Clam Girl’s Second Swim
October 22, 2018. Bill Ling helped Si- mon Lewandowski and me slowly slide a four-and-a-half-foot hot wire along guides the full length of Clam Girl. Te wire glided through polystyrene foam we had glued to Clam Girl’s bottom the day before, to increase her rocker. Last May, during the Cedar Key boat
meet, we did not sail Clam Girl, as hoped. But, Simon, Bill and I did align and epoxy tack Simon’s female leeboard cones into the hull. Te cones needed to be hardened in,
but the teak gunwales had to come first, because they could change the shape of the hull, possibly misaligning the cones. In any case, the teak work couldn’t be rushed. Six10 epoxy’s static mixer tip let me work solo in near 90s F with mid 70s dew points. Late May’s rains didn’t help. I moved
her rig to the upper, screened porch, to make fittings, and pore over scores of hooks and hoops, cleats, and styles of line. June often brought lightning, too,
with May’s rain pattern. Between squalls I roughed out the step and PVC conduit mast tube, setting and striking the fiſteen foot mast outside the concrete deck, eleven feet up. More rain. Back under the concrete.
Karen painted the port side—the star- board side is still bare. I finished the mast step and tube, partner-deck, and below seat leeboard brace. In July the clouds left and summer’s
heat blazed back—highs of low 90s, up- per 70s dew points, including a day with a dew point of 82. Te first week of September, a gust of
rain came so heavily under the concrete deck, the epoxy batch I’d just mixed went straight into the freezer. Te next day in only slanting rain, the glue thawed in a few minutes and the step structure was finally stuck in. September 10th, Simon drove up from
SMALL CRAFT ADVISOR
Clam Girl shakedown. Photo by Simon Lewandowski
St Pete, bringing his male carbon cones that bolt to the leeboards. We verified the hull’s cones’ alignment.
While he fitted the male cones to a pair of rough boards, I carbon taped the hull’s cones to the seat brace structure. On the 13th we plopped her into the
Gulf at the Shell Mound in the Lower Su- wannee NWR. Mostly sunny, upper 80s, thunder heads to the east, southwesterly four to eight knots. Within fiſty yards of the launch Simon
and I grinned as we ran over oysters with the leeboards clunking and pivoting up. Te aluminum rudder blade clanked and banged its sweet tune. Simon turned the leeboards’ handles and the boards went down as we’d imagined, although not yet as smoothly as they should. We tacked away, smiling with the comforting glee of most expectations met. Another twenty yards she accelerated
with the breeze. I heard forward a soft “white noise” of rushing water, and my mind exploded. No! Where’s the slapping rattle!? Aſter the first long tack, Simon hung
out to starboard to look. The bow knuckle was submerged a couple inches. Displacement with us was about 470
pounds. Her designed waterline of 450 pounds had nagged me a little, but not enough. In the excitement a year ago of watch-
ing JF Bedard and Simon work their magic software, I’d meant to recheck displacement compared to my loſting and the model, but I didn’t. A couple months later, in February,
when Karen and I were starting to zip tie the prototype together, a mistake of mine lost another half inch of rocker. Te inside corners of bottom and sides should have met, rather than the bottom fitting within the sides. As we sailed I asked Simon about add-
ing a false bottom. In a few minutes he explained the hot wire method of cutting foam for small airplane wings. Besides the egregious displacement,
what’s been learned? Te fullness of the chine forward in plan view, which looked right when I drew her, when I modeled her, and from inside the boat, had looked too full from the outside on the pro- totype. Zero problem, so far. Its added buoyancy helps, too, when standing at the mast, easily overcoming the disadvan- tages of extra wetted surface, or a possible tendency to “gripe,” to turn into the wind with strong weather helm. At full sail the tack was too low, so
I added nine inches to the masthead. I adjusted mast and boom fittings, and replaced jam cleats with three of Harken’s versatile cams. Misgivings? Ignoring at least two max-
ims. “Do it right the first time.” “Penny wise and pound foolish,” whether time or money. October 22nd at the Shell Mound,
Bill, Simon and I carefully liſted her off the trailer, carried her into the water and gently set her into the Gulf. “Slap, slap, rattle, slap.” With Bill
and me, displacement was 520 pounds. Her stern wake was clean, too. Yippee skippy!•SCA•
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