What's next?

That's right.

What to do after you have finished a boat project?

Even as I awaited the overdue arrival of my Passage Maker kit from CLC late last year, I found myself continuing to peruse the catalog of beautiful other boat designs available from Chesapeake Light Craft.

Have I been bitten by the boat-building bug? You bet!

So when I attended the CLC-sponsored OkoumeFest this past spring, one of my main objectives was to take a look at various kayak options, try them out and determine what my next winter project would be.

I was looking for a project that would build on my stitch and glue experience yet set a few new challenges. The various hybrid options in the kayak designs seemed to be an excellent step up since the strip-planking of the deck is a more intricate building technique.

Paul Plowright's winning Shearwater 17

I had already set my eyes on the 17' hybrid version of the Shearwater design. The kayak has great lines and looks fabulous. It also seem to offer the right mix of stability and performance that I thought would be best for me.

In fact, upon arrival at the OkoumeFest, various builders had brought their hybrid Shearwaters and I was just floored by the beautiful, personal designs.

Several test paddles on Shearwaters reinforced that this was a superb craft that was great fun to paddle and would suit me well.

Testing the Petrel

Dan Thaler's kayak:  Best in Show

I tested a variety of other extremely elegant designs including the 17' Petrel.


What a powerful kayak?!

I was pretty much set on the Shearwater. But then something unexpected happened. I sat in a very narrow and long boat called Night Heron, designed by Nick Schade (who actually designed many of the kayaks that are available as kits through CLC.)

At any rate, at 18 feet of length and with a mere 20" beam, this boat offers an altogether different paddle experience. When I first got into the snug cockpit I was a bit nervous because I thought that this design would simply be too demanding for me.

Click here for slide show of the CLC Night Heron.

After a couple of laps I became more confident and comfortable with the feel and control of the boat. Paddling this sleek, powerful machine was a total thrill! What can I say? I was smitten! Big Time. Sitting in this boat reminded me of the time when I was shopping for a new concert guitar (a classical guitar) and I played the instrument (made by Nicholas Ioannou) where - as soon as I played the first few chords - I knew that THIS WAS IT.

I did switch back and forth between the Shearwater and the Night Heron several more times and my initial infatuation with the Night Heron was reinforced with each test ride.

Detail of the wood grain at transition from loom to blade

I ordered the hybrid Night Heron kit. It arrived recently. I'll probably start in October if I can bear to wait that long. For now I have been reading up on strip-planking kayaks (Nick Schade has written two books on the subject) as well as the instruction booklet.

Then there is the important task of drawing up a deck design. I suspect that I will be able to do a better job once I have a full understanding of all the implications in construction of any particular design. I have three different types of cedar strips to work with - light, medium and dark.

The tip of my paddle is reinforced with a mix of epoxy and wood-flour

In the meantime I have been priming the wood-working pump by building a Greenland paddle.


I found a fabulous 2 by 4 of immaculate Western Red Cedar at a nearby lumber shop. Amazing stuff!

Eric Schade Demonstration at CLC

The inspiration to building this type of paddle came from one of the workshops offered at the above-mentioned OkoumeFest.

Nick Schade's brother Eric gave a demonstration.

In addition, very detailed information on making such a paddle is available online.



If you start with good wood, the paddle becomes an elegant thing of beauty.

Paddling with the Greenland paddle feels very different from the modern power paddles.








It'll be fun to learn using it to best advantage.

I'll be reporting on building the Night Heron on my new blog.

A Fine Day

On a recent Sunday, my wife Iris came along to sail for the day.

She is generally very supportive of her husband's sailing passion but otherwise does not share in the fascination with wind, water and what-not.

However, she does make an annual appearance at Moraine State Park and I am always anxious to ensure that it be a successful experience.

In the past, we have actually had some wonderful outings on the JN18 with perfect conditions, not too scary but sufficiently thrilling.

On this occasion, C-Lute offered an altogether new experience.

The temperature was balmy perfection and the sun peaked out to shine on small ripples across the water. So C-Lute set off - happily gurgling her way onto the lake toward a little island nestled near Pleasant Bay.

I had previously thought how the PMD with lug rig would be a perfect little learn-to-sail boat. It does not get more basic than the tiller plus the main sheet attached to a single lug sail with a long streaming pennant which tells you immediately whether or not the sail is trimmed correctly. You don't even have to understand the finer points of apparent wind.

Iris, do you want to take the helm?

Yes, she did! - Great! 

So there, a perfect day, indeed, on C-Lute: the Love of my Life sailing my Labor of Love - Ah!  a winning combination.

After a delectable lunch, I dropped the mast and tested the forward rowing station while Iris was sunning herself on the back seat.


I was delighted with the easy swoosh: the hull was perfectly balanced and rowed itself with greater ease than I would have expected. 

Later the winds freshened up a bit and I quickly stepped the mast and hoisted the sail for a fine finale back to Watts Bay.

Goldberry

This spring has been oh so wet and chilly. There have been very few days without any rain. Finally, this past weekend, Saturday was entirely dry. Yeah!

Light and variable winds are not exactly the preferred mode for this sailor but who is complaining?! It was such a pretty day!

Garth was ready to launch  Goldberry with her new rig. It proved to be a wonderful opportunity to get some excellent shots of the boat that inspired the creation of C-Lute. You might say that Goldberry was C-Lute's Godmother. So there, two tan-bark luggers lounging in Watts Bay! What a lovely sight!

Goldberry's new Lug sail and Mizzen were custom-made by Washington, PA-based Tom Bell, a highly-skilled and experienced sail-maker.

A number of years ago, Bell Sails made a beautiful miter-cut cruising chute for my SJ-21. Tom Bell also made C-Lute's  sleeve for the sail, boom and yard.

With three sets of reef-points, Garth will be able to take Goldberry out in hair-raising conditions...

... and though I love heavy air, one thing is certain, when he does tuck in that third reef, my lil C-Lute will not be allowed to go out to play.

Goldberry is a Iain Oughtred-designed, high-class displacement vessel, a "Ness Yawl" - which means business, y'all.



Let's say that she'll handle a blow and take on some serious seas.

One of the first outings - before the leaves emerged

By comparison, the Passagemaker Dinghy seems more like a toy. Of course, that would not be fair at all.  The PMD was designed for an entirely different purpose.  

Goldberry and C-Lute both are wooden boats that have tan-bark lug sails and - each in their own way - have a rather old-fashioned, salty look. But that is where the similarity ends.

Goldberry is a classic boat made by a master craftsman.  

C-Lute is a first-timers attempt at wood-work.

Ghosting along - ready for some serious air!

The fact that it turned out looking rather nice gives credit to John Harris and CLC for creating a wonderful kit that can be built by anyone able to read and follow the instructions.

In light air, the PMD does surprisingly well. As light as she is, it takes only a wisp of  zephyr to get her going.

Out to C

Pardon a bit of shallow humor but this blogger is out to sea...

on C-Lute  ~~~_/)~~

Also, this here don't look like no "C" to me!  More like an "L" for little lake. So there!

On C-Lute this little lake sure seems quite a bit bigger than on my other weapon of choice (see below)

At some point, I hope to get a picture or two (or video) of  the Passagemaker Dinghy in action.

For now, at least you get to see a bit of my stitching handiwork on the boom and part of the the down-haul and snuffer configuration.

Truth be told, it was not exactly the kind of day that the weather frog was all excited about either.

All the same, there was enough wind (at times) to test out the small modifications and adjustments I had been working on.

I replaced the block with becket at the traveler with a block, becket and cam cleat. That turned out to be a major - albeit not inexpensive - improvement!

I hope to take her out a couple of more times before I transport C-Lute to the OkoumeFest 2011 which CLC sponsors once a year as an annual Rendezvous of CLC boat builders. It'll be a great opportunity to actually take C-Lute "out to sea" as well as to evaluate which kayak exactly I should plan to build next winter.

Pic not of me but of the guy who convinced me to install the trap.

For now, I need to do a final coat of satin on the outside of the top strake.

I had planned it all along and now that I have the name plate, I'll be able to do it.

In the meantime, whilst waiting for the varnish to cure, I am hanging out on the new trapeze wire that I set up on my Johnson-18.

Generally I sail the JN-18 with my trusted crew. However, single-handing my JN-18 from the trap is a total blast.

Not a bad place to be!!!

Getting to know her

Today was a sailor's gift.

Temperatures reached 82 at the lake and winds started between 5 - 10 then soon provided a steady 10 with gusts to 15. A few hours later it was all white-caps for extended periods.

Did I mention that I headed up to Moraine State Park? Who would have guessed?

The little video clip of a nice broad reach as she is purring along quite nicely, don't you think?




You might say that I had an opportunity to take my little skiff  through her paces.

I am accustomed to boats whose bows slices the waves. This one goes up a hill and down a hill.

I am accustomed to boats that jump on a plane when they reach a certain speed. This boat seems to be planing before it even starts... albeit a "lightness of being" sort of plane.







Since the PMD has an exceedingly short water line, I suspect that under a number of circumstances, the boat might be faster with a second crew aboard since it would obviously lengthen the water line and thereby the hull speed.

So far, I have only single handed the boat.


Initially I expected more boat speed by simply heeling the boat since that would also lengthen its line on the water. However, from my limited experience so far, I did not find this to work the way I'd expect. The boat tracks better when sailed flat. Surely, the skegg has something to do with that result.

My preliminary conclusion:
The PMD offers a comfortable and relatively dry ride, even when "the sheep come out to graze".  I have no doubt that on most points of sail the gunter rig with jib will out-sail the lug-rig. Downwind is an altogether different story. On a broad reach and run, the balanced lug-rig soars.

If after a bit of sailing fun you wish to do a little rowing, you drop the spars, roll up the sail with spars and then pull out the mast and lay right on top of the sails, or the other side. Then you can row without the mast rocking

C-Lute is a lovely boat.

It's hard to think back now that in December I had only started to sand the bare wooden strakes.

What's in a name?

Okay, the question has been raised by many. I finally must divulge the name of what may be the obvious choice to the attentive reader of this blog.

However, before I invoke her name for the first time, a few words of affirmation are in order:

When I first decided on this design, I immediately said to myself ...I'll build her and she'll be called "in a nutshell". Hence the title of the blog. And a nutshell she is. However, I soon came to realize that other similar designs were in fact called "Nutshell" and thus this possible name seemed just too obvious.

So, Nutshell became strictly the "working title" and I hoped that her proper name would reveal itself in the process of building her.

When it became clear to me why I had chosen this perhaps less likely candidate over several of the other beautiful hybrid sailing/rowing designs offered by CLC as a kit, I resolved that the musical theme needed to be invoked by the name since I was, after all, building a "floating lute". Silly me!

My son Isaac suggested a name that I loved: No strings attached.

Upon further contemplation it seemed however simply incorrect since a sailing vessel does, in fact, have a few strings attached. Though they are not called so, try plucking the taut double-purchase downhaul on the boom (attached to the deck) and you'll get some resonance or two (to be sure) if not exactly a chord. So, strings are attached. Sorry Isaac!
 
Any lover of Renaissance or Baroque music will be familiar with wooden recorders being tuned generally either in C or F. Well, even though lutes generally have various tunings (to the best of my knowledge "C" not being one of them) my particular lute appears to be tuned most definitely in "C".

So, there you are: Her name shall be C-Lute ...my lute musing in the tune of seas.

And I understand that she is promising to strike up a few alluring sounds for anyone who sails her.

Ta-taaaah !!!

Boat floats

Moraine State Park
April 7, 2011
YES!!!
She's not sinking... my boat floats.

Okay, I'm not exactly surprised. In fact, I fully expected that result. Even so, after these past four months of regular ship-wrighting, it was gratifying to witness a positive outcome.

It had been several weekends of horrendous weather in these parts combined with the effects of a serious cold which conspired to delay the much awaited test launch.


Today, finally, on the tail end of my cold but with a brief opening in the weather window, I hooked up the trailer after a shortened day at work and headed up to Moraine State Park.

My first stop was at the Park Office in order to purchase a launch permit. Let's not risk the Park Warden confiscating my little lug-rig on its first day at sea, shall we?

Temps at 58 with cotton-ball skies and winds between 5-7 knots, it turned out to be an ideal first outing for this little pram-pup.

I wanted this first day to be private without audience and outside of a gazillion water foul, I found myself unobserved, able to mess leisurely with all the details of getting ready and figuring out

what to put where

and attach how etc.

Of course, on the down side, no action pictures of boat and skipper under away. That's for another time.

The launch was a cinch!

The wheel hubs did not even have to touch the water. I slightly lifted the bow and that cause the skegg of the boat to slide off the trailer rear roller... and off she swooshed into the water.

The rounded shape of the hull (without human ballast on it) makes it appear as though it's only skimming the water like a swallow briefly dipping into the waves in flight.

After raising the lug sail, inserting the dagger board and securing the oars, I pushed off. True, not much wind is needed to make her move. However, movement is all relative, isn't it? On one hand, she heeled nicely on easy puffs and conveyed the lovely sense of speed. Yet, after ten minutes of sailing on the same beat, I find that our little lake has gotten a whole lot bigger when sailed in the little nutshell.

Of course, as I freely admitted in the opening post of this blog, I am accustomed to hi-speed action on my Johnson-18 which readily jumps on a plane and under asymmetrical spinnaker broad reaches easily clocks close to 20 knots. I have no doubt that even a Sunfish would sail rings around the pram - and most certainly Garth's Goldberry.

As I develop a more intimate knowledge of the sailing characteristics of this design and the balanced lug-rig, I will talk shop in more detail. In the meantime, let it be said that I simply love the way it feels sailing the boat. The gurgles of the wavelets against the lap-strake hull are music to my ears. And - I love the simplicity of the lug-rig.

And one wonderful surprise! I discovered that the boat - perhaps aided by the tan-bark lug-sail - appears to provide an excellent camouflage cover for birding. Water foul was not alarmed at the sight of an approaching nutshell, bobbing along nearby. I had brought along my binoculars and spotted two pair of Northern Shovelers... not exactly that common to see in Moraine State Park. As I kept my lenses peeled on the closer pair, I failed to realize in my fascination that I was getting exceedingly close to a flock of about 200 double-crested Cormorants until a couple of them drifted into my view.

What a sight! Obviously, at one point, one Cormorant cawed to the other: this is getting too close for comfort... and started the mass movement, 200 large black birds, flying very low and close around me. Jaw-dropping view! I was in awe.

It was time to return and while winds had been sufficient to work the lug-rig, half-way back to the dock, I decided to drop canvas and try rowing. Around the dock there is generally little to no wind as was the case today or fluky puffs from all directions.

Dropping the lug rig is a piece of cake and you can easily stow it on the side out of the way. So, out come the oars and off you go ~~~ tracking rather beautifully.

The pram is a hybrid craft - neither a pure sailboat nor a pure rowboat. Instead, it is an all-around little ship to mess around in. It does both things quite nicely as long as you don't have false expectations.

I much enjoyed rowing my little vessel back to shore and happily declare the first outing a success.