Crabbing Skiff

Caroline C. A Chesapeake Bay sailing skiff in Wisconsin. And other bits.

[crabbingskiff]

September sail. 2019.

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I love the way the big new sail frames the view from the cockpit.

[ilur]

I went back to Blind Harbour the other day. Light northwesterly took me there, a sunny dawn and gentle westerly brought me back.

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Go follow @ilur. Go!

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Ok, fine.

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Drove back to Maryland for Father's Day.

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Sailing sea trials after the centerboard trunk and keelson repairs were a success.

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Installed the centerboard, with help from a friend, a diving mask and some ingenuity with dock lines. There's still more work to do to complete this repair but we're close.

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Boat's got a hole in it again. Good news is that it lines up well enough with the hole on the other side of the trunk. Well enough.

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She would no longer sink in a flood. Just don't look too closely at my fillets.

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There were swarms of black flies everywhere but on the water. So we spent most of the weekend on the water. At Imp Lake in Ottawa National Forest, MI.

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By Sunday evening I had removed all the rot, cleaned and squared up (in a manner of speaking) the damage, measured and dry-fit a new keelson section, trunk log, trunk panel and a batten for good measure. 

Now begins the drawn-out drudgery of glue, glass, fair, fill, fair, paint, sand, paint, sand, paint, sand, paint. 

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Repairing rot can be picturesque. Sometimes. I guess.

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On Friday night, just as I was wrapping up minor projects, I noticed the port side of the centerboard pivot bolt was recessed a little into its plywood case. A little rot around the bolt hole revealed itself to be a lot of rot in the case, all the way down into the keelson. Thank God that:

1) I caught this relatively early;

2) a previous keelson repair from ten years ago used so much epoxy filler that the rot stopped dead in its tracks about two thirds of the way back the centerboard case;

3) damage forward of the case is limited;

4) the bottom is heavily glassed, so structural integrity is still good, even though the bottom rotted through in a couple small places;

5) aforementioned bottom rot is very isolated.

Gonna try to have this repaired in three and a half weeks, in time to drive east for a week of sailing Chesapeake Bay. It'll be close.

[crabbingskiff]

The weekend started with some delightfully minor projects.

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On and around Lake Wisconsin, a couple weekends ago.

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For a few years I've been threatening to take my sweeps aboard Callipygous to show Rick that his Whitehall daysailer is, in fact, a fine pulling boat. I finally got around to it, and we rowed briskly across Monona to the city skyline, before Rick had enough and we hoisted the rig for an occasionally blustery afternoon.