Sunfish TETRIS CHIP and WAVE

29 Jun 19:

Our 1963 Alcort Sunfish CHIP is ready for Sea Trials, so she needed to get off the finishing dolly and onto a Dynamic Dolly. I asked Skipper how to organize Sunfish TETRIS and she said she wanted her 1965 Alcort Sunfish WAVE to take a turn on he finishing dolly, get her purtied up like the other boats, fix the amateur patches I put on 20+ years ago. So first we dollied WAVE up to the Carriage House and dropped her in the grass. Next we used Skipper's field expedient Sunfish hoist to get CHIP off of the finishing dolly.

Lowered CHIP onto the Dynamic Dolly and rolled her out next to WAVE.

WAVE loaned CHIP her spars on deck Sunbrella cover, a fine cover that we got fro SLO Sail and Canvas. It has nice straps!

Rolled the finishing dolly out into the yard and walked each end of WAVE up onto the dolly. Rolled dolly into the Carriage House. WAVE telling fish stories to ZIP and WINNIE.

While we were in the Carriage House we shaved some yaks. "Yak shaving" is what we call it when we find other jobs to do while avoiding the primary job, which in this case was getting CHIP out back to the Sunfish Shack and finishing cleaning some air vents inside the house. Today's yaks to shave were cutting some 1/8th inch nylon line to make daggerboard retaining lines for WAVE and PHOENIX and whipping the ends of a couple of vintage Sunfish/Sailfish sheets.

We cut the nylon line to length and seared the ends. Line is long enough so that daggerboard can easily be removed, but not much longer than that. The retaining line is there to keep the daggerboard from floating away after a capsize.

Tied the line with a bowline. Make the little loop, the run the rabbit (end of the line) up through the hole...

...around the tree (long end of the line) and back down into the hole.

Snug down the bowline. Cut another line for PHOENIX. Yak 1 shaved.

Old School. Simple.

Yak Shaving Take 2. Wrapped the end of the sheet with a piece of gaff tape and seared the end. Then whipped the end with waxed line. Yak 2 shaved.

How to whip a line.

Back to our original unscheduled program, CHIP taking up WAVE's slip in the Sunfish Shack, ready for Sea Trials!

Log of CHIP.
Log of WAVE.

How To Whip the End of a Line

06 Feb 18:

When we cut a piece of rope to make a line, we finish the ends with a waxed whipping twine so it won't unravel. Materials used are gaff tape, waxed whipping line and New England Rope Vintage line. It's fun, we get to run with scissors and burn stuff. Tools needed are scissors and a lighter, and sometimes pliers to pull the twine if the wraps were too tight.

Our fancy rigging kit.

Wooden Sunfish Gooseneck

Our wooden Sunfish Zip's spars had the same gooseneck as the current ships. We have seen another wooden Sunfish in the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum that has a leather yoke vs metal gooseneck, so we are not sure what is prototypical.

From Small Boat Restoration

From Small Boat Restoration

The gooseneck on Zip was shimmed, and underneath is a hole drilled all the way through the boom. We removed the metal shims and put two layers of gaff tape on the spar to protect the wood.

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Splashguard (coaming) for Merci and Gaff Tape

Got a box in the mail a few days back, what could it be?

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It's a coaming for Merci, purchase from ebay for about half the cost of new, shipping included. There are a few holes that need repair but Marine Tex will take care of that.

From Small Boat Restoration

Merci will be blue and yellow, so I put a base coat of yellow spray Rustoleum on. This will help identify areas that need epoxy putty to seal cracks or low spots in fiberglass.

From Small Boat Restoration

Gaff Tape, some of the coolest tape ever. It is made of fabric so that can be shaped, and the adhesive does not leave a residue like other tapes. It is used by the entertainment industry to temporarily tape down cables on stages. I like to use it to protect spars, a cushion for wood to wood contact, ex keeping the tiller or interlocking hardware on Zip from scraping deck or between yoke and spar. It probably developed from use of similar materials aboard sailing vessels, it would be good when whipping rigging. Speaking of sailing, i found it interesting sailors used to work at theaters when in port because they knew how to work all of the rigging for the stage. The back stage of a theatre looks a lot like a sailing ship, and I've been told the language is much similar :)

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Heron fishing from top of dock.

From Small Boat Restoration