Tampa, FL BRS 17 on first sail

I got an email yesterday from Dave, mentioned earlier on the blog, from Tampa, FL. He has been using his BRS with a motor only, until this week. He finished all the sailing bits and took it out sailing for the first time. Here's his account of the outing, with photos.

"We launched just south of Gandy Bridge on Tampa Bay. Winds were forecast at 10 knots from the SW and bay waters with a light chop. We were on the water by about 8:30 AM in order to miss the scattered thunderstorms. Set up was a breeze. I had the sails furled around the masts and bungeed. They were lashed down on top of the boat in two crutches placed into the mast steps. All I had to do was to unlash and step them before launch. I had my daughter motor us out of the boat launch canal (right into the wind) while I unrolled the sails, clipped on the sheets and set the sprits. Then we fell off the wind, killed the motor and were sailing.

I rigged the boat just like the plans indicate and everything worked as advertised. We had 5 people in the boat (570 lbs) and I left the 6hp/4stroke dragging in the water (tilted up would interfere with the sheets). Using the GPS we clocked our progress at around 3 knots close hauled and up to a little over 5 knots on a reach. On the way back we set up a run for the boat ramp and were able to sail wing-and-wing at about 3.5 knots then the wind kicked up and we reached 5 knots. It was very easy to manage and both my daughters caught on quickly. I didn’t spend a lot of effort with tweaking trim and balance or sail shape. I did adjust the snotter position and tension a little and it was not hard to do. We were able to sail straight up the canal, past the boat ramp (traffic) and luff up in a turning basin downwind. I released the snotter, removed the sprit, rolled up the sail and unclipped the sheets and fired up the motor to dock. I am not a good enough sailor to try to dock under sail at a busy public boat ramp – yet"















As you can see, this is not some tiny little dingy.

seat tops, rudder blade, and centerboard

This picture shows the rudder blade roughed into shape. I used my block plane to remove some material and then my Makita sander/polisher with a seven inch 36 grit disk. I'll have to clean it up a little with a lighter sander and fill some nail holes in it, but it's close to finished.








This is the centerboard roughed into shape. I took these pictures about a week ago. About two days ago, I was doing some more work on the centerboard and one of the glue joints failed (it's a lot of strips of wood glued together with epoxy). I think what went wrong was that the wood (mostly "yellow pine") drew too much of the epoxy into the wood, thereby starving the joint. I did precoat the wood with epoxy, but I did not thicken the second coat with anything.

Several of the joints failed, but some did not. I beat the laminated pieces that remained intact against my table to see if they would come apart, after I heated them with the heat gun. I beat them and beat them and beat them. The joints did not fail and there was no sign on the wood of the abuse - pretty tough stuff.

I put the pieces back together by first sanding them, second, wiping them with acetone, third, pre-coating with epoxy, and fourth, gluing with epoxy thickened with cabosil.
These next two pictures show the seat tops cut to shape. I will not glue until after my centerboard trunk and some other parts are installed. I think the boat looks good with them in though.