Texas 200 2014

No, I won't be there, but TARDIS... I mean SCOUT will be. Sean Mulligan, SCOUT's owner, is taking her back to her homeland. It was my dream for TARDIS to make the trip up the Texas coast, because I know she can make it easily with her shallow draft. I will not be at the helm, but I am confident that she will carry Sean safely for those 200 miles, and they will make fond memories together. Sean was kind enough to offer me the tiller for a couple days, if I would make the trip this year. But, I just can't get away from work that long.  Maybe someday my ship will come in and I will have the opportunity to run and play as much as I would like. Okay, y'all can quit laughing now... it's a nice dream though, right?

 
There is something special about this year's cruise. LIVESTRONG. Chuck Pierce decided to honor cancer survivors, and those that have lost the battle, with their name on his boat.

For a donation, a name would be placed on his 8' Duck sailboat that will sail this year. Word spread, others wanted to join. Many will be sailing this 200 mile journey in a Duck, at last count there were 13 Ducks in the flock. This is awesome. Sean is not sailing a Duck, but is participating in the fund raising... SCOUT is an honorary Duck.

"Every single name on every boat that has them will serve not only as a way to honor cancer survivors and victims, but as a way that they can be with us on the trip, if not physically, then in our thoughts."

To read more about their trip, go to Sean's blog: fullnby.com
Sean has SPOT if anyone wants to keep up with them. I know I will.

Puddle Duck to Pool

As some of you know, I have two PDRacers.

Today, I thought I would take the tarp off them and make sure they are okay. Wow, my tarp has not been doing it's job... it is worn out! The Ducks were stacked one on top of the other. The blue Duck, the one on top, had about 4 inches of water standing in it. The poor think was pretty pitiful looking. Green and black stuff covering the whole thing.

It was built to keep water out, not in. The ply has started to delaminate in a couple of places. Okay, now what do I do with it? I had already wondered this because I didn't see myself ever sailing it again. Then I had a thought.... it's been really hot lately....and it does hold water very well. Hummmmmm, I got it! A pool! So today, it was decommissioned and took on the role of POOL!

I pulled it off the trailer, slid it to the backyard and began the clean up. When it was cleaned and leveled, I started the filling of my new pool. My neighbor's patio is just on the other side of my chain link fence, so I use the sail for privacy. Clever, huh?

Ahhhh, refreshing. I will enjoy it much more as a pool than a boat. I am planning a pool party this weekend, drop on by!

Calendar Girl - Miss October

For the last few years, Dave Gray has been publishing a desk calendar featuring the PDRacer, a small sailboat. Dave owns PolySail International and has been supplying low-cost, high performance polytarp sails and sailmaking kits to homeboatbuilers since 1996.

Last year, I built a couple of PDRacers, also known as a Puddle Duck. For next year's calendar, Dave wanted to include me. It made me feel good to be recognized by a fellow boat builder.

These little boats are a lot of fun to sail. Like I always say, "The smaller the boat, the bigger the adventure."

Bobbing Ducks

Sunday, we hooked onto the boat trailer, loaded the sails and headed to Lake Somerville, Somerville, TX. We arrived at Birch Creek Park and the wind was blowing enough to make a few white caps here and there. There is a sandy beach next to the ramp which makes it a great place for our small boats. We pulled them off the trailer and beached them, easy. The wind was from the north, looked like it would be easy to catch the wind and sail off. Well, not the case, at least not for me. Dale had a little trouble getting far enough out where the wind was, but he made it. I, on the other hand, had trouble. Being short legged, if I get the boat out far enough to not get blown back in, it's too deep for me to get in the boat. ( Sigh ) Dale had to come back and give me a big push out into the lake. Okay, now I adjust the sail, and slowly make my way away from shore.

Once we did get launched, the wind was beginning to die down. No more white caps. As the day wore on, the wind, what there was of it, would shift... or stop completely. At times, we were just bobbing in the water.

This "no wind" thing did give us the opportunity to take pictures. That was a good thing.

All in all, we had a good time. On our way home, we stopped at Sealand in Brenham and had dinner. Good food.

From Pair of Ducks to Paradox

Guest Blogger : Dale

Lezlie is out in the garage fiberglassing the water tanks on the Paradox "TARDIS", and asked me to think about putting up a blog post. So with password in hand, I decided to post some photos of something besides epoxied plywood, namely from our vacation in Belize. If you look closely, there is a channel marker at the top ,so it's not completely off topic. Incidentally, after she sees this, it may be my last blog post.


Moving from arid West Texas to the Gulf Coast four years has been a real exercise in adjustment. You see, in West Texas there is very little water unless you have it shipped in, and quantities large enough to sail in are prohibitively expensive. Wind is cheap, though. Little did I know when we started sailing Galveston Bay where it would lead. When I stumbled across Matt Layden's Paradox, I daydreamed a bit, and thought it would be fun to build one. Then when Lezlie asked for plywood for Christmas, I knew it was going to get serious. Despite us never having built a boat before, and barely knowing how to sail, soon there was an intimidating pile of plywood stacked in the garage. As a warm-up exercise, she decided to build a Puddleduck Racer. Joining the forums at Yahoo helped a lot by introducing us to people who had tried this sort of thing before. Discovering Chuck's Duckworks saved us countless amounts of time with information and small boat hardware. What the heck is a gudgeon ? They got 'em! Fast forward now, a year and a half later, and there are two Puddleducks on a trailer, and a Paradox named Tardis growing in the garage.



The plumbing design on the Paradox will allow the water tanks to be both filled and emptied with a small electric pump and a combination of valves. Both water tanks will be used for ballast only, not a source of drinking water. The pump and valves will allow draining or filling of either port or starboard water tank, as well as serving as a "convenience" bilge pump in the event of water from entry through the hatch or over the transom baffle in following seas. I found some nifty 3-way valves from US Plastics , that greatly reduced the amount of plumbing necessary. The plan is to do all the plumbing and electrical work before the deck is installed. Yeah, I know, something will be forgotten and have to be installed lying down in the boat, in the dark, in an inaccessible spot, with special tools., by a contortionist. But at least at the present there is a plan to do it right.

Two weeks until the Centex messabout at Lake Bastrop, Texas on April 23, 2011. We plan to have both Duckish boats there, assuming a new leeboard for gOZling to replace the one cracked during the last sail at Lake Somerville. I hope we get to see some people from SailOklahoma! , and get a close look at that world-famous Scamp !

Fun begins when you push away from the dock ....