Jumping in (with an OzRacer)
Recently I had the pleasure to get a kick start on my OZ Racer build – mostly in the form of inspiration from Rick Landervile and him saying “Hey, just get started! The only mistake you can make is to do nothing”. Actually, this started a couple weeks back after he replied back to me about a question I had about his post “go ahead with the ¼ inch plywood since he had success with it”. During the email exchange, I found out that he lives “just” north of me so I grabbed a buddy to make the nice drive to the heart of some of the most beautiful territory in the BC Canada / Pacific Northwest area. And I am very glad I did because the visit answered a lot of my questions and concerns and allowed me to see his boats – all of them. And, at Rick’s suggestion, I thought I would post not only to mention the start of my build but also ask a few questions for starters. I have been making a thorough attempt research my questions and I am sure that I’ve missed a few since the wild-wild-web is very big. So, feel free to point me in the direction of the answers if they have already been discussed.
“First Cut is the hardest”. When I heard this, it clicked. I think I have been locked-up with trying to figure out the exact right thing to do / or / not do stupid things. My question is, what is the biggest thing you all focus on to make sure you are on the right track?
“Rule of thumb” wisdom. What rules of thumbs do you follow that will help me? I plan on following the plans a close as possible but what I’ve already learned from all of the threads is that there is a trade-off on nearly every decision in building boats. One of my goals is to build a quality boat (I think I’m definitely on the right track buying Michael Storer’s plan!) but also I have a somewhat limited budget (do to my strong desire of maintaining marital bliss as I want to keep my string of 25 years alive)
Materials – Things to stay away from? I am definitely going to be using that liquid gold (epoxy) but likely going to try some alternatives that I’ve picked up on these forums. What I don’t really know is the really big “don’t go there” type materials. Maybe this is a can of worms so if that’s the case, feel free to pummel me (ok, maybe not too hard).
Materials – Things to definitely check out? Is there anything emerging that I should google/bing/yahoo/etc?
Thank you all for any advice and/or direction you want to provide me!
Steve Canaga
Update - foils and mast in progress. Still collecting materials
First of all, thank you all for the thoughtful and pain saving comments! The idea of setting goals and picking some time to focus on the building will save me from turning this into a race or chore. And, I've already learned this is serious fun.
So far, I've got the foil blanks done and "thickenend" to 22mm and have the hollow mast all cut up and ready to glue. I have already learned about choices and the fun of figuring things out.
That brings me to a couple questions about the rigging lines. I'm planning on going with the Balanced Lug rig but in reading through the plans and online, I am not clear on the length of line I should be getting for the various rigging needs as I am collecting my other materials. At this point I see:
Mainsheet=27 feet of double braid -- is that true for the balanced lug rig as well, I assume so.
Traveler=5 feet of low-streatch, -- seems pretty standard on the OZ - right?
Lashing = a bunch of VB
Halyard = ?? low-streatch. In reading throught the plans and on the 'net, I can't easily find how much low-streatch I will need for the halyard. I'm guessing it is mast height x 2 a bit more for the connection to the "front" of the yard. Any help would be grand.
Again, thank you all for your help! (and the other threads are an amazing source of information! Great work!)
More thanks and new question on foil size
Thank you for the guidance and I am getting some epoxy for the high stress parts!
New question is about the foil sizes. When I laid up the staves for the foil I ended up with a taller blank. I have researched the web a bit about lengths and I see that there is some math-amgical formulas at work so I am wondering if a longer dagger and rudder would be bad or ok on the Oz RV. Thoughts?
1 Attachment(s)
Oz Racer color book... ok, just one page
I am out of town but thinking about the boat. I have gone back and forth on colors and recall the sage advice of letting the wife pick the colors. So, I came up with this MS Paint hand-scrawled pic of the Balanced Lug version of something that looks kind-a-like the OZ RV and thought I'd share it out in case anyone else was interested in paint schemes.
Attachment 258319
In case you haven't used MS Paint, just need to use the paint bucket icon and fill in the empty spaces. If you want stripes and all, you can add those with the drawing pencil tool and pick the squiggly line so you can move the line around a bit...
Fun times,
Steve