Ladybug

When we last looked in on the Ladybug, boys and girls, Sandra was giving her a nice coat of John Deere Green paint. We have a deal: Sandra helps me with all the boat painting, and I let her pick the colors. It saves me a lot of work, and she seems to enjoy the painting, and frankly she has better taste than I ever will. Note the two drain holes near the stern on the bottom. These drain the slosh well.

Once she went over (after letting the bottom paint cure for a couple of weeks), the decks were glued on....

Then I fabricated the hatch covers. Note the extensive use of PVC pipe clamps. I used 4 inch sch. 80 pipe cut to about an inch wide. That seems to give about the right tension. I used ss screws only at the corners.

A regular boom tent is out of the question on this boat, since it has a balanced lug main, therefore, I opted for mast/boom crutches fore and aft. This shows how the rear one works. This crutch will be high to support the cockpit tent, and I will make a short one for transporting.

In the picture below, you can see that I have dry fitted the rudder and tiller. I used the stainless pintles and gudgeons from Duckworks. They seem sturdy enough and don't cost too much.

The blade is weighted with several pounds of scrap stainless steel. Between it and the stock is a big disk of teflon to reduce friction. I could have used UHMW, but had the other on hand. The plastic in there makes the action smooth as silk. It's about 6" in diameter.

I decided to hinge the hatches, so I used some of the fiberglass filled Nylon hinges from Sea-Dog. These are very sturdy and will never rust as the pin is stainless steel.

We are planning some one and two night cruises in this boat, so the storage campartments fore and aft will hold a lot of gear. The trick will be making the boom tent. Since we are used to the bug free space in the Caprice, mosquito netting will be manditory. It'll be fun.

Chuck