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The latest progress report on “Punkin’ Seed.”

This could get outa’ hand quickly, if I don’t pay strict attention to the clock and calendar.  They both insist that it’s still “early.”  But, things do have a way of slipping.  Anyhow.

I made a simple “adjustment” to “Roughneck” yesterday.  Seems she was just not going to level out and sit on her “marks” without some trim ballast.  I was going to use steel re-bar packed tightly in the old motor sump, until.  Until I checked the price of that stuff.  Instead, the nice guy down at our local hardware store showed me a pallet load of winter stuff out in their back lot—it’s technically April right now.  April is when we get to wear short pants in the daytime, and don’t have to plow the frost at night.  This winter stuff had a couple tons of “tube sand” with it.  Just the stuff!

With the help of one of their younger guys who hasn’t had quite as much time with the hand surgeon as I have, we got about 400 pounds of tube sand stacked in the cockpit and old engine sump and just about all over the rest of the rear end.

Tube sand decidedly takes up more room than re-bar.  But, at a couple bucks a hundred pounds, there was an advantage to this strategy.

I headed directly down to the lake.

I, of course, wore my short pants and waited for the heat-of-the-day.  The mercury seemed to top out at just north-of-forty, and that’s not counting wind chill.  Not the best time to be experimenting with whether a boat’s gonna’ turn over or sink.  But, like I said, it’ still “early.”

As it turns out, the wind was kicking up pretty strong, and COLD.  Right into the launch ramp.  So, the revised plan was to simply do a “fast cruise” and leave the boat on the trailer, with tie-downs slacked and just see how she floated.  Well, she didn’t.  Float, that is.  I guess 400 pounds of sand is a bit too much.  Well, actually, I think that amount of ballast is about right.  It’s just the buoyancy problem that I need to work on.

And, with water coming in past the outboard motor in its cutout stern, taking pictures wasn’t real high on the priority list.  So, we’ll have to settle good old fashioned word pictures.

I just need a longer boat.  But, doesn’t everybody?

Time to build that Lucas Stern that I’ve been avoiding.  More on that, in a bit.  This is supposed to be about “Punkin’ Seed.”

And, that’s gotten a bit complicated.  Most everybody in the small boat world that I know and read, says that wooden boats are the best thing since sliced bread.  And, I’ve been doing my best to follow along.  “Punkin’ Seed” was originally made out of mahogany lumber and quarter-inch marine plywood.  That was sometime in the late ‘70s.  Since then, a modicum of abrasion and rot has entered the equation.  But, up until a couple weeks ago, I figured that I had finally gotten the upper hand on those bad boys.  I was even spreading some of Chuck the Duck’s super colossal fairing compound all over the outsideterior.  She was gonna’ be a showpiece, I tell ya.

I was crawling around inside the hull and noticed a “slight spongyness” in one of those mahogany boards.  One, that in fact sort of kept the bottom of the boat together.  I didn’t have my ice pick handy, but I did have my thumb.  And, surprise!  I shoved my thumb right through that four-quarters by four inch stringer.  Not good.

So, after I got the finish-pretty stuff put away, and the worst of the rotten stuff separated from the not-quite-so-bad parts; it was time for a conference with Sam, the structural genius.  It’s so much fun to work on stuff like this with Sam.  We can talk about politics, economics, human behavior, history, and even modulai of elasticity without loosing track of the sketches we’re making with a scratch awl on a chunk of firewood. 

What we were trying to figure out, was the best way to save the boat, and completely redesign the centerboard well.   And, the word “well” is rather apt.  A constant source of water.   So, we discussed moment arms and sheer panels and such esoterica.  Sam left, and I got out my mini-saw.

That was a couple weeks ago.  Since then, the little girl has spent a bunch of time in what I’ll call the “rotisserie box.”

She gets tumbled from side to side, top to bottom.  Fiberglass tape and cloth sections get stuck here and there.  Sam’s and my “stealth centerboard well” is taking shape.  Completely different than anything I’ve ever seen, anyway.  And, we all know what that could indicate.

Epoxy drips and runs and generally makes a nuisance of itself.

And, maybe in a few more days, there will be something to float test.

Maybe.

Keep an eye on the calendar, for me, huh?

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