MicroShip's Maiden Voyage

William Kevin Scanlon (westwightpottersofne@starting-point.com)
Wed, 28 Oct 1998 13:02:56 -0700


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West Wight Potter Website at URL
http://www.lesbois.com/wwpotter/
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MicroShip's Maiden Voyage

Hello All,

Let me share with you the experiences of my first sail on my new (1996) WWP-19 this past Sunday. Hopefully you’ll find some humor in it and I can continue to learn from it through your knowledge and suggestions.

You may want to print and then read this, its 4+ pages long. I wrote this in MS-Word 6.0 incase your e-mail software doesn’t translate the format.

First let me say that I do have "sailing" experience having sailed periodically throughout my life and more seriously the past 2 (96 & 97) seasons with the Boston Harbor Sailing Club which included various courses and plenty of sailing. The luxury of a sailing club is that when you arrive to sail your boat is either docked or moored fully rigged, maintained and ready to sail. What you don’t acquire are the trailering, rigging, maintenance and LAUNCHING skills. These are the area’s that I expected, and did, meet challenges.

A BIG thanks to "Linda & Ray P-19 #953 Water Wings Thunder Bay, Lake Superior" for their VERY timely launch check-off list. I received and printed it at work last Friday and had it at hand on Sunday until my boat was launched. It was a big help, I will make a few neophyte-launcher suggestions below.

The trailering went pretty smoothly. I knew I needed to add some air to the trailer tires, increasing the pressure from 32 psi to 70 psi. This resulted in an immediate improvement in towing. I only needed to drive approximately 5 miles to the launch site, but, I still needed to get familiar with the whole tailoring concept and experience.

The launch site is at the rear of the old "Shraffts Candy" building in the Charlestown section of Boston. Charlestown is an older neighborhood, currently experiencing a renaissance, on the waterfront of the inner Boston Harbor. It’s a deeply rooted working class community with a rich history in commercial shipping, long-shore, naval and the ship building industries. Charlestown Navy Yard is home to the U.S.S. Constitution, the oldest continuously commissioned U.S. Naval Vessel. YES it saw battle in the Revolutionary War, and is a beautiful working museum not to be missed if you visit Boston. I had the pleasure of taking my children sailing last summer to watch her sail from Boston to Marblehead, under tow, for its first sail in nearly 100 years. Charlestown is also home to the "Bunker Hill Monument" that pays tribute to the Revolutionary War "Battle of Bunker Hill".

Anyway, the launch leads into the Mystic River at about ½ mile from Boston Harbor. The launch area is very nice, plenty deep, at least at near high-tide, and free to the public. The area has a fairly new and well maintained large pier/dock. The only draw back is that the pier is about 75 yards from the launch and the shore line is not conducive to leading the a boat, by rope, to it, therefore, you need to motor to the dock to finish rigging (lowering the center board, etc ..) and picking up passenger(s),whoever parks your vehicle/trailer. This area of the river and harbor is a very busy commercial shipping area frequented by tug boats, barges, tanker and containment ships as well as pleasure boats.

I knew my maiden voyage (and probably the next couple after that) would be a learning experience, therefore, I needed to select my crew accordingly. My older brother graciously offered to join me which was very nice especially considering he lived a 3 hour drive away in western CT, it would have been a 2.5 hour drive if he had not gotten an $80 speeding ticket on the Mass. Turnpike, ouch!

After arriving at the launch around 10:30 A.M. we started to rig the boat using Linda & Ray’s trusty check list. This took at least 1 hour and possibly 1.5 hours. Although we took our time to make sure we had it right, I had a strong feeling after finishing, and now KNOW, I didn’t have everything rigged right. I’ll list below how I rigged it, where I know it was wrong and ask how it should be done.

Time to Launch: The launch ramp was very adequate it was made of cement, wide, long, steep with plenty of depth. The outboard engine is a 2-cycle 5hp Tahatsu having forward, reverse and neutral gears and a self contained gas tank. My brother checked the fuel before we launched and said it was full and we had an additional 2 gallons on board. The launch off the trailer went well. I started the engine, on the first pull, and let it idle for a few moments. We were ready to motor to the dock.

I increased the throttle, engaged the transmission into reverse and our 3rd hand gave us shove. And you guessed it this is when the trouble began. The engine lurched out of its ‘reverse" safety latch and wasn’t adequately propelling us. And of course being in a river we quickly started to drift. The engine stalled and I re-started it. The bow was pointed down river and we were rapidly approaching a sea wall on our starboard side. To try and steer away hard to port I pushed the tiller all the way to starboard and guess what? The raised kick-up rudder met with the propeller making some unpleasant noises. At his point we were just a few feet from the sea wall and had to address that first. I killed the engine and using an oar, we smartly had ready, we avoided hitting the wall. Luckily there was a place at the wall to tie up and we were not hitting rocks or bottom.

This sea wall had about 20 feet of river bed between it and shore not allowing us to get ashore or for our 3rd hand to be able to assist us. Swimming or wading ashore from there wasn’t a pleasant thought, at this time of year the water temperature is less than accommodating and the river is very polluted, maybe even toxic. So we quickly assessed the situation and I TRIED to restart the engine with no luck. After several attempts and thinking I had flooded the engine I then checked the fuel, it was empty, ;). We determined that the water was deep enough to fully lower the rudder. After filling the gas tank the engine started right up. We let it run for a few moments shoved off again and easily motored back up river to the dock, tied up and finished rigging. I now understand the reasons for the many e-mails addressing the rudder system. It’s not very easy to lower, luckily we had the oar with us to push it down into place.

While trying to get out of the above situation I struggled with the engine and the transom engine mount. I was unable to lift the mount up to readjust the engines vertical setting and had to leave it at the lowest position.

The engine troubles: The engine is pretty new, it’s a 1996 purchased by the original owner from IM as part of the whole boat package. It, like most if not all engines, has a locking mechanism, when in reverse gear only, to keep it from lurching upwards. There is a pushpin type component to the engine that disengages the lock when in forward or neutral gears. This, in case you don’t know, is to allow the engine to kick up to avoid damage in the advent of hitting an obstruction. What was happening on this day was when shifting to reverse the engine would jump and the lock would NOT engage. This made it very difficult to use reverse. I was able to force the engine down by hand the few more times I needed reveres that day.

Another problem with this engine is that it WOULDN’T go into neutral from forward or reverse while the engine was running. I was able to position the shifter into neutral when the engine was off and then start it in neutral and shift out. But again it wouldn’t shift to neutral from another gear, it would just bypass neutral and go back and forth between forward and reverse.

The rudder/engine collision problem: While resolving the above engine problems I’ll fix this gouging problem by purchasing a ?? safety guard/basket to place around the propeller to keep it from damaging or being damaged should it collide with something. I can also install a ?? corrosion resistant kick plate to the area of the rudder where the gouging occurred. The previous owner encountered this problem too, he mentioned it to me an pointed out some marks on the rudder. This winter I will be using the rudder repairing/refinishing techniques obtained from the WWP e-mails.

On with the voyage. At the dock we lowered the keel which went well, although, the previous owner mentioned some locking reversing mechanism at the winch/crank that would/should engage the crank. I couldn’t locate it. I just cranked the handle one way to raise it and the other to lower it, although, when raising it there seems to be quite a risk if you were to lose control of the handle. Am I missing something here?

Everything up to this point took longer than expected and we were rushed for time, my brother still had a 3 hour drive home at the end of the day. He even hinted at aborting the mission, but, I assured him he would be impressed with my sailing skills as well as the beauty of Boston Harbor. We double checked everything got the engine going untied the lines and shoved off.

Sunday, Oct 25th was a picture perfect day in Boston. The air temperature was an unseasonably warm 70 degrees with barely a cloud in the sky with just a slight breeze. The average daily high this time of year is around 55 degrees, the next 2 days didn’t make it above 50, we were lucky. To save time we motored into the harbor and out past the new England Aquarium before raising the sails. This went well too, with the exception of some minor, easily and quickly fixable snags. I was feeling I had her rigged incorrectly but not wrong enough to keep from sailing. It may have been more of a problem if we had stronger winds. I’ll list below how I rigged her so some of you can make suggestions on how to correct it.

The fall is a nice time to sail in Boston’s inner and outer harbors and around it’s many island state and federal parks. Many of the motor boats are gone for the season and commercial traffic is light on the weekends. The harbor/channel is slightly narrow therefore the chop picks up towards the end of the day from all the boating activity and the afternoon winds. There were quite a few 3 to 4 foot swells/wakes kicking around. Although, the WWP-19 didn’t handle them as well as the boats I have been use to sailing in the harbor, 26 foot Pearson’s at double the weight of a WWP, MicroShip handled them nicely and I was proud to be her new owner.

We sailed around for a while before dropping the sails and motoring (because of time) back to the launch. Pulling the boat out of the water was pretty uneventful. With the exception of the motor problems, I didn’t have neutral so I had to ride in circles (which was kind of fun) until the jeep/trailer were in place. My poor brother, on top of getting his speeding ticket ended up nearly waist deep in water when tying the boat to the trailer winch. Neither of us were expecting that. It sometimes can take a long time for a younger brother to place his big brother in such a predicament without expecting payback, LOL only kidding. The de-rigging was an obvious reverse of the morning and the trailer ride home was so smooth that I didn’t even loose the hammer, pliers, and screwdriver I left on the top deck.

Aside from the troubles encountered which I know I’ll resolve it was an all-in-all pleasant day. My brother and I were both exhausted when we got home at 6:00 P.M. in the dark on the first day of eastern standard time. We sat down to a well deserved beer and a wonderful home cooked meal by my lovely girlfriend Andrea. Unfortunately my brother couldn’t stay over night and had to drive home for 3 hours.

Weather permitting, I hope to sail a few more times before putting MicroShip away for the winter. Below I’ll summarize/list the problems I encountered, questions I have and some resolutions I think will work. Please feel free to offer your advice.

The Engine:

Of course the engine may need to be serviced. Although I need to become more familiar with it, while it’s on land. I’ll set up a frame at home and run it in a water filled barrel to test its operation and determine if its working correctly. Have any of you who own this engine had similar problems?

The transom motor mount: As I had said above I had difficulty raising the engine while on the frame. Even after removing the engine at the end of the day it was very difficult to move this frame up and down and it doesn’t seem to have any corrosion on it?

The rudder:

I was recently reading about the risk of losing the rudder while sailing from jarring etc … Someone asked for suggestions? On the WWP-19 the rudder pins (please feel to correct my boat component/terminology, I’ll get it eventually), at least the top one, has a beveled tip. If something like a long/strong pipe cleaner type item was used to wrap around this bevel to act like a WEAK cotter pin. This might prevent the rudder from coming agar in minimal resistance but will not hold when a stronger pressure is encountered to protect the transom etc ..?

Have any of you encountered the problem of the raised rudder/propeller collision? How have you corrected it? Propeller safety basket/cage? Rudder guard?

The Sails/Rigging:

As I said earlier I felt I had the sails rigged incorrectly and after looking at several WWP-19 pictures on the internet I’m convinced of it. Before I picked up my boat from the previous owner we rigged it, as he did, so I would become familiar with it. I rigged it the same way on my first sail.

Here is how it was rigged: 4 side shrouds (2 on each side). This boat has a roller-furling Jib so it doubles as the fore-stay, I hope/think.

NO back stay or a ?? mast lift? Is there a stay that should go from the boom to the mast head?

Among the items that came with the boat are 2 additional side shrouds that I believe hook to the mast at about ¼ of the way up from the deck. The previous owner said he didn’t use them and said when he called IM they told him they were not necessary to use. I don’t think so?

The main sail: I’m certain I had the sail attached to the main halyard and mast correctly, although, I don’t think I had the ??? bottom/forward main grommet attached the right way. I had it attached to, where on other boats I’ve sailed is the reefing ?? hook. The main sail tail ?? grommet I had attached directly to the rear of boom. This I know was very wrong, I know it should be attached with a line/blocks setup which I didn’t notice amongst my gear. Also possibly missing is the boom-vang.

A few things I should have done differently. I didn’t even think, until I was on shore again, about using the anchor while launching. This would have kept us from drifting and allowed us to focus on the engine problems. I will soon purchase a 4 foot step-ladder to keep with the boat and trailer. I have bruises and welts on my forearms, shins and legs from climbing in and out of the boat all day using only a 15" pail as a step. I have a transom swimming ladder that I did not want to use to get in and out of the boat all day. I’m concerned about what that might do to what I hear is a weak transom.

I suggest adding 2 items to Linda & Jay’s check-list, 1) remember to insert the "bilge drain plug" and 2) tie on your bumpers and hang them over the side rails after you are off the trailer.

I plan to call the previous owner and ask him about some of these issues as well as go through these steps again, on land, to become much more familiar with the boat and its rigging prior to launching again.

Do any of you know of a web site that has diagrams or CLEAR pictures of the rigging? There is a "mast raising" site which is good but you don't get a good view of the rest of the rigging.

Thanks to all of you who read through this voluminous log of my maiden voyage I hope you found it somewhat entertaining. And thanks in advance to those of you who will attempt to answer my questions and to offer advice.

Bill Scanlon
Boston, Mass.
WWP-19 Hull #870, MicroShip
WestWightPottersOfNE@starting-point.com

Bosotn?maas.

Links:

http://www.state.ma.us/dem/parks/bhis.htm

http://www.by-the-sea.com/bhsclub/

http://www.magnet.state.ma.us/rec.htm

http://www.mass-vacation.com/index.shtml

http://ftp.std.com/NE/harbor.html

http://familiar.sph.umich.edu/cjackson/s/p-salmon1.htm

http://marinabayboston.com/index.html

http://www.marinas.com/Marinas/marbay.htm

http://www.Bigdig.com/frame.htm

http://www.bostondine.com/

http://www.boston.email.net/whats-new

http://icyra.org/00jobs/community.shtml

http://www.milner-hotels.com/bmap.html

http://www.capecodusa.com/hyharborcam.asp

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