Vessel Name: | Steelin' Way |
Vessel Make/Model: | O'day 10M ...oops I meant 10ft |
Hailing Port: | Lake Champlain |
Crew: | Scott Paulson, Barbara Smith |
About: | Cap'n: Water Sign - No Brainer. 1st Mate (aka) Admiral: Earth Sign...Not so much.... but willing to humor him for now. |
Extra: |
Well with my friend's F-150 out of commission and the boat FINALLY ready to meet the water, I had a dilemma. As we know the olde saying "Necessity is a Mother" or something like that. I'm someone who likes solving puzzles. I don't mean crosswords or sodukos (I HATE those), I mean real world puzzles where people say "Oh you'll never be able to get X to do Y! ...Oh really?" I rarely give up in these situations because I like pitting my however questionable wits against conventional wisdom. Now it's no surprise that a 5 foot wide boat can't go into a 4 foot wide Van, and it wouldn't stay in there anyhow because it's much too long. Well friction is a beautiful thing in the right context. Yes the boat was in the water this day and I did it all alone. Dad: thanks for the stubbornness.
Couldn't resist one more picture. Yes I could have polished the aluminum rudder and keel.... but that might be considered ...obsessive??
This was the week of launch for 2012. Date of the photo was July 25th and I think she hit the water on the 30th. I guess OCD is good for some things and looking at it now I would never have believed that I could have gotten her to look this nice. I decided to move the mast to the forward "Cat Boat" position to keep things simple. In the "Lake of the Switchy Winds" having more things to deal with didn't make sense. Still at this time I didn't even know how we were going to get her there...
So it was almost the end of July and I was blowing lots of gelcoat dust and rubbing compound out of my nose with still no real way to get "Pan" in the water. I'd seen dollies for getting things like a Sunfish across the beach to the water ...and that got me thinking.
My "pre-season" jobs on "Pan" turned into more like 66% of the season. I started by grinding out the crack in the rear of the swing keel trunk. After my formal education at Youtube U, I had my first experience with fiberglass. You really do need to have all the layers cut out and ready before you mix [...]
Things have been moving slowly in sailboat land. I was able to get out a couple of times on "Pan" in August. Getting to the boat was a bit of a procedure. Put the kayak in my car... well its a 14.5 foot kayak so it doesn't actually go all of the way IN the car. Yes I could put the rack on the roof and [...]