small sailboat garage storage

while flipping through old photos yesterday (when I found the photo of my 1st sail in a Sunfish), I also found this picture of how I used to store my old Super Porpoise when we used to live down in southeastern Indiana.  the Super Porpoise was shortly produced as a slightly larger version of the Sunfish, but with a lot of similar features, and the same lateen sail (although a tad larger sail area).

our garage at that house had a large amount of extra space above the garage doors.  I installed (4) heavy-duty eyebolts in the garage ceiling, making sure they were securely screwed into the wood trusses on the other side of the drywall.  I then just used a couple pieces of rope, maybe 1/2″ diameter standard rope you could find at a hardware store, so nothing fancy.  I think there were a few S-hooks to make it easy to connect the rope to the eyebolts.

as you can see, it actually was hanging below the garage door (in its open position), but was still high enough that our smaller sedan could be parked easily right below the boat.  I also tossed some more stuff on the boat as you can see the mast, as well as an old plastic kiddie pool for my son to play in during the hot summer days.

this would be a lighter-duty version of winter storage than what I’m currently using at my dad’s barn, with 2×4 hangers and a 2×4 cross beam holding up my 2 Sunfish.

sunfish winter storage

with the leaves changing colors and temperatures dropping pretty quickly here in Michigan, I have now put my Sunfish sailboats away for winter storage.  I had already put my newer Sunfish away a few weeks ago, but I still had my older one to haul up to my folks house and put away.  over the summer, I had kept it in my back yard on sawhorses, and while that kept it up off the ground, I hadn’t covered it with a tarp or anything, so leaves and the like had built up on it, a good coating of summer dirt.  so prior to putting it into storage, I hosed and washed it down, and then hit it quick with a little bit of polishing compound and a buffing wheel.

there is still some fiberglass work that could be down on this 45+ year old boat that polishing compound won’t do much for, but it does help clean up the boat pretty nicely, and it makes it easier to see where the boat could use some repairs.

after cleaning it up, I trailered the boat up to my folk’s house – and my dad graciously allowed me to store now (2) of my Sunfish in his barn.  I re-used the hanger system I built out of 2×4′s for the last winter storage, and just added (2) new hangers and cross-beams to support the 2nd Sunfish.  luckily, my brother and brother-in-law were in town to help me lift the boat up and fasten the cross-beams in place.

navigating past the goose, part 2

I have to admit, I shouldn’t have left out such an important detail from our Easter weekend.  no visit to Opa & Oma’s house goes by without a little friendly face time with Mr Goose.  he promptly lets all visitors know their place, and will offer his kind services showing us the way to drive down the driveway as he runs along side (if you didn’t watch the video before, check it out – this goose is crazy!).  and sure enough, he escorted us per usual as we left for church on Good Friday.

I’ve always know that the Goose had a fondness for water, as most geese do.  here he is swimming in the big pond:

but I didn’t realize that the goose has a certain interest in Sunfish sailing as well!

so tillerman… instead of navigating past the goose, I might just need to learn to navigate WITH the goose.

happy Easter weekend

we had a great weekend at my folk’s house over Easter weekend.  Saturday was a beautiful day, and we spent a good part of the day helping with yard work.  pruning trees, picking up sticks from the yard, and clearing some of the brush along the shoreline at the pond.  we also cleared out the brush near the rope swing that a few of us hung up in a tree near the pond probably more than 10 years ago.  the swing still works great – all the young boys loved it, and even Luke tested it out!

we’ve never tried to jump off the swing to land in the pond, as we’re not sure it’d reach that well, or if the pond would even be deep enough.  but a few of the younger boys thought it’d be fun to test the water in the pond – and several jumped right into the still very cold water.  luckily Opa & Oma (Grandpa & Grandma) have a hot tub that helped get the boys warmed back up after the pond jumping.

Sunday was a beautiful day, too – we went to church in the morning, and then visited with my grandparents for a short bit right after church.  the afternoon was spent playing outside, then a great Easter dinner, followed by the usual Easter egg hunt around the yard.

over the weekend, I walked around the yard a bit, and snapped a few pictures of the scenery around the ponds in my parent’s yard – a weeping willow starting to bud, reflected in the pond:

and the cascading waterfall from the smaller water ponds that my brothers built into the nearby hill – water is pumped up into the upper pond, and it waterfalls down to 2 more small ponds before dumping back into the big main pond.

we also got the Sunfish down from my dad’s barn, where I had been storing it during the winter, and I trailered it home tonight.  it’s still a bit too cold around here for me to sail, but I’m going to try to get some work done on it – maybe a leak test, and some trailer upgrades.

sunfish storage gone wrong

thankfully, this is not my Sunfish.

the picture was posted over at the Sunfish Forum a month or two ago by Alan Glos – I got his permission to share the picture here on my blog.  here’s how he described it:

Attached is a photo of what’s left of my neighbor’s 1960s vintage Sunfish hull after a recent fall windstorm on Cazenovia Lake here in Upstate New York. The hull is a total loss and it is off to the landfill for the “long dirt nap” after we chainsaw up the errant tree. R.I.P.

I’m glad I decided to use my dad’s barn for this year’s winter storage.

winter storage 2010-2011

to get my boat prepped for storage over the winter this year, I wanted to come up with a way to keep the inspection ports fully open to allow natural airflow through the (2) inspection ports I put in (I’d prefer a small fan, but the one I was using crashed out – to much constant running, maybe?).  I wanted to try to create some sort of barrier to keep rodents and bugs if possible from making a nice winter nest on the interior of my Sunfish, though.  I spent a few hours making these little screen covers for the inspection ports:

now before you criticize me for that piece of fine wood-working, keep in mind 2 things: it was quick and dirty, and I really really really HATE using a jigsaw.  I didn’t really have any other tool in my shop that would work any better, though, so that’s what I put together, and I think Norm Abrams would be mighty proud.

anyway, it’s made from a piece of 1/4″ plywood, with a piece of window screen stapled to the back.  I also added these little pieces of foam around the back perimeter to sort of seal the edges.  the 2 screws are attached to little blocks of wood, each with a small piece of the foam, and a quarter turn of a screwdriver from above will “clamp” the bug/rodent cover down over the inspection ports.

another thing I did towards the end of the summer or early fall was order a sail/spar bag from the Sailboat Garage (same folks that help run the Sunfish Class).  they recommended one a bit heavier duty than the “official” Sunfish version from Laser Performance, and so far I’m quite happy with it.  it is a full length zippered bag constructed of rugged, water resistant nylon, with the white webbing handles that make it easy to throw it over your shoulder to carry the sails, spars and mast down to the beach (order # MSF558 from the Sailboat Garage).

I had my usual helper that fall afternoon – Luke is modeling his lovely Burger King crown while sitting on top of the Sunfish.

for winter storage, I just keep the sails, spars and mast zippered up in the sail bag, and use bungees to hang it all from the roof of my garage:

last year, it was brutal ordeal to wrestle the Sunfish up into the 2nd floor of my dad’s barn (it really was brutal – I wrote about it here, if you want to re-live the pain), so I was really hesitant to try that same route this year.  instead, over the holiday break a few weeks back, I trailered the Sunfish up to my dad’s again, but this time decided to just hang the Sunfish from the floor joists of the barn.  the ceiling is pretty high, so it shouldn’t interfere with any of his stuff in the barn (unless he tries to wire up that extra ceiling fan hanging there!).

my brothers and brother-in-law helped me out this year, and we used my dad’s John Deere a little more wisely this time: we lifted the Sunfish laying flat and balanced it on the tractor front bucket, and used the tractor to lift and hold the Sunfish horizontal up near the joists.  after we screwed the (4) hangers into the floor joists, we had to only lift the Sunfish slightly and install the 2×4 cross beam.  I also threw in some scraps of fiberglass insulation as padding.  I’m sure there are better alternatives than that, but it was handy, and better than having the boat rest directly on the 2×4 cross beams.  I haven’t put a fan on it, but left the inspection ports open with the bug screens I talked about above.

we’ll see how it holds up over this winter, and it should be pretty easy to reverse the process in the spring!

10 stone 5

as you may recall, I stored the Sunfish over the winter in the 2nd floor of my dad’s barn, with a fan running most of the early spring months to force airflow across the foam blocks.  the dry(ish) winter air in the barn, combined with the constant air flow would serve to dry out any moisture in the boat, as well as reverse the osmosis process and draw any absorbed water back out of the foam flotation blocks.

getting the boat down out of the barn was a much simpler process – I rigged up a block and tackle system with a 1/2″ diameter, 100-ft long rope and 2 pulleys, to get a 4 to 1 mechanical advantage.  gravity was also working in our favor, I guess.  my dad was on the ground, holding the end of the 100-ft rope, and I was up in the barn with my brother-in-law (we had an extra rope on the boat, in case my pulley system didn’t work).  my dad was able to easily lower it down to the ground though.  I’m sure that the drying out had helped as well.  sorry about no pictures – it went so quickly and so easily, I didn’t even have time to grab my camera.

after I trailered the Sunfish back to my house, I stood it up on its edge on a bathroom scale out in my garage.  this was the moment of truth… the Sunfish weighed in at 145 pounds, or 10 stone 5 (pounds)!  per the amazing “Files” section over at the Yahoo Sunfish Sailor group, I determined that my boat would have weighed approximately 139 pounds brand new back in the 1960′s, so at only 6 pounds overweight at 40+ years later, I was pretty happy!  I’m bummed that I didn’t weigh the Sunfish in the fall, as I would have liked to know the amount of water weight we were able to remove.  but my father and brother-in-law both think it could have been over 200 pounds, as even with 4 guys – she was a bear to carry down to the beach.

now that I’ve determined that I am able to dry the boat out and get it back down to a decent hull weight, the next steps will be to replace the bedding foam above and below the foam flotation blocks, perform a leak test, and get any hull leaks repaired.

winter storage

so, this weekend I trailered my wet ‘Fish up to my folks place, to store it for the winter in their barn.  my dad had given me permission to store it there, up in the hay loft (2nd story – usually more just storage space for “stuff” than actual hay storage).  since my dad was out of town, it was potentially going to be just my wife and I getting the boat up there – but I was able to sucker my brother-in-law to come over and lend me a hand.

about a week or so ago, I had bought a block-and-pulley kit (similar to the picture shown here) at my local Harbor Freight store – it was supposed to be rated for 440lbs, which should’ve been more than adequate to lift up my boat. so as I tried to rig up this system, I realized that the supplied rope wasn’t going to be nearly long enough, at least not to achieve the 4 to 1 mechanical advantage… so I de-rigged half of the setup, leaving me now with plenty of rope, but only a 2 to 1 mechanical advantage.  I had brought along an extra 100-ft rope, but the diameter was just barely too big to fit into the junk pulleys that came with this setup.  my dad’s barn wasn’t really set up to have a hoist, although there was a stub section jutting out from the wall at the peak.  I threw a loop of my 100-ft rope over the stub section, and then hung the block-and-pulley kit from that rope.  I then tried to initially lift the Sunfish.

that wasn’t happening.  the supplied rope was just too thin and it was too hard to get sufficient leverage, so my brother-in-law and I brainstormed a bit.  our solution was… haphazard?  ugly? dangerous? foolish?  all of the above? sure, but it worked to get the boat up there, and I have a few months to figure something better out.  anyway, here’s what we did:

I switched the hoist line location and used the block-and-pulley hoist to hook onto the bow handle, and then we slowly raised the Sunfish until it was almost vertical, with the back end still resting on the trailer bunks.  we then positioned my dad’s john deere tractor with a front-end loader bucket at the back end of the boat.  we used a big tarp for padding, and then lifted the boat’s back end into the tractor bucket.  I ran up into the barn to guide the front while my brother-in-law used the tractor to then lift up the back end of the boat.  this all sounds pretty good right?  a heavy duty tractor to lift the boat is way better than a cheap pulley system, right?  well, the next problem arose in that the bucket could only lift the back end up so far… and not quite far enough for us to just slide the boat in.  so we ended up having to carefully lean out and grab at the boat’s cockpit and just muscle it up and in the rest of the way.  all in all – not a very pretty or easy process.  definitely leaves a LOT of room to improve on for getting it back down in the spring.

then, we maneuvered it over to the side of the barn, and struggled mightily to get it lifted up and into rope cradles I made using the 100-ft rope – it was a lot harder than I expected, because the rope kept sliding up on the curved surfaces of the boat.  I had looked several times at the store to find a fan (not exactly in season since the weather has been in the 40′s), and finally settled on a window fan (discounted to only $10!).  as I couldn’t find any painter’s tape and plastic to really seal off the cockpit area, I ended up just throwing something together to start the drying process.  the fan is set on low, and I have my screens over each of the holes, so I’m not really worried about critters or anything, but the next time I’m up there, I’ll spend a bit of time to make a better system sealing off the cockpit and really getting the air flow moving through the boat.  as it is now, the fan sucks air out – so air enters the hole up near the coaming, flows in the and through the interior of the boat, then out the hole in the sidewall of the cockpit and to the fan. see my previous post about cutting the holes for more information.  I think it should work pretty well for the few months I’ll have over the winter to let it dry out.