Part One - Part Two
All in, I spent 160 hours on the Mixer. I have a detailed log of what I spent the time on. I think after 40 hours I had the hull all taped together. I spent at least 30 hours sanding and fairing – especially after glassing the bottom - big drips of epoxy down the sides took forever to deal with. Even now I look at the finish and believe I could still be there now – fairing, sanding, vacuuming. I don’t know how people put 500 hours into building a boat, the thing is there to sail, not to constantly fuss over.
The mast was too small and wobbly in the end – I used a 16x1x4 board cut down the middle and glued to make it square, with strips glued to the sides to make it up to 2x2 at the bottom. I had made a stronger mast for the PDR, that now gets used in the Mixer. There is literally no way on earth I could make a birds-mouth mast. I couldn’t even cut the staves, let alone shape them and glue them.
I added a few bits of innovation – the mast partner uses a metal plate held in place by easy-to-deal-with knobs, the bolts are 5/16s threaded rods that go all the way into the front storage area. The mainsheet traveller is carabiner’d to the deck using stainless steel eye straps that are bolted through the gunnel, so I can take the whole thing off easily.
The color was chosen because it seemed easiest. Plain white. I left the decks wood-colored, purely because I didn’t foul them up too badly and thought they looked nice. The gunnels show the dark center ply of the sides and look very striking. The boat is extremely pretty in my opinion, and gets a lot of admiring glances, even from the powerboat / jetski crew at Tahoe. Michalak deserves all the credit, the plumb bow with the sides turning up at the front, it looks extremely nice.
Some of my ideas were a complete bust. I put the oars on the gunnels, suspending them on horned oarlocks in the two rowing stations each side. Looks great. Now try to get in the boat with a stiff wind when you’re standing in water to your thighs. Not easy. I almost castrated myself that time. I ditched that set up pretty quick.
I never really thought about how to make the leeboard stay down. I assumed it just would. There’s nothing in the boat to tie it to, so I’m fighting a constant battle to keep it to stay down. I have actually purchased a stress-releasing cam cleat from duckworks. But I can’t figure out where to put it. On the gunnel – gets in the way of getting in and out of the boat. Inside the gunnel I’ll lean on it. Outside the gunnel it’ll get in the way and look bad, under the gunnel I’ll never be able to find it.
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Sailing it – is interesting. With no seats at all inside it was awkward at first. I’m not a natural floor-sitter, I have to admit. I started using a footstool to sit on, which adds another step to tacking (move tiller, kick lose mainsheet rope towards back of boat, lift your butt, move the seat, duck under the boom, sit back down, check the loose mainsheet rope isn’t caught under the seat). During the strong windy days the other week, I sat back on the floor again. When the boat is heeling I find myself sitting on the tilted bilge board ‘standing’ on the opposite side. The boat won’t lean that far before it starts taking on water. I haven’t capsized it yet.. I know, I’m a chicken. The longer I leave it, the closer towards winter it’ll be, and Lake Tahoe (at 6500 feet) gets seriously cold in winter. I need to do a capsize test pretty soon.
The boat moves fast, it is long and thin, and slippery. With the new mast it picks up speed quickly. With the old mast, the lug sail would spill too much wind. I had the lug sail reefed to about 55 square feet because the mast would bend about 20 degrees to leeward, causing mild panic in me. Performance-wise, it was a bit frustrating. The boat would get up to a mild plane then just seem to hesitate. I haven’t taken the new mast out in strong enough winds to really see what it can do, but I’m hoping it’ll pick up enough for me to get my butt out on the gunnel and really get it moving. (Note to self – add toe-straps before you do that). If the boat doesn’t get moving fast, I’ll seriously regret not building a GIS. I believe it will though, just needs more tweaking.
All-in-all a very enjoyable process. Even the DMV bit, in hindsight. I just received a letter from my county saying that I have to pay property tax on the boat that I made myself, but so far I’m in denial about that. I have a lovely boat, that I made myself, that I can trailer around to the plenty of lakes nearby. My kids seem to enjoy it mostly, which is a mild surprise, I’m sure they’ll take to it when they get older. As I mentioned above, I’ve already almost finished my third boat. I’ll write about that next.
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