Whether this season finds you celebrating the Eternal Creator of Life, High Holy Days or simply enjoying holiday festivities with family and friends, we wish you every peace and all the very best in the year ahead.
• Deanna, Larry & Buckshot
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12/04/2008 | Howard and Brenda (HowieNBren att woh dott rr dott com)
Having received your Christmas card along with the picture and URL for your blog, I thought I'd check it out and really enjoyed reading all of the things you two have been doing. How talented you two are!!! Howard is the one with all of that talent here and I am quite content to be the "grunt" - But you two are accomplishing so many things with the boat...We hope to one day visit. Take care and HAPPY HOLIDAYS....Lovinginly, Howard and Brenda
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Going well into a our second year with Angles Wings, we probably haven't learned anything that other microcruiser families don't already know. But as general observation, we've noticed that what one gains in reduced maintenance, smaller outlay and ease of handling must be given-up to some degree in how much space there is to move around, modest carrying capacity and the intangibles of how it "presents" at the dock.
A few things we have found awkward concerning our little Bristol, which is truly cozy with two aboard; however, 3-4 must be family or exceptionally good friends.
• Any "stuff" must be stowed properly when not in use, or Wings looks like a trash-dump quickly.
• Dark colors seem to close in things.
• Good ventilation is hugely important in such closed space.
• One must be careful how much is brought aboard for a weekend - storage is critical.
• Wings smallish (slightly less than 6-foot) cockpit is really only comfortable for 2-3.
• Deck space is modest, although fairly stable underfoot - but the lee deck tricky in a fresh breeze.
• We have very limited ability to run today's many technogadgets - everything runs on batteries for now.
• Hard to work on a small rehab projects without affecting the entire cabin -- better to take them off the boat.
• Trash must be bagged and out of sight immediately.
Some of the many pluses:
• Property taxes are payable out of pocket change.
• Small successful refurbishments can lift our spirits exponentially.
• With thought, it is fine to substitute locally available wood for teak and mahogany.
• Heavy D/L ratios don't accelerate quickly, but the high inertia makes tacking easy.
• Painting the hull takes only a few enjoyable hours work per coat.
• The whole boat costs less than the working jib on many bigger vessels.
• Standing headroom is possible for those 6' or under.
• Will sail over the same horizons and any other boat
• 2nd-hand accessories fit right in and leave plenty of $$$ left over.
• For her size, Wings motion is very dignified and quite composed.
• Slack bilges pound very little even beating into 20kt winds -- occassional splash, but no banging.
• Fifty percent ballast ratio stands up well and seldom heels much over 20-25 deg.
• Running aground holds minimal terror.
• Some projects are bigger than others, but very little on Wings is complicated.
• Everyone is our friend - who won't chat with folks on the little black boat.
• Handholds are never far away.
Whether one feels the dividing line between microcruisers and normal boats is 15 feet or 45 feet, vessels above or below the line will have certain dissimilar capabilities - other factors being equal. Nonetheless, both have their advantages, and properly equipped can be fun and seaworthy.
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On the noticeably larger Irwin some years ago, I had many times wished for a light air sail, such as a drifter -- especially in the light winds of late summer. Ultimately, there never was such a sail for the Irwin; however, one just the right size for Wings came on the market and we snatched it up.
The drifter was nearly brand-new, couldn't of been used more than two or three times, which makes it one of the newest additions to our little boat. The really special thing was that the almost-new sail only cost a couple hundred bucks; well below what I could buy a new drifter for. As it turned out however, we didn't use it for some months after we purchased it. Then near late summer we had one of those sunny, lazy days where the Potomac barely rippled, and perhaps there was somewhere between 2-5 kts of wind -- and that was in a gust.
Deanna and I puttered out of our slip and into the Potomac, happily shutting off the little auxiliary as we hoisted the sails. There really wasn't enough wind to do justice to the heavier fabric of the mainsail, but the red and black nylon of the "new" drifter filled nicely and began to pull Wings just fast enough that we could see our wake -- if we hung over the stern and look for the bubbles. It was a warm, truly lazy day and we didn't go far. We simply sailed a mile or two across toward the Maryland shore, did some tacking about just to say we did, and then slowly sailed back, consuming the entire afternoon in the process.
Although nobody will ever confuse Wings with a race boat, we did find that she tacks quite nicely even in very soft breezes. Okay, I admit we back-winded the drifter once or twice to help the bow over. But for the most part, the little Bristol's heavy displacement stores good inertia for the tacking maneuver -- so long as the tiller is handled with a bit of finesse.
I'm not sure why we waited so long to get one of these handy, light air sails; however, it is clear that for sailing around the middle Atlantic it is quite valuable. One thing I'll have to put on our shopping list is some lighter line for the drifter's sheets, because the 3/8" jib sheets weighed just a tad too much for such light air and distorted the lighter nylon a bit. All in all, it was a wonderful sunny sail... a success.
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Deanna and I had pretty much decided that where Wings is concerned we would work for a little bit and then try to sail little bit as time permitted. That, of course, meant that, on occasion, our sailing or a project could get in the way of each other, or, we'd simply be sailing Wings with half-finished projects -- this has been the case almost all the time.
Almost from the first we decided the original ports wouls have to go -- sooner or later.... We hoped to replace the fixed ports with opening ports. The old Plexiglas on the original fixed ports was in a bad way anyway, so something had to be done, plus in the warmer mid-Atlantic ventilation is important. We shopped and shopped and then discovered that Beckson has an overstock store were we could order brand-new opening ports at one third to one half retail cost. We ordered enough Rain-Drain ports to do the entire boat, although we have yet to finish installation.
The old upholstery was nearly threadbare, not to mention after being bottled up with wasps and swampy smelling saltwater, the cloth had an unpleasing odor to it. Deanna had a friend back in North Dakota who ran a small upholstery business. Deanna stripped off the old cloth and shipped it along with new fabric(you guessed it, purchased from a marine overstock store...) to her friend up north. In the meantime we did our best to air out the foam and clean them up generally. About a month and a half later the new upholstery arrived -- with a handy feature that wasn't on the originals, the old troublesome zippers were replaced with Velcro. And, we had enough of the rich, blue fabric to have our kitchen chairs redone as well.
In the meantime we both attended to smaller projects of our own. I happened onto an end-run of stainless steel anchor chain, one size oversized, and quickly added the 50 or so feet to the new anchor line. The chain was almost too beautiful to put in the anchor locker, but the minimal price made it even more so.
Deanna has long been a woodworker and when she has time thoroughly enjoys her shop projects. Indeed, up in North Dakota she rehabed her own house almost by herself, and has a nearby wood-shop in a comfortable sized building that has the distinction of having once a Pony Express waystation (a century ago). She moved several of her heavier bench-tools, saws and routers from North Dakota to Virginia and has begun revamping a number of the wood structures. She made new oak braces for the outboard mount that strengthens the attachment in the motor well. She also stripped much of the old paint from the interior of the cabin and then began to tackle other odds and ends. Removing the old combings from the cockpit, Deanna brought them back to her shop to use as patterns to make new ones. The old wood, although not totally beyond repair cosmetically, was well past its prime structurally.
When we visited the Annapolis boat show in the fall, we chatted with other hobbyists about alternative woods available as replacements for the expensive and more traditional yachting woods such as teak and Philippine mahogany. Birch, Poplar and Ash seemed to be widely used in some vessels and we went looking for prime boards with minimal checks, grain anomalies or structural imperfections. Even these were not cheap, but they were reasonably readily available and in the meantime Deanna has been making replacement combings, patiently matching the beveling, routing and cutouts of the orginals.
So those are our sailing projects -- a little work, a little armchair sailing, a little more work, some real sailing and then back to work again. Sometimes progress on Angels Wings has seemed almost glacial, but it keeps moving a little here and little there...
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Just after Memorial Day weekend our little boat went back in the water and she sure did look beautiful floating in her slip. Neither the decks nor the cabin was yet done; however, the black hull, red boot stripe and the new yellowish gold lettering seemed to compensate nicely for the moment.
The little motor that had performed so faithfully the year before failed to start and despite all sorts of cajoling, wheedling and the few words in distressed English, it showed no signs of life. Deanna's grandchildren were getting ready to return home and we wanted to go sailing at least once before they left, so I dashed around to find a professional mechanic.
The marina had several mechanics employed there on one job or another -- it was spring, and they were understandably very busy getting many boats ready for the summer boating season. One mechanic, however, volunteered to take our little eight-horsepower auxiliary home, with a note of confidence that he would have it back in a day or two.
That week came and went in there was no motor, but the mechanic said he was sure he could fix it for about $200 because he knew what it was. A week later there still was no motor and the grandchildren returned home without ever getting to sail. Eventually the 4th of July came and went, and still no motor. Upon inquiry, it seems the mechanic was waiting to purchase a book that would tell him the proper resistance for the coils. Two weeks later we were still awaiting the arrival of magic book -- indeed that saga repeated itself numerous times into the late July and early August.
In late July I had to take a two-week business trip; however, Deanna returned home from seeing her family just before I left. I related to her the story about our outboard and she promised to look into it. Sure enough, when she approached mechanic at the marina, he reassured her that he was simply waiting to receive the instruction manual that should arrive ant day now and would give him the proper electrical resistance for the coils.
Thankfully, Deanna is not as paralyzed by the world as I can be, and about two weeks before Labor Day she asked (more like, insisted) the mechanic to bring our motor back. She loaded it into the pickup truck and took it around to another mechanic in the village she had met previously. Surprise, surprise: within three or four days the motor was back from the second mechanic and purring happily -- total cost, $80. We don't know if the first mechanic ever got his magic book, but we do know which mechanic we'll use next time.
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As soon as the weather became more hospitable, we began to get earnest about Angels Wings hull. Essentially we had to do everything from the deck down while she was still out of the water -- and once again, we appreciated her diminutive size. Deanna's grandchildren finished out their spring school-term with us and figured greatly into our success. Rory, in particular, turned out to be quite a little bulldog with an orbital sander. Once he got the knack of it, Rory could sand the entire topsides, from waterline to deck, in about 2 1/2 to three hours -- at which point he would award himself a one-hour "coffee break" to build an intricate, fantasy condo on the nearby beach, or to ward off marauding pirates.
The minor blisters filled in easily with the usual mixture of epoxy and filler; however, getting the hull reasonably fair was quite another matter. It took many hours, and no shortage of patience to grind down the hardened skeletal remains of what must have been a complete ecosystem. Below the waterline we used many 80-grit and 60-grit discs before the chore was complete. After that, began the usual filling, sanding and refairing, which went much faster.
We discovered a softball sized delamination near the base of the keel just forward of the rudder and ground that out entirely. Fitting some sacrificial plywood behind the hole, we then use the usual method of epoxy, structural filler and ultimately about 10 layers of glass-cloth to bring it out fair again. The biggest challenge with the delamination turned out to be getting days when the temperature would stay above 50° so they epoxy would kick off properly.
Painting day came upon us unexpectedly -- we'd simply run out of fairing projects, and couldn't come up with a good excuse not to proceed with the Brightside. We'd read that not everyone has great results with this modern paint; however, for us it has worked reasonably well so far. For the paint, Rory and I worked together. We used a fine nap roller and then Rory would come immediately behind and gently lay down the Brightside with a brush. We sanded with 220-grit and 400-grit paper between coats, and although it wouldn't pass a professional test, it passed our 10-foot test with ease -- i.e. looked okay from 10 feet away.
We enlisted more skilled hands to finish up the red boot stripe, when Deanna came down again and began to put the finishing touches on. I'm fairly content working with minor fiberglass repairs and the rough and ready stuff; however, Deanna has had her own woodcraft shop for many years and is more skilled and patient finishing a project so that it looks complete. In the meantime I slopped on the bottom paint.
The finishing touch, sort of a present to all of us, was to put on the state registry numbers and of course Angels Wings name. I remembered my lack of skill in putting on model car decals in my youth, I half a century before, but this went reasonably well. The directions were right on the money and in about two hours we had aligned, taped and finally permanently mounted the yellowish gold lettering with the occasional red shadow -- to complement the red boot stripe. At which point, we took a break to take some pictures and admire the progress of our little fiberglass lady.
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