
Aside from the occasional brainstorming session at a local watering hole, this boat-building project has been taking place in the back yard. Our boat-yard, as it were. But when the Frankenscot needed to go visit the machine shop, Captain TwoBeers had to call in the troops.
The Frankenscot trailer (Frankenwagon?) had a tenuous grasp of itself. By all estimates, it only had a few nail-biting miles left before imploding in a puff of rust-flakes, leaving the Frankenscot stranded road-side.
A three-card Monte shuffle ensued, involving several cars and some very good friends. The Fisher-Silvernail Flying Scot and Ensign RumDown's (spoken with a note of panic, mind you) powerboat trailer and the Frankenwagon all played a sort of musical chairs game. But at the end of the long day, no one was bleeding, nothing sank, and the Frankenscot was sitting pretty on a good trailer at the machine shop.
Sailing friend and metal maestro Derek Dudinsky has fabricated all sorts of odd bits and bobs out of aluminum and stainless for us over the years. Stanchions and chain-plates, centerboard control-boxs, a cooking-pan rack for the kitchen, cool trophies, a deluxe retractible pole for the birdhouse, miscellaneous things that have made Customs officers scratch their heads all over the Caribbean. He's got a big shop, JTR Enterprises, with all the metal-bending fixin's in Gulfport, FL. He hosted a Classic Moth Midwinters party at the shop one time: the science-crazy Moth-building enginerds still speak of the place in hushed and sentimental tones.
For the Frankenscot, we asked Derek to bend some aluminum tubing into hiking racks. By attaching these hiking racks, ideally, we will be able to sail pretty comfortably while keeping the boat "hiked down."
In sailing, the term "hiking" describes the way sailors lean their weight against the pressure of wind on the sails. (Sidebar fact: in New Zealand, the term is "stacking.") |

Next up, the fittings that will hold the racks firmly in place.