Sailing with Roger on Little Cat

We are evading the winter rains of Florida with a two month road trip out West which also is aiding in getting Ali comfortable with living in a small space :)  Anyways, Roger Sullivan graciously let us go sailing on Little Cat in San Francisco on New Years Eve. It was a real treat to accomplish a goal of sailing under the Golden Gate for the first time and even better to achieve such a feat on a Tiki 21 like Beto when there are so few of them around the States. Thanks again Roger for hooking us up! We are even more excited to move onto Beto in late February and start cruising Florida after today.

Check out Roger's blog here:
http://tiki21littlecat.blogspot.com/

Tide Against us in Racoon Straits until we got halfway through. Wharrams do go to windward, albeit a little slowly! 

Ali could get cold in the heat of a Mississippi summer afternoon. Despite this, she never complains, so we like her ;)

Launch Video

Launch Video is up. It's too large a file for blogger, but here is the link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyLpNgqTeeI

Short Video

Higher quality. I wanted to test out new GoPro for our Spring 2016 Florida Keys and Bahamas trip.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk86-OrHKew

Sail covers and Tramp

Sewed these up. Im no seamstress, but for $90 Shes looking much more like a proper yacht now.

Really starting to like this boat

Getting To Speed

Be to in 20 knots! Full sail was too much, so we reefed  the main after this video and calmed her down a bit. A reefed jib would have been preferable for beating in such wind. 

Spending the Weekend on Beto

Well Ali wanted to spend the whole weekend aboard to get a feel for how cruising will be, so we camped onboard this past weekend. All went well, despite having only light winds. Saturday night gave us around twelve knots of breeze under full moon, and we were just zipping along all night! Beto is a very swift vessel! She tacks slowly in light winds, but she still comes about with a little back winding of the jib. Our Mantus anchor set instantly every time and was a real treat. Here are some pictures. Look tomorrow for those hatch specs tomorrow, Agur. Rain all day today :/

First Time Bucket and Chuck It User

Angry early wake up

Not happy

Launched!

After three years of off and on work, five build locations, and the development of pure hate for epoxy fillets, the 931st Tiki 21 has been put into the water! She floats, and she hauls ass! We had an epic sunset for the launch, and then the wind picked up to around ten knots and we did some great night sailing afterwards. After bouncing around on the net, it needs another tightening session, but it's so worth it to be chilling in a 21' long hammock while drinking wine doing eight knots. She doesn't tack super well, but I probably just need to do some more experimenting. After all, though, she is a boardless cat. Stoked! GoPro footage is coming shortly.

Rigged

Here are some shots of the finished product. All we have to do today is raise the mast, put on the tillers and tiller bar, and drop her in the water! She turned out looking pretty good, but always room for more perfection. We are going to raise the mast up when my buddy gets off work in a little while, and he's going to do some GoPro action. He is a skydiving videographer, you know, a real pro, so we should come up with a pretty good launch vid.

Launching Tomorrow

We got the boat rigged and trampoline lashed down right as it got dark today. Tomorrow we will raise the mast for the first time and hopefully do some sailing! More pictures tomorrow.

Got the boot!

Betos fifth construction site move. Next move should be to anchor. Almost there!

Going Green

So much taping. Dark Green top sides look pretty sweet!

Kiwi-Grip

Kiwi-Grip has been applied. This product is awesome! It was so easy to use, even in 92 degrees with 80% humidity. Needless to say I had a much rougher time sweating my ass off all day than I did applying the stuff. The only negative thing was the cheap tape that I used for a few sections when I ran out of the good stuff. It pulled up two little spots when I pulled the tape, but this stuff is so easy that touching it up will be no problem. I used one liter per hull and have a little left over for future touch ups. The color is light grey. It really made Beto look sharp I think! I'm going to flip the hulls tomorrow and start prepping for topsides and antifouling.

Second coat of deck paint is on and non-skid patterns are drawn out. I am applying Kiwi Grip this evening in a shade of light grey. I'm going to flip the hulls tomorrow evening and start painting the topsides on Saturday in the shade of dark green seen in the photo.

Paint

First coat of paint on the decks. We skipped the nonskid areas, because I am going to be using Kiwi Grip. It makes for a nice 10 foot finish. I did a test patch of the green for the topsides, and I think it's going to look pretty sweet.

Low resolution night time photos hide all of the brush stroke marks and little unsightly things here and there. Primekote cures quickly when it's still 85 degrees at night. Work boat finishes are the most functional though, righhhhhhht? Who needs a showboat.

Prime x2

I took the weekend off to go visit Alison in Birmingham. We went up to Little River Canyon (600' deep) to swim in the river that winds through it. It's pretty cool to have crystal clear water, 50 foot boulders, and 600' of walls on each side while you enjoy the refreshing water. Today I got the second coat of primer on the hulls after sanding down the first to 120. There are a few pinholes and voids here and there which I will fill in tomorrow. After this is complete, I plan to flip the hulls and start prepping the decks. They don't need much more than sanding and a final epoxy coat before they can be primed. Anyways, here are some photos.

Of course there had to be a massive ledge about 3' underwater. No jumping unfortunately

Second prime coat made her look pretty good!

Primer

Super tired so won't be writing much tonight. First coat of primer is on!

Epoxy Primekote fumes were horrible so took afternoon off to sail my Sunfish, aptly named Gertrude.

Glassing

Yesterday saw a lot of work. I made some fairing compound and faired the small gaps and edges of the thick biaxial to the hull. Then I sanded down all 12 sheer stringer doublers and 2 sets of chainplate knees, glued them on, filleted them, and glassed them in. Following that up I filled the weave on them with some thickened epoxy and filled the weave along the underside of the sheerstringer. Lastly I rolled on one more coat of neat epoxy over the hulls in prep for final sanding on Saturday. I plan to sand the biax fairing, hull-sides, and sheer and knees down to 120 on Saturday, and hopefully will be rolling on some epoxy primer on Sunday! I'm pretty stoked to take a break from the damn hulls today and work on some smaller bits for once.