Boats Thread 2.0

[rturbo 930]

While I'm sure there's many that simply get broken up, there's a few that get a second chance. With regards to great boat restorations, I have to recommend this series documenting the restoration of Tally Ho on YouTube. Wouldn't be surprised if some have already seen it. It's very impressive.

The series can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/@SampsonBoatCo

[BlackbirdM3]

While I'm sure there's many that simply get broken up, there's a few that get a second chance. With regards to great boat restorations, I have to recommend this series documenting the restoration of Tally Ho on YouTube. Wouldn't be surprised if some have already seen it. It's very impressive.

The series can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/@SampsonBoatCo

Yes, Leo has done amazing work on Tally Ho. I've watched the project from the beginning.

On the topic of boats being broken up, this is how close Hummingbird was. We took her over in June of last year. (Note the thread date to start.) https://forums.ybw.com/threads/1932-...wanted.595788/ What the issue was that he was so worried about is a mystery to me. The boat is even more dry now than she was a year ago, heck 3 months ago. Before the haul out and paint, there was always about 1.5 gallons in the bilge, now it can be soaked up with a sponge in 2 minutes.

If anyone is interested in a project, I know of two San Francisco Bear Boats in need of a home. They both have their issues, but its a two for one deal, and the deal is free to a good home. If someone won't take them on, sadly the plan is to salvage all the Bear specific parts from them and break them up. I know one has about 15 cracked/broken frames, but many of those could have come from sitting on the trailer. The stem needs to be refastened as well, The other boat needs similar work, and needs a rudder. The thought is that one boat could be built from both.

Will

[george graves]

That's awesome.

[BlackbirdM3]

A pic of Hummingbird about a mile west of Alcatraz on Sunday morning. The fog was on the water, visibility about 200 yards. We were racing Freda, the oldest privately owned yacht on the west coast back to Sausalito. I knew the current was pushing us to the east and we were pointed at Tiburon, so I tacked back to SF behind Freda in an effort to find either the counter current, or just move the boat west far enough to straight shoot across the Bay. In the end, we lost, as they found a fanning counter current that pulled them around the tip of Belvedere and into Richardson's Bay I ended up about 1/3 of a mile off St Francis Yacht Club before tacking back across the Bay pointed at Ft Baker and assuming the current would carry us east and right into the channel through Sausalito (Which it did) Luckily no large ships came looming out of the fog as we crossed blindly.

Will

[BlackbirdM3]

10 minutes of feeling our way through the fog on SF bay last Sunday. No navigation equipment other than a magnetic compass, no radar, all dead reckoning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vpJIQMAsqk

Will

[roguetoaster]

Fog sure is interesting to be out it in with any boat. Out in the Chesapeake it's an interesting conundrum, either stay very near shore, inside the crab pots, hopefully in occasional view of the shore, or run outside of the pots with no real nav.

I've picked the former option the only time I ended up out in 50' visibility, and it is hilarious that you can hold the wheel ahead and forever make imperceptible arcs away from your point of aim. The nav track on my phone was hilarious betweenhaving no fixed point of reference, and dodging the innumerable sand bars.

Anyway, the lower unit on my 18' mostly failed, so I ordered a brand new one, and elected to strip the transom down to reseal and add a two stroke kicker bracket. Thinking I'm going to rig the kicker to always dead ahead when deployed and use the primary as a rudder.

[uturn]

Was searching for other J-boats on youtube and saw a video of Tally Ho pop up. Also something about the Bayesian superyacht sinking... but the best video was of these RC Kayaks... they got me as I ordered one.

BTW... awesome picture of Hummingbird in the fog but I'd be crapping bricks. Once drove on Skyline drive in the fog and some car jumped out at me seemingly from nowhere.

[BlackbirdM3]

I knew exactly where I was, and what heading I was on (more or less) I was trying to make Richardson's Bay, but I knew I was pointed at the Corinthian Yacht club in Tiburon (even though I couldn't see it. ) I tacked around and went back to SF, thinking I was pointed at St Francis Yacht club, and as we emerged from the fog, there it was a point off the bow. Adding to the difficulty was the fact that my newly installed wind vane on the top of the mast due to the boat being bashed into another boat when some big rollers came out of nowhere and hit the boats broadside. I think the plastic base broke rather than the screws pulling out, but I haven't gone up the mast to find out yet. Having no reference to where the wind was coming from made sailing upwind tough. I was going as high on the wind as I could guess, to the point of pinching pretty hard. Once we got back over to StFYC, there was a race going on, so we tacked about again and went out for a bit, still pointed at Corinthian, so we threw another tack and went back to StFYC and ended up in the middle of a race with some Folkboats. (It was clear near the shore) I tacked and ducked a couple boats then figured I was far enough west to shoot for Ft Baker on the north side of the GGB. Back into the soup we went. We found a catamaran trying to do the same thing, but on a course that was close to a collision course. I ducked him and continued on my way, popping out of the fog pointed at Ft Baker. We fell off and made our way into Sausalito from there.

Here is a chart overlay showing some of the wind patterns, but i think they are incorrect, or were different close to the water.

No sailing this week. Doing some cosmetic improvements on the boat. I spent the afternoon stripping paint off the back of the cabin hoping the wood was in good enough shape to varnish again, but there are some issues that are too much trouble to fix well enough to varnish, so I think its going to end up painted again. At least this time it will be a better color (Schooner Martha Green. Schooner Martha predates the Bird fleet by about 10 years, but she was on the bay and racing with them in the '20s and '30s. She is the oldest remaining SFYC flagship. She is now found in Pt Townsend WA where she sails regularly and is looked after by people from the Pt Townsend School of wooden boat building.)

Schooner Martha Green...

I will be painting the sheer planks on the sides of Hummingbird this color, so having the cabin area this color should look good, and not be out of place.


Will

[roguetoaster]

That's a lovely French sort of green, should be a good fit.

[BlackbirdM3]

The trip over to Aquatic Park on August 16th. We were trying to stay semi dry, or at least not have to sit on a wet deck. It was gusting 20+ kts.

Will

[BlackbirdM3]

Hummingbird powered up and punching through the chop off Angel Island back in August. I had high hopes for a good finish when this pic was taken just before the start line. The raced turned out to be a brutal ass kicking both by the rest of the fleet, and by the conditions. We oversailed the hell out of the boat, went slow, got very wet and beaten up. Nothing went our way in that race. Brutal wind, waves, and SF Bay made it clear we weren't contenders that day.

Will

[roguetoaster]

Forgot to mention, got another aluminum powerboat, this time with twin engines. It's an '89 Grumman 16 side console with twin 40s.

Already liberated the fancy trolling motor for my other boat, and will probably take the fish finder too. Other than the rotted transom insert and the starboard engine not firing on the lower two out of four cylinders it's a very decent boat.

Also got the 18' back together and took it for a couple of short trips before doing a 40 mile outing last weekend.

[BlackbirdM3]

A couple videos from over the summer.
I spotted a newer, larger sailboat and decided to try and chase it down. (its the one off the bow.) We did actually catch and pass them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWo4d5i1U68

This is a really long video, but it was a good recording and a fun day on the bay. We poached the "Great Pumpkin Race" (I wanted to enter it, but a certain harbor master was very unwelcoming.) We motored to the start (almost 3 hrs) through heavy fog on the water, then zero wind. I knew when our technical start time was, so I started the video just before we came about and didn't cross the start line (we were just to the left of it.) The moment we came about, the wind started to build and off we went. It was a pursuit race, with a staggered start based off of the handicap rating. We were the first boat to the bottom of Alcatraz of the part of the fleet that went counter clockwise.

What I failed to video was actually the best part of the day. The battery on the Gopro had died before we finished the race. After "finishing" I spotted the oldest privately owned yacht on the west coast out for a sail off of Tiburon, so we headed over to sail with them. We couldn't catch them going downwind, but after we both came about, I chased them down doing 9 kts on the GPS, upwind, into the flooding tide. I so wish the camera had been working for this. Hummingbird was absolutely flying.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUcHz_vWrTY

Will

[BlackbirdM3]

The sailboat racing season is officially in full swing on SF Bay. The annual Master Mariners Regatta, possibly the oldest sailboat race in the US, took place over Memorial Day weekend. Last year I showed up with a very nice looking boat, but one that wasn't sorted, and a crew who had never sailed together. Needless to say we got slaughtered. In the past year I've dedicated a HUGE amount of time and effort to sorting the boat, and making it sail as it should. Even a month ago, the fastest boat in the class was literally sailing circles around us. Hummingbird had been showing flashes of speed, but we kept running into an issue where the front part of the mainsail would get this huge bubble of stalled air over it. Obviously, that didn't drive the boat forward well. We couldn't haul the sail up any higher as the sail couldn't be pulled any tighter. After pushing the boat harder than we have ever done while trying to keep up with Cuckoo, we bowed the main boom so much a check appeared in it about midway. After fixing that, I was looking carefully around the mast for any cracks or evidence of impending doom and noticed a pair of pinch marks that were in line with the boom mounting saddle, but 3 inches below where it was. Hmmmm..... I consulted some old pics of Hummingbird that came with the boat and sure enough, the boom was supposed to sit 3 inches lower than where it was. I moved it down, but didn't have time to test anything. I also tried my other jib that had really not worked well with my old setup, so I reworked the lines to match the boat the sail came off of, and again, didn't have time to test it, but figured that it should work better than it had.

The day of the race I was still making adjustments, and then it was time to head off to the start line. What was the boat going to do? Did I make it sail right? Did I screw something up further? I didn't know, and wouldn't know until it came down to the start of the race.

We hoisted the sails and everyone on the boat knew things were better, the main had better shape, no more luff bubble... The Jib flew better and made power now as well. Perhaps I was onto something. We got over to the start line, found Cuckoo and Grey Goose. I knew Cuckoo was the faster boat, so we decided to focus our efforts to cover them and let Grey Goose do their thing. We came out aggressively and covered Cuckoo, until I found myself in a bad position stuck between the committee boat at the start, and Cuckoo. I was going to have to slow and go behind Cuckoo to round the start mark. We eased sail to slow down, ducked behind Cuckoo and then squeezed around the mark on the start line by about 4 inches... Cuckoo hit the mark and had to do a gybe and a tack before continuing. I didn't realize that they had hit the mark and wasn't sure what they were doing, so I got clear and headed off for the first mark. In 8 starts, this was by far our best so far. Cuckoo got their acts together and passed us to windward, but they didn't go anywhere. They were just stuck 1/2 a boat length ahead of us and not pulling away. I again ducked below them getting out of their dirty air and came up on the windward side... It was a dead heat drag race between us to the first mark. There was a minor miscommunication aboard Hummingbird and Cuckoo got clear, rounding the mark first opening up a small lead. We attempted to follow them to the second mark, but realizing we weren't going to make it, I took a short tack away from the mark to make sure we'd round it. Cuckoo continued on, and ended up low, but was able to make it up to the mark and round it before we could get down to it. (Lesson learned) They opened about 1.5 minutes on us, but the downwind run across the SF waterfront saw us claw back at least 45 seconds. Till this point, Hummingbird had not been a fast boat downwind. Infact, I dreaded a downwind leg as everyone would normally just sail away from us. By this point Grey Goose was close to 10 minutes behind us, and eventually dropped out of the race.

By the next mark we were about 30 seconds behind Cuckoo, still very much in the race. We headed off to the next mark in another dead heat, Cuckoo didn't pull away, but we didn't get any closer. We rounded the next mark again about 30 seconds behind. This was the tough leg of the race, back out almost to the center of SF bay. The wind had increased to 25 gusting 30 kts with an ebb tide. This meant it was going to be a long wet, brutal bashing to the final mark. Cuckoo was just far enough ahead that they got a few breaks in the wind and current, despite my best efforts to sail the same course they were. Eventually they tacked toward the mark, again well short, we should have followed, but didn't. This was where they finally escaped and put some serious time on us. In the end they were about 5.5 minutes ahead of us. Still, we were elated as we were 30 minutes faster than our time last year. We had shown that Hummingbird was as fast as Cuckoo (Who, according to her owner has never been faster) and with some luck and better tactics, could give Cuckoo a run for her $ through the rest of the season. (I should add that the owner of Cuckoo is 84, he's been racing on SF bay since he was 10, and has owned and refined Cuckoo for the past 16 years. I've done 8 races now, and I've had only a year to refine Hummingbird.) Yep we were second place, but we might as well have won. A 30 minute gain is HUGE, and it proved that all the frustration that I've had over the past year wasn't for nothing. For the first time in 20+ years Hummingbird is fast again, and I did it through trial and error, not really knowing what I was doing, only that this or that change might help in some way or another.

The two biggest changes were adding 500 lbs of lead to the boat below the mast step (Previous owner took it out and recycled it causing the boat to sail poorly) as well as lowering the boom to its correct height (something that a professional rigger who owned and restored one of the other Birds completely missed. Several of the other Bird owners who have sailed with me also missed it. ) Two simple fixes that made monumental improvements.

Here is the video from the race. https://youtu.be/ZW4gVHsfQdo

Will

[2mAn]

Very Cool Will!... but we need a Sprint update! lol