Notes Floats!!...

As promised Notes is finished and here are the pictures! I burned the midnight oil all week to finish working on all the little details in preparation for today's launch. About wensday I was feeling the pressure to get her done because I promised you all that I would by this weekend.

Without further adieu, I present Notes, the stitch and glue yacht tender that I built from scratch.


As you can see it's a hard chine, very traditional design. The bottom has not been covered with anti-fouling paint yet as it's not really needed until I'm living onboard BeBop and traveling around.


In this picture you can see the oar leathers and buttons. There were easier ways to accomplish the goal of keeping the oars from falling out of the oarlocks but this was the classy way to do it. It took quite some time on Saturday to soak the leather, measure the position out and secure them on with stainless steel brads. I had some left over material and Rich used it to make leather covers for the oar locks too. I must admit I had my doubts but they came out great! (thanks Rich)


Hehehe....very small eh? The pictures above don't do justice to her size. Only 7 feet long but she does have some heft. I haven't weighted her out yet on a scale but I bet she's about 60 pounds.


I'm sure you all know when you commission a boat you have to break a bottle of champaign. Well, I might of went overboard but I decided to use a champaign split to commission Notes lol. Figured a very small boat needs a very small bottle of champaign. The ceremony lasted about 1 minute, Rich and I each had a drink and some was spilled into the water as custom dictated and no..it wasn't broken on the bow....it just made for a cool picture hehehe.


She floating! (and more importantly, didn't turn turtle) I have the waterline painted totally wrong. It's too low by about 3 inches from the stern to the bow. Easy to fix though when I go to put the anti-fouling paint on the bottom.


Row, row, row your boat, gently down the (tampa) bay....


Just rowing her around, I went over to that island there then rowed into the marina that's in the picture towards the top entry. I got some very weird looks from a couple of fisherman fueling up their boat as I rowed on by while I was whistling. I yelled out howdy and they just stood there staring at my little boat.


Richard taking her out for a row. Thanks for assisting me these past few weeks in helping me get her done.

I'm pretty pleased with the results of my labor. Some things still need to be adjusted. I mentioned the waterline will have to be corrected as I had no idea were it really was until today and the oar locks need to be narrowed down some as they are about a 1/4" too wide. (the oars can come out) The only thing I'm not real happy with is the bow is just a tad bit low in the water. I'm not exactly sure why. Perhaps the oar and seating placement is too far forward or I might have too much weight up near the bow when I redesigned the interior from the stock plans. In any event, it's not something I can easily correct and it doesn't seem to make a difference on how she performs. I still need to test my trolling motor and I'm sure the bow will be perfect with it and battery mounted on the stern. Have to cut me some slack, it's the first boat I ever built. ^_^

Well that pretty much wraps up the Notes project. Still some stuff to do and one more water test for the trolling motor is coming but I doubt it will be interesting enough to post about.

I will make mention that yes I've broken down and put up some adverts and a donation button (coming soon) on this site. I know you want to know my reasons why. I really thought long and hard about it before I took the plunge. I spend at least 3 to 5 hours a week, taking pictures of what I do, editing them for publishing then writing up the articles. After that I try and answer any email I get in great detail on what I've done, or to help anybody with any questions about boats, how to's or simply my plans. That's time I could be relaxing or doing more work on the project. I don't mind and I think it's fun, or I wouldn't run this blog, but it still takes time.

I've mentioned plenty enough in the past I'm not a very wealthy man. I make do with what I have and can afford on literally a paycheck to paycheck basis. Sometimes it's enough, other times not much gets done for lack of funds. If you would like to help me out in a passive way, just click a amazon link on my site before you make a purchase from their online store and I'll receive a bit of credit for it. If you really dig what I write about each week, from exciting stuff like today to boring mast painting, I'm going to have the donation link up very soon. It might sound silly but $5 bucks buys 2 clevis and clovis pins. That's about 20mins less per set I have to work to get BeBop Around The World.

Until next time Fair Winds....