The young starlings…fledglings…have left the nest within the last two days. Finally I can launch the boat without doing harm to young birds. It also happens that the high-high tides are falling this time of month (6.9′) from 9:30 tomorrow (Wednesday) through 12:00 noon on Saturday. I think we’ll target Friday…11:15 is the high and that means the boat can be trailered to the ramp sometime in the morning…at a time to miss the ferry traffic…with plenty of time to extend the tongue and get the boat floated while the high tide lingers long enough to allow the trailer to stay safely up from the drop-off at the bottom end of the ramp.
The entire process takes several hours between extending the tongue, floating the boat, resetting the tongue, motoring the boat over to the wharf, raising the mast, and bringing the trailer home. Actually I intend to bring the trailer to Graham, my handy machinist/welder, to fix the width as well as adding a cradle/roller to align and capture the bow when bringing the boat onto the trailer again. Being about 15′ wide, I don’t like to have it on the road any more than possible, but it is no worse than much of the farm machinery one encounters here. I will try to be careful to pick times when ferry traffic is not racing along toward or from Charlottetown.
Probably I’ll have 8 weeks for sailing, barring any ill-aimed hurricanes.
old..ive built hundreds of small sfifks in my day..if you want cheap and long lasting here you go.14 ft you need 6 sheets of 1/4 ac fir for sides and seats, 4 sheets 3/8 ac fir for the bottom,1 sheet of 3/4 ac for transom cut transom to your liking wide as you want to ,esceptions are for work boats most of my low powered boats are about 3 to 1 ltry for a boat 4 ft on bottom and you can save even more in supplies,,make your transom 4 ft wide at bottom 5 1/2 ft at top,lay 2 sheets of 3/8 on floor nail a temp splice to hold together,nail transon to back of ply wood in stand up ,,brace it at around 12 % leaning back, cut boat sides same as transom in back STOP rememer sides have a tilt and a bow from1/3 forward of the transom STOP.. DONT FOGET TO LEAVE EXTRA ON SIDES BUY TRANSON !REMEMBER THE TILT ?take along thin boardan go from transom and bund to shape you like temp nail in place mark out line..theres your bottom if your happy with you work good if not eye ball it again move the long board till you like what you see ok make a board to go across the dead center of the boat this board makes the flare at the top when you add the sides.ok now put the sides on ground and fashen them with a 6 inch 1/4 plate on the inside now you have one long 1/4 plw wood16 ft take scrap piece 2/4 cut to the hight you want the bow to be nail the two long sides and you will see a boat no your not done but i think my 12 year old son could figure the rest out