Ducktape Engineering – the Viking project blog

Awrite,

dear followers of Ducktape Engineering, I hate to admit it: I just managed to stupidly loose the old look of the Miniflower and kayak projects by going ‘blog’. The data are still somewhere in cyberspace – I hope I can reconstruct an access to them. Until then, stay tuned. This is the beginning of a new project. Tada.

So we bought a new iMac as the old warhorse eMac reached its capacity limits. All pictures are transferred (>4000) and now I have to rearrange the albums to get some structure back in. Obviously, I did not get it.

It’s been a quiet couple of weeks in Tierrasanta. The Miniflower project has reached maturity – all that remains is the article for Wooden Boat. But that is not really fun.

Fun is to get started on a new project. And somebody said writing a blog with Worldpress is a piece of cake. Well, so far I wonder.

Here is a book that I managed to get from Germany after doing some basic internet research. The backdrop is good old lines drafting, ducks and splines on our grand piano that has been turned into a drafting table. How is this for the complainers about photo sizes? The pictures are clickable in case they are larger than the display window.

Anyways, since mid November I had started taking some notes and built a scrapbook of thoughts. Again, this phase is probably the most fun. Energy flows well up to midnight.

So here are some objectives:

1. The vessel shall be trailerable on US roads (8′ max width) by my trusted old F150.
2. Easy to set up the rig and strike down.
3. Have a cabin at least for 2 people. With a stove and other basic.
4. Have a tent for many friends
5. Minimum deadweight but must sail well. So probably a water ballast scheme.
6. No metal or minimal usage
7. Must be seaworthy (coastal and light offshore navigation, like the Channel Islands and possibly Guadaloupe Island, off Baja, just at the upper edge of the blog theme cover)
8. Beautiful. Did I mention beautiful? Yes, clear wood, white/red sail.
9. Be a challenge as to building technology.

So If I do the math right, a scale factor of 47% will create the 8′ width about right, length over all is 36′, 3′ height at midships (the stems more than twice that). A formidable size for our backyard. An amphibious assault vessel of yore, built with epoxy and a few other tricks.

Anyways, enough damage done for a day. Stay curious my friends.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 28th, 2012 at 06:42 and is filed under Boot. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.