The Boat-Build: a Recap and a Bit of Progress

Those of you who have been keeping up with the adventures of my favorite skipper as he builds another sailboat will know all this already...but a recap follows. (Thanks for bearing with me, non-sailing readers.)

In 2014, my husband raced in the Everglades Challenge on a highly modified Flying Scot sailboat. The EC, as the cognosceti call it, is an expedition-style human-powered adventure race of about 300 miles along the west coast of Florida.

The boat was called Frankenscot, with a nod to the original boat (the portly and comfortable Flying Scot) as well as the classic story of man pushing the edges of experimentation too far.

Jeff and his crew, Jahn Tihansky, finished the race in something like 60 hours, winning their division.

People have uploaded a ton of video about the event. Search YouTube if you want more than these two from onboard Frankenscot:

A combination of hindsight, forgetfulness, and experience slowly worked its magic. The crew is ready to do the event again. (Kind of like women deciding to have a second child.)

This time, Jeff is building the boat from scratch –– or at least from a pile of exotic plywood –– with guidance from boat-designer O.H. Rodgers. The goal is for real speed and seaworthiness. The boat will feature a sloop rig, with some of the same canvas from the Frankenscot program, as well as a sliding rowing seat –– plus a carbon mast and boom. 

Some more dramatic developments are still on the drawing board, but we hope to see the presently-nameless vessel sailing before Christmas.

Nameless? Yes, dang it.

Despite mustering some of the finest thinkers in the multiverse and tempting them with small plastickytrophies, the boat remains without name.  

We are hoping that the boat's performance will help us discover the right name.  

Progress this week has been a little less than visually dramatic. O.H. and Jeff did a lot of sanding. They repaired a Melges 20 carbon-fiber mast and, thanks to Marty Kullman at Quantum Sails, there are shrouds to hold the mast upright. Some exciting packages arrived in the mail. Very cool lighting options were explored. The mast-step was constructed in advance of painting. 

Preparing the boat for the paint-job revealed some really pleasant news: in lifting the boat and its belly-pans onto a rough staging, the boys discovered that only one person is required to hoist an end of the boat.

Try that with a Flying Scot and someone is going to visit the chiropractor!  

The hull might weigh less than 400 pounds so far.

​Which leads me to another movie-star gif...

via GIPHY