I'm building a boat to a design by Paul Fisher of Selway Fisher Design in the UK. The design is called "Able" and her vital statistics are: overall length 4.88m (16ft), beam 2m (6ft 6in) and design weight is 360kg (790lbs). You can read more about this design at http://www.selway-fisher.com/OtherDB.htm#KANE.

I intend to procede more slowly with this boat than I did with either of my other boat building projects (see links below on the right). This is, after all, a hobby and there are other things to do. So, updates to this blog might happen once every week or two. Come back and see.

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Saturday 15 March 2014

She Floats!

I went for a test launch a couple of days ago mainly to see how she got off and on the trailer but also to try out the ballast tank arrangement and to check for leaks! I was more than a bit relieved to find that everything went well. Sad to say but the battery in my waterproof camera was flat so I only managed a couple of photos with the mobile phone before leaving it in the car for safety.



The two photos appear to be the same but the first is taken with no water in the ballast tanks and the second with them full. The approx 130 litres (130 Kg or 285lb) of water ballast sank the boat by approx 35 or 40 mm. The design waterline is where the colour changes so she floats quite a bit higher than expected. Crew weight will sink her a bit more.

Having taken her to the water and launched her of course I put the mast up and went for a sail. The wind was very light and flukey so it wasn't a very good test sail but everything appeared to work. I need to work out a way of tightening the jib halyard to straighten the luff. I think the mizzen boom needs a vang to flatten the sail, without it the boom lifts and the sail twists making it less effective.

Next week I'm off to a 5 day camp with the local wooden boat guys so there will be lots of suggestions about improvements and hopefully some more photos of the boat in action.
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