Summer is finally starting to make it's exit here in Florida, nothing you Yankees would recognize as cooler; it's 89 instead of 93 and the low gets all the way down to 73 at night. We really have been doing things out in the shop for the last couple of months but not a whole lot. Howard's been rebuilding his motor again after I broke it, Sandy's playing with his little canoes, Jim has no big project started yet but he manages to find things to do, his wife has him refinishing furniture, never let them know you need something to do. Stan's still trying to find the leak in his Junk, Steve's trying to set the record for how long a guy can get by doing exactly what he wants to do and I have been killing myself finishing Lurlyne.

She looks really good on the trailer and at slow speed.

But the high speed performance is definitely lacking. After much discussion and figuring we've come to the conclusion that the best fix to get her down and running smoothly is to add a three foot box to each side of the motor to extend the hull back to the original hull design that John Atkins called for. I'll use these boxes like Ron Johnson did when he built his boat, he made steps out of them so his fat old man body could get in and out of the boat. That's exactly what I need. The first time I climbed up into the boat from the water I thought of Pat and realized that he really knew what was doing, you would think that at some point I'd learn. I can get 27 mph with this Mercury 60 four stroke and the terrible hull angle, I'm looking for 35 when I get it right. If you feel compelled to offer advice on how I can set this current arrangement up to do what I want be advised that we've probably already tried it.

Another old picture. What did you look like in 1968? Here's me at age 21 with my father and brother, all in at the same time. One of us was the black sheep. What can I say, the Air Force was all full up at the time so it was either Navy blue or Army green for me. The jungles and swamps would have been good training for where I live now.

Another 16 foot melon seed fanatic; Fland Sharp and his sweetie Brenda love this boat that Jim built and say it's the best small sailboat ever. Brenda is the real sailor here and likes to hot rod and scare her man whenever she can. You really have to sail one of these things to understand what we mean. I've sailed just about everything there is and this is the one that puts the biggest grin on my face. I hope to see Fland and Brenda at Cedar Key in May with some of us other melonheads. Kevin Lott and his all black menace has already booked a suite at Island Place.

Here's another crazy man; Steve Brookman and his 16 with it's giant sail. Steve and Richard Honan were building their melonseeds at about the same time and my only advice to them was, "go for a big sail and you'll never be sorry", being a jet pilot and Corvette owner Steve took me at my word big time.. Steve thinks like Brenda, these are really fun, kick ass little boats.

Crazy Steve was going home last week and came across these three boys floating down our river in a canoe and kayak. The canoe was half full of water with all three of them in it towing the kayak. Steve stopped to check on them and learned that they had somehow managed to make it two miles down the Manatee river and then three miles up our river on an all day teenage boy outing. Sounds familiar doesn't it, who among us hasn't been there, done that? It was now five o'clock and they were dead tired and didn't know what to do so Steve pulled them to his dock, bailed the boats out, lashed them on his boat and took them back to where they had started out. Did they learn anything? Probably not.

Here are our docks a few days later. This is what three inches of rain will do, I can't imagine 12.

Richard Honan's bunch had an end of summer gathering up in the Boston area with food, booze and boats. These guys seem to have a really good time, kind of like when any of us get together with boats we built ourselves. And for a thrill ride how about this sandbagger with the huge sail. This may be a little too much.

We have a new "project" boat here at the shop. As you know, we get a lot of offers for free boats needing a little work and don't usually even consider them or as Steve likes to say, "get the hell out of here". This one is different, it'll be something any of us can work on if we need something to do. It belongs to our friend Gene Koblick who managed to get too old in body but not in mind. This boat has a history. It's a boat designed and built back about 1960 by Morgan Embroden in Southern California. Gene helped with some of the build and did tank testing of the hull. This was Embroden's first design to be produced in some numbers, it's 19 ft 8 inches long and is called the Windjammer Class.

This is how the boat looked when we got it home, it didn't look this good when we first saw it sitting out in a field buried up to the trailer frame in mud. It had been sitting there for about ten years. Notice the front tire, it was slapping and bouncing all the way home at ten miles and hour. Luckily it was a short trip that seemed to take forever, how long can you hold your breath. So why in the world would anyone his right mind ever dream of hauling this thing home.

There's more to this boat than meets the eye. Howard and I saw the potential right off, it's taking a little longer for some of the other guys. First off this is a really solid boat. The glass is in great condition and as smooth as a new boat. It's really beamy with a shallow cockpit and narrow cabin top. The reason is because it's designed and built to be a ocean going Blue Water sailor. The rigging and hardware are overbuilt to handle the stresses of long ocean voyages. Waves could crash over the boat and the water would drain away instantly through a wide slot that goes into the well that holds the outboard motor. The small cabin top and curved sides offer little resistance to wave action. The long bowsprit is held securely with massive hardware and check out that rudder. I think the one feature that got Howard is the cool taffrail around the back. Gene says that the long keel is all you need most of the time but for going hard to weather it has a centerboard built into the keel. We didn't know all this at first but then Gene told us some of the history of the boat. He's owned it from the beginning in the early '60's and has sailed it all up and down the West coast from Baja to Canada AND he sailed it to Hawaii and back. The more we inspect things the more impressed we are. Most of the wood will need to be replaced and I haven't been inside the cabin yet but I think a good clean out and clean up will do wonders. We'll keep Gene's name of "First Born" since it was the first of it's kind but we've been calling it our "go to Cuba" boat cause I told the guys that when it's finished we're all going to take a trip to Cuba in it.. That idea sounds much better after happy hour. It may actually end up with one of you guys, we'll see.

I'll finish up with this shot of one of our favorite guys on a kayak trip on the lower Rio Grande river. I wonder if it's fresh water here or backed up salt water from the ocean. I don't know how he does it, Chuck the Duck of Duckworks online magazine and store is always on the go doing the things we all dream about doing if we didn't like our own beds so much. Those rocks look really lumpy to sleep on and the grass is probably full of bugs; hey a man has to know his limitations. I guess you could say that I am along with him in a way, Chuck's wearing my hat.