A summer summary...

It's been quite a while since I posted, mostly because it was a very busy summer once the boat hit the water. So let's take a look at some of the events since the boat was launched!

Here's one of the first photos of the boat on the water taken by my sister Bonnie.

A couple weeks later we had the official launch party. Everyone who had contributed to building the boat was invited, the weather cooperated, everyone got at least one ride and the official bottle breaking was held.

A bit of a humorous story goes along with the bottle breaking. I thought a lot about who to ask and finally decided to ask Caitlin to do it and she agreed. I did warn her that failing to break the bottle on the first swing would condemn the boat to a lifetime of bad luck. She clearly took that to heart for when she swung that bottle it was like she was swinging for the bleachers!

There was champagne and glass everywhere! I'm still finding little pieces of green glass. :-) Photo courtesy of Dan Holt who caught this on his cell phone.

Rides were given and everyone had a good time.

All the kids took one last trip together and they wanted MAX SPEED!!! So we did a full speed run and they all had great big smiles when we got back.

At the end of the day a toast was given, in the Tolman tradition, of Yukon Jack to the designer of these fine boats, Renn Tolman.

The rest of the summer was spent fishing (here's the first one caught by Kenneth) ...

Whale watching (a thrill every time!) ...

And generally poking around Southeast Alaska. A trip to Tenakee Springs was made and each trip only reinforced the confidence this boat inspires.

The boat has been put away for the winter, but some final numbers. The motor was run for 139 flawless hours, 487 gallons of fuel was put in the tanks and that means I average 3.5 gallons per hour. Impressive numbers for a 24' boat.

There's still more to do on the boat, but those projects will just have to wait till spring!

Tweaking the prop

New prop today and some very rough numbers and a graph.

Prop: 15.25x15
Weather: Windy and somewhat lumpy seas. I was able to find some calmer water, but some of the runs were done downwind, some upwind. A calm day and two way runs will be required to get better numbers.
Engine: Still some tweaking to do here as well. The recommended RPM range is 5500-5800.

Knots    MPH    Gal./Hr   RPM     MPG  Theo Speed   Slip
2.8      3.22      0.5     630   6.44    4.66      30.9%
4.3      4.95      0.8    1000   6.19    7.40      33.1%
6.0      6.90      1.3    1500   5.31   11.10      37.8%
8.0      9.21      2.1    2000   4.38   14.80      37.8%
12.3    14.15      2.8    2500   5.06   18.50      23.5%
16.5    18.99      3.8    3000   5.00   22.19      14.4%
21.0    24.17      5.0    3500   4.83   25.89       6.7%
23.1    26.58      7.1    4000   3.74   29.59      10.2%
27.3    31.42      8.6    4500   3.65   33.29       5.6%
30.0    34.52     11.1    5000   3.11   36.99       6.7%
33.5    38.55     14.5    5600   2.66   41.43       6.9%

So it looks like the sweet spot is somewhere around 3500RPM right now. We'll see if those numbers can improve. I'd be thrilled to get 5MPG!

It didn't sink...

Yep, after finishing some last minute details the boat went in the water today. It was one of the rare beautiful days with almost flat calm water.

Gotta tell you though, I was really nervous when we went to put it in the water!

She sits about an inch higher at the bow than the stern and I didn't need to cheat the waterline, my graphite is about one and half inches above the water at the stern.
It was floated and run for the two hour break-in period today. Once I sorted out a fuel system boo-boo everything ran great.

Now for the motor. It's quiet at idle, in fact so quiet at idle you have the leave the rear door open and really listen for it. The guy at the fuel dock even commented on how quiet it is.

I've got the wrong prop on it. I was pretty sure when the dealer handed me a 14.5x19 that it was way to much pitch and I was right. I was only able to get the RPM to 5000 when WOT should be 5800. But I gotta tell you, at 5000RPM we were doing 36 knots! That's 42MPH! WooHoo!!!

At WOT (Wide Open Throttle) it's a little loud in the cabin, but it's still all hard surfaces. It was still perfectly possible to talk, you just had to speak up.

I can also tell you she'll come right down in speed in a hurry. We were coming in at 4500RPM, when all of a sudden at about 30 yards out, OMG THERE'S A WHALE SURFACING!!! Very quickly pulled the throttle back and without slamming you forward we dropped to almost no forward momentum so quick I couldn't believe it.

Quite a day. Can't stop grinning. Thanks once again to my friend Kim who helped with sorting out the hydraulic lines, cleaning up the stuff around the boat, being my deckhand, and putting up with the crazy maniac who was having a blast ripping around at full throttle. I think she's a little crazy though.

She wants to water ski behind it. :-)

There's still work to do before the official launch, but that'll probably be next weekend.

Yay!

Left is right and right is left

<chuckle>

Well, tonight was interesting. My friend Kim came over to help me hook up the hydraulic steering. The instructions were less than clear, but we finally managed to figure things out and get everything hooked up. With all things hydraulic, one has to add fluid and bleed the air bubbles out.

On this system that means adding fluid at the helm and bleeding the air from the bleed fittings at the stern, port and starboard. So after a couple of attempts Kim and I finally got to where we were doing swell. She'd open the bleed fitting and mange the oil at the back, while I turned the steering wheel and added fluid at the front. We went back a forth a couple times and figured we'd gotten it all taken care of.

Then I turned around to watch the motor as I turned the steering wheel.

And guess what?

I hooked up the lines backwards.

All together now...

Ding, Dang, Durn It!!!

All we could do was laugh about it. Oh well, I'll swap the lines tomorrow and we'll do it again.

At least we know what we're doing this time. :-)

3 Hours

No longer marking days...

Nope. Essentially everything from here on out will just be projects. A lot has happened since the boat was put on the trailer so I'll briefly bring you up to date.

In the last post the boat had been put on the trailer, but the shed floor and two walls were still left. A neighbor offered to buy what was left so off it went. I went over later the next day to start breaking it down and it turns out he brought his three boys over and they had gone to town. This is all that was left.

They came over later that night and collected the rest. I went through and cut all the joints out of the PVC pipe and piled it and the conduit up into piles to sell.

Then it started raining again, record rainfall. So I tarped the back of the boat to wait it out.

The motor arrived on Tuesday and with a couple hours off from work today I took the boat over to the shop and I helped Mark and Ben hang the motor. Then with the occasional helpful comment from Ben and parts from Mark I installed the prop, the shifter and throttle cables, connected the wiring harness, installed the battery cables and pretty much cleaned everything up. Ben inspected my work and made a tiny adjustment in the throttle cable as I wouldn't have been able to take the engine to full throttle. "No big deal," he said, "I sometimes do that intentionally for certain customers."

:-)

Ben covered a few details that I didn't know anything about and then I took it all home.

Now it's a boat. I've the steering system to install tomorrow and run replacement fuel line as it turns out I need to run 3/8" all the way to the engine, not 5/16" from the filter. Need a couple fittings to fix that up.

Off to read manuals!

3 Hours

Day 250 - Smile

1 Hour

Day 249 - What goes up...

Sure comes down a lot faster...

Thanks again to my friend Kim who came over for a couple hours and worked with me in the rain showers.

Bit of a problem when we went to rotate the boat to move it onto the trailer.

Yeah, that beam's not supposed to be rolled like that. So that put the kibosh on any more work tonight. I'll need to figure out a Plan B. Probably sling it onto the trailer. Time for the yellow pages!

Kim - 2 Hours
Me - 11 Hours

BTW... 1344 Hours to date! :-)