Willows:

“There is nothing, absolute nothing, half so much worth doing as simply messing-about in boats!”

Plans, page 5

Messing-about in boats, huh? I knew I liked this guy.

Previously, all I had seen in this class of boat were heavy displacement style boats … wonderful in their own right … like Sam Devlin’s Surf Scoter and Ken Hankinson’s Coastal Cruiser. This was a perfect cruising boat to put on my “gotta’ build” list. But alas, this article was by Tom Lathrop, an individual who designed the boat solely for himself, and no plans were available.

Liz, the First Bluejacket 24

A query on the Wooden Boat Forum brought Tom out, and several of us pressed him for “lines” of his beloved Liz.

With the epoxy barely cured, Tom set out to bring the world plans of his Liz, but like designing the boat, this was new territory for Tom.

When pressed, Tom shared more photos of Liz, whetting our appetite for the design. I was particularly interested in how she acted as she got up on a plane. While the aforementioned boats don’t plane at all unless given tremendous amounts of fuel-wasting power, I have always been bothered with the bow-up, look-at-the-sky attitude of boats that do plane as they accelerate. Tom’s hull design incorporated elements to meet his design requirements … including a weight light enough to be powered by a relatively small 50 hp outboard … and found he had indeed designed a boat which would get up on plane without thrusting its bow up in the air. You can see the smooth transition between 8, 16 and Liz’s top speed of 23 mph in the photos below.

Tom describes the Bluejacket 24 as a “lightweight, trailerable, pilothouse power-cruiser designed for cruising with a crew of two in inshore or protected water such as the Intra Coastal Waterway, rivers and inland lakes.” As far as that smooth transition from idle to fully planing at her top speed, Tom says simply “the Bluejacket 24 hull design is optimized for economical cruising in the planing mode at much lower speed than normally possible with other similar sized craft.”

Liz at 8 MPH

Liz at 16 MPH

Liz at 23 MPH

So, will the Bluejacket 24 be inadequate for coastal crusing in the waters off Southern California or the New England Coast? Its probably unfair to ask Tom, as he built Liz for his home waters. But there are plenty of flat bottomed fishing boats like the C-Dory that enjoy fair weather cruising off-shore. The C-Dory is noted for pounding a bit in a chop, and it can be expected that the Bluejacket 24 would behave similarly. As always, the builder is treading new ground when adapting a boat for other than its intended purpose. But then, who said amateur boat builders were shy about trying out new things? (That’s not an endorsement, mind you, but if any builder out there has experience with the Bluejacket 24 in other conditions, please let us know.)

Tom started his design process with some objectives:

• Small and light enough to be readily trailerable
• Capable of economical cruising at 12 – 14 mph with a top speed at least 50% higher
• Seaworthy in inshore conditions
• Economical operation
• Sitting headroom in the sleeping cabin
• Good, classic looks
• Reasonably easy to build in plywood and epoxy

Later, other design requirements came to the fore, but you can see how close his final design is to the original design objectives.

Tom used premium materials throughout including marine okoume plywood, 17 ounce fiberglass cloth and RAKA epoxy. While there may be some things missing from his list of expenses (remember he wasn’t planning to sell plans in the beginning), I suspect he captured the vast majority of costs, including building a fuel tank, window channel, steering mechanism, etc. His expenses, before adding the Yamaha T50 50 hp four stroke outboard and a trailer, was $5,800. Four stroke outboards in the 50 HP range run about $6,500 installed, and a trailer can cost up to $3,000 if you opt for a lifetime aluminum trailer (the cheapskates among us will find less expensive alternatives, I’m sure, but the lifetime cost is often higher that way).

So does Tom have any regrets? He mentions that he probably wouldn’t spend the time to build a built-in fuel tank, as space for off-the-shelf poly tanks would be easy to incorporate. But other than that, you would be hard pressed to find anything negative about the Bluejacket 24 that Tom … or anyone else, for that matter … could cite.

Visit the Bluejacket Boats website for information on other models of the Bluejacket, plans pricing and more pictures.

By Bob Smalser, June 18, 2004

These are for the wedding-gift sailboat to the oldest son, so the family consensus is that store-bought oars or my cruder, painted workboat oars won´t do … I´ll have to bite the bullet and finish something in … ugh … brightwork. The yacht-finish masochists among you should be pleased.

I pick a couple weathered 8/4 X 6 old growth Western Red Cedar planks off their stack. Tight grained and clear stock I milled from a sunken log I salvaged 4 years ago. These rift-sawn planks were milled to be door stock for the new house … but I can spare a couple for a good cause.

Why cedar? I have it on hand, and mast-grade Sitka Spruce, Port Orford or Yellow Cedar … all much stronger and more appropriate than WRC … are 8 bucks a BF. I have some good Doug Fir … but it is ugly finished bright, IMO … and doesn´t plane as crisply as the others. I can do some things to the cedar that will make it adequately hard and strong for this application.

Well … after planing off the weathering … the chalk line shows I picked one wrong plank. A butt log board I couldn´t overcome the taper in … and if I rip it straight there is a pin knot in the way and insufficient stock remaining for the blade. Fine for a door panel or an oar blade … but no good at all for an oar loom. I can go back out in the rain and muscle around a few thousand pounds of planks to find a better one, or I can make do. I decide to make do. An edge joined blade will take longer to do but will be stronger, eh? A joined oar also gives me the option of orienting the stronger edge grain to the moment of effort in the loom … like in a baseball bat … while using the face grain pieces on either side of the loom to minimize the chances of the blade splitting. That option is useful when making an exceptionally light oar … which these are not, and I don´t use it, as I want these oars to have some spring during use.

The first step in laying up the oars is to joint the fence edge and rip my looms from the straighter 8/4 plank … and there is zero movement after the rip, which tells me the stock is perfectly seasoned. If it were otherwise, I´d have to go find other stock. I rip a 16th oversize and joint all the faying surfaces on the jointer for a good layup.

I rehearse my glueup … and glue up using Elmer´s Poly and leave it overnight. Why poly and not epoxy? Well, in the old days, we woulda used Plastic Resin Glue, which in edge joining … a joint not hard on glue … is also more than adequately strong. Even with perfectly jointed edges, it will take a bunch of clamping pressure to bring 8/4 stock into a good joint … poly loves high clamping pressure while using epoxy under those circumstances may starve the joint of glue. The soft cedar soaks up glue, so I use a lot of glue on all mating surfaces, and let it soak in a while before clamping, keeping a wet surface.

Strengthening the Oar Tips
This next step looks silly, but it works. Because of the softness of the cedar, I´ll epoxy in a Purpleheart spline into the oarblade tip. It´s a crossgrain glue joint, but cedar is exceptionally stable and epoxy exceptionally flexible. In the process, I´ll use the heat gun to thin unthickened epoxy, flowing it deep into the end grain of the blade tip … as much as the wood will take … followed by thickened epoxy and the splines, which are cleaned with acetone first, as Purpleheart is oily.

And the resulting assembly is allowed to cure.

Shaping the Oars
Now I´m ready to mark my centerlines, stapling my face pattern to one of the glueups and cut it out. I like the pattern found for ash and spruce oars in Woodenboat Issue # 127 (Nov ´95) and modify it for weaker cedar by increasing the scantling size a bit. My looms will be sided 2″ X 1 7/8″ tapering to 1 3/4″ X 1 1/3″ … with a 5 inch blade width. For easy storage, I make patterns in two pieces on a long table and line them on the stock with a straightedge.

After cutting out with the saber saw, I square and fair the edges with hand planes and spoke shave. You´ll always see two planes in my pics … the #3 is set coarser than the #4, which is set for a very fine shaving and is used in finishing. A #5 is used ILO the #3 for longer oars. Oars are best cut on a band saw, but you don´t really need one … just remember that the least precise your saw, the farther you should cut outside your lines … especially on curves … to be finished square to the line with hand tools with no unpleasant surprises when you turn the stock over and discover where your blade wandered.

I then use the cut and faired stock as a pattern for its mate. The side profile or taper pattern is applied and marked on both sides of each rough oar … and the power jointer set up to machine the tapers. Set the unplugged jointer to take a 16th, then index the oar against the cutter head where the penciled taper first shows a 16th on the blade side of the loom. Make a tick mark on each oar indexed against the edge of the jointer fence as your starting point.

Turn the jointer on, open the guard using a push block held in your right hand and align the tick mark on the oar with the fence edge using your left. Then lower the oar face onto the cutter head gently with a forward motion, and push it through bearing down with the push block in your right hand.

Repeat using that 16th distance between pencil line and oar face each time, and you can taper the faces in about 8 passes per face so cleanly that they need no further work with the hand plane. Do a few dry runs, first, of course … as machines can´t hear you cry.

I make an 8-Siding Gage (see my post on  Wooden Boat Forums, or here on  messing-about) and lay out my tapered, square looms into octagons for planing … and rough out all the bevels with draw knife before finishing them with the plane and spoke shave. Very fast and efficient … but practice both using the drawknife in all 4 of its modes and reading grain before committing expensive stock to it. (I have more on this at the .)