Dallas Corinthian Yacht Club-Heritage Cup

Great winds and competition at the DCYC Corinthian Heritage Cup. Racing on a J80 in PHRF fleet.

J80 casual race

Fun evening on the soon to be renamed J80 "5200 Love Explosion." Gusty winds ranging from around 16 to near 30 at times.  Since no other J80s were out, we went without the chute. Still great fun.

The other side of spring sailing

Here in Texas we get to start our sailing season quite a bit earlier than the rest of the country. Sounds great, right? But sometimes I sense that all the nice days early the year are just a way of luring onto the water on days like this. The forecast was for light winds from the southeast, but once we got out on the lake, the wind shifted around suddenly to the north. And with it came the hail...

More casual racing

Beercan race, March 20.

Beer Can Racing

Nothing says springtime like Wednesday evening beercan races!

Our inaugural event of the season featured 8 boats on a two-and-a-half mile course. Format is reverse-start pursuit race (slower boats start first).

Here is a video summary:

 

Early Morning Cruise

Our nephew and his girlfriend were passing through town and made time to spend a night and go for an early morning sail. Very nice visit. Great to catch up.

First Solo Sail

Here's a short clip from my first solo sail.

Video from first weekend

A few more pics

These were taken by my friend James as we were working our way our of the harbor.

Launch day pics

Heading out!

A few more pics

Here are a couple more shots of the first float take by my friend Dave. Much better than my pics.

Not quite big enough for my melon.

Prep for Launch

No pics to post today. I'm getting lots of little bits ironed-out in preparation for launching this Saturday. It's amazing how many little things accumulate toward the end of a project like this. Nevertheless, if all goes well, GoodFoot sails this weekend! So far I have had good luck uploading pics and video from my phone straight to the blog, so look for semi-live updates. I also, have the new GoPro camera so there should be some decent video posted late in the day.

Cheers
P

It Floats!

Today was the day to register and title the boat, which required a trip to Garland about an hour away. So since I was in the neighborhood, my friend David invited me to stop by Rush Creek Yacht Club where we gave Goodfoot her first dunk. Without any crew weight or spars on board, she sat very high on her lines. In fact the chines were fully out of the water. Very encouraging.

Saturday evening racing

Had a nice sail this Saturday until a storm moved in to ruin the race.

Tiller

I had considered either just buying a tiller from the infernal-marine-supply-store-not-to-be-named, but as expected, they wanted WAY too much $, or just using a stick of closet rod or something similar till I had more time to make something better. But I had some leftover mahogany from the material I bought for the rubrails, and figured anything other than a nice laminated tiller would annoy me until I did it right. So, here's the rough blank for a slightly curved, mahogany and fir tiller. Marie took the photos of the layup. She gets some nice shots, doesn't she.

Goopy, messy process. Laminating spars and the tiller is quickly decimating my remaining epoxy supply. Fortunately, there is not much left that calls for it.

Even pressure is the key to a good lamination. The horizontal C-clamps are clamping scrap plywood cheeks to keep the layers aligned while the spring clamps give just enough pressure to squeeze out a bit, but not too much, of the thickened epoxy.

Here it is clamped in place after an initial clean up on the table saw. This photo was taken by me with my crappy phone camera. I'll have Marie take nicer pictures once it is completely done.

 

Running rigging

I'm starting to add the running rigging. Here is the port turning block and cleat for the mizzen sheet. Both the mizzen and mainsheets are split and can be trimmed from either end. The mizzen runs to the either side of the aft deck near the transom and is split over the tiller to avoid interference. After it runs through a block there, it is led forward to the aft end of the cockpit and must be routed over the coaming. This mahogany block raises the block and cleat just high enough to give clearance.

Evening racing

Summer evening racing at Dallas Corinthian Yacht Club aboard "Scoots," a J 29 driven by Dan Wolf. This is a reverse-start race with faster boats starting behind.

Wishbone sprits

Here are the laminated spars for the wishbone sprit.

Hatches with take-apart hinges.

I like the idea of being able to easily remove the hatch covers. I found these nifty take-apart hinges which make the process simple. The knob on the hinge is spring-loaded. Just give it a tug and the hinge releases.